After completing my Principal’s courses this December, I’m now putting together a package that will serve me when an opening might come up in my school district. I’m connected to a lot of teachers and administrators online, so being very public about how I learn and teach has never been an issue for me – in order to understand being ‘out there’ I had to get out there. My CV is online, my blog chronicles my personal and professional learning along with my digital footprint, and sharing with social media is just a part of how I go about learning and connecting with others. Of course, this will be the way that I do business in school leadership, should I be lucky enough to get a chance to do that, but some folks have suggested that they would never put their CV online for all to see. What about you?
Given all the speaking dates that @gcouros is having these days in Ontario, it sounds like more and more administrators will be joining those of us who are Ontario Connected Learners! Hurray! I sure hope so, because although I have many connections online with my PLN, I don’t get the same sense that many administrators in my school district use their connections in quite the same way. It’s a bit daunting to think that perhaps this might not be viewed as appropriate for administrators from within my school district, but I will stay the course, be brave and find folks like @LeBlancPeter@lisaneale@shannoninottawa and @julie1gast to learn with! If the role of a vice-principal is to build community, focus on student learning and engagement and nurture a positive 21st century learning environment, I can’t imagine not leveraging the benefits of technology to amplify the possibilities!
I remember hearing this famous story about a management professor talking about goals, vision, and the effective management of time. The professor told the story while starting to fill a jar with several large rocks, asking if it were full (to which the audience replied ‘yes’) and then continuing to fill the jar first with pebbles, then sand, and then water. Just as the audience thinks the jar is full each time, he continues to add more of the smaller items, letting them fall between the cracks. What has stayed with me about this story is the idea that we must think about what represents the larger rocks in our lives and get them into the jar first…otherwise we run the risk of filling up our jars with less important albeit time consuming activities.
Easier said than done!
I’ve tried to remember this story when thinking about the balance between work and personal time. Most of us have to make very conscious choices about maintaining a work/family/personal balance and school leadership is no exception. There will be daily pressures to lose track of the ‘big rocks’ as other items compete for attention or time. Taking to heart the ‘people before paper’ recommendation that we’ve heard from several authors and from some of our guests in our course, would be a way that I could set relationship building as one of my larger ‘rocks’. Using my network of experienced vice-principals and principals will be crucial in gathering advice about setting priorities and creating structures to help with organization. Networking and professional learning are both a balance challenge for me because I have access to a rich and generous personal learning network online as well as f2f. This is a wonderful addition to my working and learning life, and with the opportunity to learn 24/7 in both f2f and virtual spaces, comes the responsibility to make decisions about how much time to devote to learning and how to incorporate fitness, wellness and fun into the mix as well! Students are also working and learning in virtual as well as f2f spaces and need some awareness of their need to make healthy and balanced choices.
I have to admit that when my sons went off to University, I may have busied myself with getting a new puppy and doing a little too much work — it was fulfilling and valuable — and therefore a good distraction. Other Moms or Dads probably take up a new hobby or run a marathon. I’ve made some conscious choices in the last 6 months to be a little bit more selective in what I’m taking on this next year. I’ve taken a break from the ECOO Board of Directors and ECOO Conference work after six years, and I’m making time for some travel as well as getting to the gym more regularly. It is important to encourage staff to consider their own situations and priorities and make time to talk about the challenges of family, work and personal time.
These final thoughts come to mind as important to remember as a school administrator:
Noticing people, listening, and being visible can be powerful ways to get a sense of how staff are coping with the demands of the job.
We are all at different places in our family and personal lives. Having young families, caring for elders, or helping friends and/or family are big commitments that might mean contributions to the work place in varied ways at certain times.
Staff will be different in their need/desire to socialize and that’s perfectly okay. Providing a variety of options will encourage authentic relationships.
There is an ebb and flow to the busy school year that needs to be respected by administrators. Know when to add on, and when to take away.
Teachers are nurturers and need reminders to make sure to look after themselves too.
I’m always looking for ways we can use technology to amplify current practices to make them more powerful or to become more innovative – to do things we couldn’t do before. While working on a PD session for some teachers last week, I came across this video of a first year teacher who used Google Forms to connect with her students on a personal level – and from where they were most comfortable – using their digital tools.
Many people are critical of the role technology plays in keeping us disconnected from others, but this is a powerful example of how technology can support those f2f relationships.
My interest in building exciting learning communities that benefit all children is what motivates me to be thinking about taking the plunge into school leadership, so I often reflect on the challenges and rewards of being an instructional leader in a school.
For the past two years, I have been privileged to take part in the Teacher Learning and Leadership Program’s Summits, where teachers share their amazing learning projects that result from a year long, job-embedded, teacher-directed professional learning. This event attracts the attention of researchers like the Ministry of Education (Minister Liz Sandals and Paul Anthony), Ann Lieberman and Carol Campbell (Stanford University) and People for Education‘s Annie Kidder who all spoke to teachers about the profound impact of their learning and leadership on the students of the province.
My experience of being at TLLP got me thinking about some of the challenges and rewards of being an administrator with a focus on instructional leadership as supported by the Ontario Leadership Framework and these thoughts came to mind:
Know that the smartest person in the room, is the room. One person can’t know it all. Creating a learning community where people feel comfortable sharing what they know, and what they don’t know, is essential to moving forward and starts with modeling a growth mindset from the administrators at the school.
We need to change our traditional mindset about where, when and how teacher learning happens. Options abound for valuable learning anytime, anyplace, and administrators can help meet diverse needs by offering options.
Deep learning is messy, non-linear, and sometimes needs time to simmer. Be supportive and helpful through the discord that often happens in the most productively collaborative groups.
Time is a big challenge and administrators need to help find creative ways to make teacher learning a priority during the school day if possible.
Structures can be put in place to help teachers develop their craft through a lens of relevant, student-centred learning goals (not to be confused with top-down, micro-managing strategies).
Helping teachers tell their success stories and articulate and share their knowledge is part of how the administrator can help improve the whole school.
Find the right balance between amplifying the expertise already in the building and bringing in some diverse or motivating voices from outside.
Fan the fire before watering the stones, but never give up on finding what motivates a teacher who might seem disengaged.
Be clear that the business of ‘school’ is about nurturing a joy of learning in our students (and teachers) and we don’t have to be sick to get better.
Find ways to collect meaningful data that keeps us focused on what students need right now.
I’ve spent the last week or so thinking deeply about something in which all schools in Ontario take part; the drafting of the School Improvement Plan (SIP). This is the direction that a school sets for itself, based on what we know about the needs of our students, the directions of our School Board, and the focus of our Ministry of Education, which provides us with excellent curriculum and supporting documents (as well as personnel), to make schools as successful as possible.
I have to be honest. I’ve had a variety of experiences with the SIP and often it’s been something we did at the beginning of the year with/for the principal, presumably to be handed in to the superintendent — never to be referred to again.
I’m glad to see that those days are over! I’m learning that the SIP is now a central focus of the school and there is a lot of freedom in how it might be approached and co-constructed with the voices of all of the school community involved. It will be an organic document that will become the focus of my work as an administrator and therefore it might look a bit messy at times. I’m okay with this, as real learning is often a messy process. The SIP allows the principal to help staff define student needs, and as a result, collaboratively decide on some needs for teacher learning as well. As a working document, it allows the principal to engage staff in a process of taking manageable, cumulative steps towards school improvement in the following areas:
Enhancing the way curriculum is ‘presented’ to students (I prefer to use the word presented rather than ‘delivered’)
Creating a positive school environment
Increasing the involvement of parents
There is a lot of support from the Ministry and from our own Board staff to help me implement this process with staff, including some of the following recommendations:
surveying staff, students and parents about school climate
collecting data from a variety of sources
involving staff in setting directions
collaboratively deciding where we want to go and how we will get there
Since an effective SIP is a 3-year plan that is iterative and involving collaborative inquiry on the part of teachers, I will probably be inheriting a SIP that is in progress. I will need to embrace this direction positively and respectfully and yet figure out my role as a change agent within that school by listening to, and getting to know, staff and students. I believe that effective administrators embrace and nurture change through their involvement in helping teachers see and understand how they are making a huge difference to students through their focus on school wide improvement. Helping to set clear and realistic goals, providing conditions that provide teachers with the knowledge and skills they need to do their jobs well, removing distracting obstacles, and helping to monitor progress and celebrate successes will be an exciting part of making my school a better place to learn!
I’m currently taking a school leadership course and we have been encouraged to dream big about Professional Learning in our roles as School Level Leaders from the Ontario Leadership Framework. Professional learning is a passion of mine, and one of the main reasons that I’m considering moving into a more formal role as an instructional leader in an elementary school.
I’ve been lucky to have had an opportunity to dabble in providing professional learning in a variety of formats:
I’ve also had the chance to be a teacher-learner in these spaces as well, which I believe is an important perspective to keep in mind when creating the conditions for learning in a school community – PD can’t be something we ‘do’ to people – that’s just not the way effective learning works. Although I’m not sure exactly how professional learning would look in my school, there are two big ideas that guide me based upon what I’ve learned about teacher learning:
Learning About Learning Needs To Be A Major Focus Of The School Culture
This begins with me, the school administrator. We know that teachers have the biggest impact on student achievement and, therefore, choosing great teachers, and nurturing the ones we already have, must become a primary goal. The school needs to be a learning community, with the principal being the ‘lead learner’ who can model an interest in improving their own practice. This includes setting goals, taking risks, admitting and being comfortable with ‘mistakes’ and articulating how a professional learns from those mistakes. I’ve learned from Viviane Robinson’s research that there is a huge impact on student achievement when principals promote and participate in teacher learning and development, both as learners and leaders. It will be my responsibility as a school administrator to be active in the professional learning and development of teachers with a focus on being responsive to student needs. What might this activity look like? According to Robinson, here are some impactful examples:
Involving staff in discussions of teaching, including its impact on students
Working with staff to coordinate and review the curriculum
Providing feedback to teachers, based on classroom observations
that they report as useful in improving their teaching
Systematic monitoring of student progress for the purpose of
improvement at school department and class level
Professional learning is not one-size fits all
Just as students are varied in their needs, passions and interests, so are the teacher learners in the building! If I have an expectation that teachers will be meeting the needs of students in diverse ways, then it is also something that I need to model as an administrator when attempting to meet the varied needs of teachers. Professional learning communities need to be focused on school goals and be teacher driven. My background in inquiry-based teaching will continue as a model for professional learning communities in my school through teacher collaborative inquiries and it’s exciting to think about the learning that is in store for me as a principal learning along with my staff. I like what Todd Whitaker says about “people before programs” and I’d like to be able to get to know my teachers (their strengths, needs, interests) so that I could help plan effective professional learning. I feel comfortable in offering some virtual options as well as face-to-face approaches, but supporting teachers in a variety of individual, team, and whole-school approaches is critical, just like it is for students in the classroom. In my experience as a teacher, I appreciate the support, focus and monitoring that an administrator can bring to the table to enhance teacher learning and ultimately keep us all focused on making a positive impact on students.
Here is a clip summarizing some of Viviane Robinson’s synthesis of the research about leadership impact in education. I have so much to learn about building a positive school culture and welcome your stories, tips and sharing of the resources that you find helpful! In what ways do school administrators positively impact YOUR professional learning?
It’s been exciting to see a project in which my son Kieran is involved take shape this past year. Filming is about to begin and Director Jeff and his team have been crowd sourcing some financial support in order to make their film as professional as they can – and they’ve met their goal! This project is a dream come true for Kieran, because although his friend Jeff wrote about his great-grandfather’s experience at Vimy Ridge, Kieran’s own ‘Poppie’, James Orr, survived the Battle of the Somme at age 16 and was a member of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. We spent many Sunday nights listening to Poppie retell his experiences of trying to survive life in the trenches, so to see Kieran depicted in the promo video was a bit haunting. I’ll never forget my grandfather, responding to something my Mom was NOT going to let me do as a young teenager (the details escape me) — saying “Aach…Kathleen, when I was her age I was in the trenches in France fighting for my life…let her go! “
We are so proud to see Kieran involved in telling this story – and Poppie would be so proud too! Thanks so much to the friends and families of these young artists – your contributions are making dreams come true!
