Tag Archives: school leadership

Reflecting on 2023 as we move into 2024

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2023 was a year of the increasing impact of generative Artificial Intelligence, devastating international conflicts, a global economic downturn, a King’s coronation, the Barbie movie, climate crises (with 2023 the hottest year on record), the Australian referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the Matilda’s playing in the semi-final of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, and financial pressures for households due to rising interest rates and inflation. Educators engaged with AI, VR, AR, entrepreneurship, micro credentialling, evolving curriculum priorities, personalisation, complex wellbeing issues, youth mental health crises, workload pressures, workforce shortages, cybersecurity, sustainability, and equity. 2023 was the first year since 2020 when everything seemed ‘back’ and ‘on’. Many people I have spoken to have commented that to them the year felt full and fast.

For me, 2023 was a big year of growth and memory making. I moved with my family from Perth to Adelaide. This meant buying a new family home (and then renovating it while living in it), our two children beginning at their new school and in new sporting teams, and our family exploring our new city and state.

I began as Principal at Walford Anglican School for Girls, where this year we launched our 2023-2025 Strategic Plan, a new scholarship, a wellbeing dog program, staff learning communities, and a staff wellbeing committee. We refreshed the school’s values in consultation with students and introduced values awards. We engaged extensively in Reconciliation, service, enterprise learning, a glowing IB PYP evaluation, and designing bespoke senior secondary pathways for students. We undertook significant stakeholder consultation as part of a review and redesign of the uniform. We reviewed the shape of the school day and the café menu, and built new play spaces for our early and junior years. I have learned much about traffic safety and significant trees. We enjoyed community events and incredible showcases of student talent and hard work.

Additionally, this year I was appointed as Adjunct Senior Fellow at the University of Adelaide, and a Member of Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Professional Capital and Community. I completed and graduated from the AICD Company Directors Course. I recorded and released nine episodes of The Edu Salon. I co-authored the book chapter ‘Grappling with Pracademia in Education: Forms, Functions, and Futures’ with Paul Campbell and Trista Hollweck, published in the book Professional Development for Practitioners in Academia. I presented a keynote at the AITSL National Summit for Highly Accomplished and Lead Teachers. With Summer Howarth I presented to school leaders at an ACEL SA ‘Hot Topic’ event, and alongside Kevin Richardson at an AHISA SA event for aspirant principals. It was an honour to be awarded the ACEL Hedley Beare Award for Academic Writing, and to be listed on The Educator’s Most Influential Educator List and Hot List of innovative Australian educators. I travelled to Bali, Kangaroo Island, Rottnest Island, Cairns, Melbourne, Sydney, and Perth, and celebrated 20 years of marriage.

2024 is a new year, filled at this early stage with uncertainty, as well as hope and possibility. I wish all in my network a wonderful year ahead, and one in which you find joy, meaning, peace, and time to nourish, replenish and rejuvenate yourselves amongst the challenges the year will undoubtedly bring.

On Educational Writing

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Last night, I had the remarkable privilege of receiving the ACEL Hedley Beare Award for Educational Writing from the Australian Council for Educational Leaders at the National Awards Ceremony.

Educational writing has been something I have done to give back to the education space, to connect with others, and to encourage others in schools to be part of the narrative about schools. My Google Scholar profile summarises much of this work.

Below I share my acceptance speech.

 I am incredibly honoured by the distinct privilege of receiving this award tonight.

As I think about Professor Hedley Beare, after whom this award is named, and his significant writing and contribution to education, I am in awe of his 18 books, 40 book chapters and hundreds of journal articles. I look at the list of previous awardees, including those that are incredibly well-known in education, such as Robert Marzano, John Hattie, Pasi Sahlberg, and Viviane Robinson. I feel humbled that my name has now been added to this list.

Receiving this award has me reflecting on why I write and what I have written. As a child I wanted to be an author, and I tried to write my first novel at around 8 years old. I think I got to about 30 pages and 3 chapters before I gave up that novel, but I still remember the main character, Lesley, and her Nancy-Drewe style adventures.

My educational writing has been borne out of a commitment to the teaching and school leadership profession, a desire to speak out into and help to shape education narratives, and the sense of nourishment I get from reading the writing of others, being informed by it in my thinking and practice, and from collaborating with others in writing projects.

I have been reflecting on what I like to think of as the ‘family tree’ of educational leadership and educational writing in Australia. Of the educational leaders who have supported me through my career, of the educational writers and researchers who have engaged me in conversation, in the colleagues in schools and the academy who have worked alongside me, engaged me in robust debate, and encouraged me.

Writing about education has been something I have done while working full time in schools. Some of my recent writing has been around the still-fairly-emerging concept in education of ‘pracademia’ – a concept that thinks of practice and research as both/and rather than either/or. Trista Hollweck, Paul Campbell and I define pracademia as the plurality of spaces, and the space itself, occupied by those interacting within, between, and beyond the domains of practice and academia, and involving the components of identity, community and engagement. For me, pracademia as a concept encapsulates the valuable networks and constructive collaboration between educators across and between education spaces. This is a space I feel I have inhabited as I have written from my work inside schools and sought to contribute beyond the walls of the schools in which I have worked.

This year’s ACEL conference theme—Learning from the past, Leading for the future—encapsulates what we need in education: to honour and seek to understand our past, while working to serve our students and communities into the future.

Some of the takeaways of the edited book, Future Alternatives for Educational Leadership, are that leadership requires intuition, adaptive responsiveness, and continuous learning, combined with systematic, critical, and intentional work. That educational leaders need to be reflexive in their practice, actively seeking to examine, interrogate, and challenge our beliefs, practices, and the norms and structures operating in our schools and systems. That leadership should work to balance the needs and care for each individual with the needs and care of the whole. It is about knowing our contexts and communities and responding to their needs. About openly addressing complex or difficult issues and looking for ways forward, even if these turn out to be unsuccessful. About making space for diversity of perspectives and knowledge systems, including those of Indigenous and culturally marginalised groups. Doing good, not looking good. Doing the right thing, not the popular thing. Serving others and focusing on the humanity of our work. Leading from the past and for the future requires creative, critical, and novel approaches, balanced with appreciation for, understanding of, and learning from history and tradition.

Writing for me has been sustaining, and it is wonderful to think that my contribution to educational writing is something that might support and positively influence others. Really, though, it is the ecosystem of educational writing, in which we connect with others and build upon the work of others, that is most valuable. We are better together. We are better because of who has come before, and we are better when we support those who will come next.

As I reflected on accepting this award tonight, I thought back to my PhD thesis, which used Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a metaphor for education, professional identity, professional learning, and school change.

The last lines of my thesis explore the hope I have for educational writing – that listening to the stories of others and sharing a range of perspectives might transform us individually, collectively, and as a profession. I will finish by reading some lines from the final passage:

“Alice remembered how she had fallen slowly down the strange and marvellous rabbit hole, touching the creased spines of books and the smooth wood of ornaments as she fell down, down, down. She thought of those she had met and whose stories she had heard along her curious journey.

She had known who she was when she got up that morning, but Alice had changed so many times since then! The process of adventuring down the rabbit hole and through all the tangled paths of Wonderland had been a cocoon in which she had been transformed, and from which she had emerged ablaze with new colours and fresh insights.”

Reflections on six months of principalship

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I have worked in education for my whole career – from a graduate teacher, through middle and senior leadership in schools. Teachers know their impact and see it every day in the progress of their students, or when a student they used to teach tells them what a difference they made to the trajectory of the student’s life. Teaching and leading in schools is work full of purpose and meaning. One thing I have never had to wonder is, “What is the point of my work?” or “Why do I do what I do professionally?” From the direct influence on students in the classroom, to more diluted and broader influence through leading, working in schools is literally life-changing work.

Now as a school principal, the ‘why’ of my work is clear. According to the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL):

“The role of the principal in a school is one of the most exciting and significant undertaken by any person in our society. Principals help to create the future. Principals are responsible and accountable for the development of children and young people.”

AITSL describes the principal’s job as to raise student achievement, promote equity and excellence, cultivate conditions under which quality teaching and learning thrive, engage with community expectations, deliver on government policy, and contribute to the education system at local, national and international levels.

Through the Australian Professional Standards for Principals, AITSL outlines the scope of the work of principal. Firstly, to lead the vision and values of the school, serving the best interests of the community by upholding high standards and fostering respect. Secondly, principals know, understand and apply the theory and practice of leadership, teaching, curriculum, assessment, reporting, strategy, policy, legislation, and management of human and financial resources. According to the Standards, principals also have the emotional intelligence, empathy, resilience, decision making frameworks and conflict management skills to build trusting, collaborative and positive cultures across the school community. Additionally, AITSL outlines the nature of principals’ work as including: leading teaching and learning; developing self and others; leading improvement, innovation and change; leading the management of the school; and engaging and working with community.

When I think of the role of principal, I think of it as encompassing the roles of: custodian of the school’s history, identity, mission, values, traditions and stories; servant to the school community; chief ambassador, sense-maker, storyteller and advocate; relationship builder; stakeholder engager, seeking to understand multiple perspectives and engaging enthusiasts and dissenters; leader of strategy; ethical decision maker; coach, mentor and builder of others’ capacity; fosterer of high performing teams and a culture of trust; networker beyond the school gates to local and international contexts; and joy-finder, because it’s important to find celebration and wonder among what can be challenging times.

So, knowing all this, how does a principal new to a school begin her work? What have the first six months looked like for me?

In my first semester, importantly, I have been getting to know the people and the school’s specific context; these people and this place at this time. While there is never a dull moment in principalship, and much of a day or a week can be made up of the unexpected and the surprising, below I outline some of what my semester has encompassed as I have sought to get to know community.

I enjoyed visiting classrooms across the school from ELC to Year 12, and teaching my Year 10 class. I love to be in the classroom. It is students that make my heart sing and ground me in the ‘why’ of school. I met students as they got on, and then later off, buses from camp, full of new memories, challenges overcome and strengthened friendships. I hosted lunches with all Year 12 students, in groups of about five, and met regularly with various student leaders and committees. I have gotten to know students through House events and competitions, service opportunities, and attending sports events and arts performances. I am constantly humbled by the resilience and achievements of students in academics, arts, sports and other endeavours.

I connected with parents at coffee mornings, events, committee meetings, school tours and in one-on-one or family meetings. I have begun to understand the school’s rich history and community by meeting alumnae through old scholars’ committee meetings and events.

I partner with the school’s Council of Governors and Executive Leadership Team on actioning the business of the school and its strategic direction in ways that are sustainable, ethical, futures-focused and in the best interests of students. I have been involved in planning and opening new facilities, overseeing budgets, leading staffing decisions and processes, minimising risk, responding to critical incidents, and attending to complex student issues. I have led the refreshing of the school’s values, generated community responses to the school uniform and begun a uniform review, instigated a new scholarship, and launched a new strategic plan.

It was a joy to collaborate in the finalisation of the school’s strategic plan. While I came to the process mid-way, I was able to engage in shaping the threads and themes of consultation and synthesis to fruition. As the principal I need to live and breathe the school’s strategy. I need to feel it in my bones with a resonance that hums through everything from decision making to the way I show up each day. Clear strategic intent anchors all in our community to unite in important shared work around a collective purpose, so it is exciting to have a new plan to shape our decisions, initiatives, actions and opportunities.

My visits to classrooms, walks through the campus, yard duties and staff meetings, have all been opportunities to understand those who together contribute to the work of the school. It has been a pleasure to get to know their knowledge, skills and commitment to our students and families. At the outset of the year, I invited all staff to a one-on-one meeting with me to each share their story and to convey their views on what is great about the school, what might be improved, and how I might support them in their aspirations. These conversations revealed insights into individual staff from across the school as well as into the broader culture and history of the place.

Leadership is built one conversation, interaction and action at a time. As I reflect on my first semester as principal, the highlights have been many. Mother Teresa said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Our community is made up of students, staff, parents and wider community who are all doing small things with great care, and these kindnesses and micro-moments all add up to make the school the special place it is. In principalship, too, it is the daily actions—undertaken with care, intentionality and the desire to serve and do good—that make up the work.

Culture: Who do we want to be, together?

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I have talked with staff this week about together creating the conditions for all of us to grow as a community of learners, through fostering an environment of high support and high challenge. Our staff have been preparing for the return of students and coming together to work through the idea of organisational culture, including hearing from students about their experiences of and insights into our school culture.

We have been wondering: Who are we now, and who do we want to be and become?

Peter Drucker famously said that “Culture eats Strategy for breakfast”, implying that strategy falls flat without a positive culture that empowers and supports the people in an organisation to enact the strategy. While most would agree that culture is important in organisations, it is one of those fluid, nebulous, and slippery terms that evades clear definition. Richard Perrin defines organisational culture as “the sum of values and rituals which serve as ‘glue’ to integrate members of the organisation.” The metaphor of glue is central; culture binds individuals together as a collective. Culture is about those things we share, consciously and unconsciously. When I think about culture, those things we share, or aim to share, include:

  • Purpose – Our shared why.
  • Values – What underpins our beliefs and actions.
  • Stories and symbols – What we say about ourselves, to ourselves and to others.
  • Relationships – How and who we are with each other.
  • Behaviours – How we do things around here.
  • Language – How we talk around here.

Herb Kelleher famously said that “culture is what people do when no one is looking.” We perform culture through our presence and our actions, seen and unseen, accepted and challenged. As Lieutenant-General David Morrison’s oft-cited message goes: “The standard we walk past is the standard we accept.” We become enculturated through our immersion in a culture and our observations of how a place and its people present, interact, and operate. As a new principal to a school this year, I am at the outset of my own journey of enculturation; of absorbing, being influenced by, and being initiated into, an existing culture.

In their work on culture this week, our staff were guided by organisational psychologist Hayley Lokan, from ISC Consulting, who described culture and both intangible and palpable. She shared Robert Kreitner and Angelo Kinicki’s definition of culture as “the set of shared, taken-for-granted implicit assumptions that a group holds and that determines how it perceives, thinks about, and reacts to its various environments”. Hayley likened culture to an iceberg and challenged us to look beyond the visible aspects of culture to interrogate our deep-seated assumptions. It reminded me of one of the findings from my PhD study: that in order to change our behaviour we often need to change our beliefs. In order to shift culture we need to challenge our norms, and our accepted attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours. Story, symbols, rituals, and traditions are important markers of and continuers of culture, but we need to be honest about those things that we allow to continue that are not aligned with our moral purpose or current community. Context, as always, is Queen, and our communities and their needs change over time.

This week’s staff workshops and student panel on culture revealed insights into the school. Staff described the school’s culture as supportive, caring, welcoming, inclusive, kind, collaborative, friendly, aspirant, dedicated, proud, respectful, hard working, and with a mixture of tradition and trailblazing dynamism. Students in a panel discussion described the culture as safe, caring, close-knit, empowering, inclusive, and one in which students feel encouraged to be their best while being supported during times of difficulty. In exploratory discussions about the future of our culture, staff began to wonder about how we might elevate wellbeing, agency, and celebration of the diversity of the individual, to strengthen what is great about our culture and to grow with our community.

If we can build and maintain a culture of trust in which there is openness, honest and gracious feedback, diverse voices, varied aspirations, and a commitment to lifting each other up, we can all learn, lead, be well, and be in community with one another. We will continue to ask ourselves, our students and our wider community:

  • What about our culture do we want to keep?
  • What about our culture might we like to change or develop?
  • What are our next steps to move forward with intentionality?

Threads of 2022: Wellbeing, inclusion and agency

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Source: Mick Haupt via unsplash.com

2022 has been a year in which we have immersed ourselves in deep reflection on the realities of the present, and pushed ourselves to think radically and realistically about the possibilities of the future.

The realities have been largely distressing: pandemics, war, climate events, economic instability, rising inflation, financial stress, skills shortages, and threats to democracy. Concerns about climate change, geopolitical turbulence, and health, abound. Technologies are providing risk and opportunity. Some professions are in crisis, while some industries are reinventing ways of working and pioneering hybrid alternatives.

In 2022, schools dealt with huge amounts of staff absence, largely from Covid-19, as well as significant profession-wide teacher shortages, and increasing student and staff wellbeing concerns. We have also seen young people and school staff rise to meet challenges, and hope-full conversations, research, and practice interventions at local, national and global levels.

The wellbeing of students remains paramount, with schools implementing multi-layered approaches to equipping students to lead fulfilling and flourishing lives. Many schools have been busy reviewing or introducing strengthened wellbeing programs, as well as bolstering human resources to support students’ physical, emotional, and relational wellbeing. Initiatives that focus on service to others are being integrated with work that focuses on knowledge of and care for self.

The wellbeing of staff, too, remains a top priority for schools. The ‘great resignation’ and ‘quiet quitting’ trends of the last couple of years have employees in all sectors asking themselves why they are doing the work they do, and what their alternatives might be. With teacher shortages and crises of teacher recruitment and retention, the workload and workforce conditions of teachers have been under the spotlight. At an education policy level, well-meaning but insufficient solutions have been tabled, such as reviewing initial teacher education (again), paying some teachers more, and providing pre-made teaching resources and lesson plans in an attempt to ‘unburden’ teachers of some of their work.

Schools have been digging deep into their cultures. They have been moving beyond bolt-on wellbeing initiatives and viewing wellbeing as a solely individual pursuit, to working on the complexities of community, belonging, and meaning, as ways to envisage and address wellbeing. Schools are focusing on clear strategic priorities, combined with cultures in which each person is supported as an individual who valued for who they are while being nestled as part of a connected whole.

Those of us leading in schools have been increasingly considering how we can make our workplaces sites of connection, purpose, wellness, and hope. This might be through considering the administrative burden on teachers and seeing what can be taken away – such as subject report comments, expectations of extensive written feedback on every assessment, and co-curricular expectations. Many schools have attempted to streamline communication through platforms such as Teams in an effort to stem the unmanageable firehose of emails. Parent teacher interviews, information evenings, and other meetings, have often moved online to enhance flexibility and accessibility. Some schools are building meeting times into the school day, rather than holding these after school hours. Schools are implementing responsive learning technologies, automated marking and feedback systems, and collaborative planning technologies. Reducing the number of summative assessments, and increasing student ownership over reflection and feedback on formative tasks, is one way to simultaneously support learning and reduce teacher workload.

As we watch corporate sectors reimagining their workplaces in ways that allow increasing flexibility for workers, the school as workplace is also being reconsidered, albeit more slowly. Some schools and systems have been generous in their leave policies and leave conditions, while others have been unable to do so due to financial constraints. Professional learning budgets are being spent on providing time for meaningful planning and collaboration, and on coaching and mentoring, as well as on opportunities for networking and connecting with those beyond the school gates and local community. While school timetables are notoriously inflexible, schools are considering how to allow staff more flexibility about how and where they work. It isn’t yet usually possible to offer teachers regular ‘working from home’ days. However, within the available parameters many schools are negotiating job-share and attractive part-time arrangements for teachers.

A focus on student and staff wellbeing has been bolstered by a focus on inclusion and agency. Education organisations have been interrogating the inclusivity of their language, physical spaces, policies, and practices. A focus on addressing the diverse needs of learners has led to continued work in differentiation and appropriate adjustments. Many schools are engaged in exciting work on increasingly one-size-fits-one approaches to learning, to success pathways, and to ways of demonstrating achievement. Students and staff are being offered opportunities for meaningful collaboration and a voice in positive change. Personalisation, voice, and choice, are being increasingly woven into the fabric of learning, leading, and working.

As we move towards the end of 2022, and into 2023, wellbeing, inclusion, and agency will continue to be issues with which schools grapple.

Metaphor as a way of considering future alternatives for educational leadership

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Last week I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote to the Australian Council for Educational Leaders National Conference in Sydney. The presentation was based, in part, on the edited book Future Alternatives for Educational Leadership.

In exploring what leadership looks like now, and what it might look like next, as the book does, I shared some unusual metaphors for leadership, from educational scholarship, that could help to move our thinking beyond normalised paradigms of leadership as largely male, white, and about the individual. These were:

  • The Cheshire Cat (Netolicky, 2019) representing the deliberately visible-invisible leader who navigates fluidity of role, and intentionally provides others with what they need at any given time.
  • The punk rock principal (Heffernan, 2019) as the leader who sees themselves as part of a band, and who is willing to consider and potentially resist compliances and expectations.
  • Network leadership (Azorín, Harris, & Jones, 2021) in which leading is collective, networked, and a social practice.
  • Leadership as a social movement (Rincón-Gallardo, 2021) in which leaders participate as a learners, craft strategy, forge collective commitment, shape the public narrative, and ignite others to action.
  • Leading as salvaging (Grice, 2021) as a practice of hope and sustainability that involves collecting, saving, selecting, respecting the value of resources, and repurposing or returning to purpose.
  • Wayfinding leadership (Netolicky & Golledge, 2021) in which leaders know and reflect on self, know and respond to their environment, navigate roadblocks, use instruments fit for purpose, and balance tensions by simultaneously applying systematisation and intuition, strategy and empathy.

The theme of the conference was ‘inspiring hope, leading our future’, and my takeaways for the audience were that we benefit from:

  • A focus on leading as a practice for all, rather than the leader as a person or title.
  • Knowing that context is queen, including knowing our people and honoring tradition while engaging in futures thinking.
  • Applying reflexive practice by examining self and evaluating impact.
  • Seeing ourselves, as educators and leaders, as collaborators rather than competitors, working together across stakeholder groups and systems.
  • Redesigning for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
  • Considering sustainable practices, for our schools, our staff, ourselves, and the planet.
  • Creating and feeding the conditions for an ecosystem of high trust, high support, high challenge, and respectful disagreement.
  • Empowering, building the capacity of, meaningfully inviting the voices of, and co-designing with others.

A core belief of my presentation, and of the conference, was the importance of humanity at the centre of our work as teachers and school leaders.

My slide deck is below.

Reflections on teaching and school leadership during Term 1 2022

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source: Sprudge

Term 1 2022 may have occurred at and for about the same time as it usually does in Australia, but it felt like an especially long for educators.                 

In Western Australia, with more restrictions in place than some other states, signature experiences of Term 1 included the following.

  • Mask-wearing for school staff, and for students in Years 3 and up.
  • Classrooms with air purifiers, CO2 monitors and open windows.
  • Schools taking on the role of contact tracing and communication.
  • Restrictions to gatherings at schools, resulting in parent information, parent teacher interviews, assemblies, and activities being held online, outdoors, or in small groups.
  • The latest iterations of remote and hybrid learning as students and teachers were absent from school due to isolation and illness.
  • Teacher absences and shortages.
  • Teachers classed as potential ‘critical workers’.
  • The hard border into WA softening.
  • The acting federal Education Minister making remarks about “dud teachers” “dragging the chain” and “not delivering the learning gains our children need”.

The administrative requirements of Covid-19 directions for schools, combined with restrictions on getting together in person, meant that educators’ experiences of the term were largely transactional, operational, and cumulatively exhausting. School leaders and teachers worked to keep school communities safe, informed, and with a sense of calm normalcy. We put one foot in front of the other, complied with requirements, and ensured that learning and pastoral care continued for students. But we missed some of those things that buoy us in our work: relationality, community, and connection.

At my school we employed as many relief staff as we could to take the pressure off our teachers. We offered opportunities for staff to work flexibly or from home when we could. We scaled back and reimagined meetings, doing these differently or not at all, according to their purpose and our community’s needs. We carefully considered administrative requirements and evaluated the effectiveness, efficiency, and flexibility of assessment tasks and feedback practices. We interrogated the reasons for our ways of doing things, generated alternate ways to achieve our aims, and questioned whether the aims themselves needed to be rethought or relinquished. What was important during this time? What could we do differently? What could be let go?

We found small ways to connect with one another. There were no whole-staff meetings or morning teas, but we met in smaller groups (on balconies, in the quadrangle, in well-ventilated spaces). We held some free coffee Fridays where drinks at the coffee van were paid for by the school, facilitating incidental outdoors conversations between colleagues, as well as offering a gesture of thanks to our hard working staff. We thanked individuals for specific contributions. I called most teachers who were home isolating or ill, to check in and see how they were. We introduced a Staff Appreciation Award so that staff could recognise colleagues for their support.

While it was tempting to hold off on all but the most essential work, we knew that engaging with our professional selves, professional goals, and core purpose was key to staying connected and uplifted. We held our annual goal setting meetings and booked into professional learning experiences. We provided opportunities for staff to collaborate in small groups and teams to have energising, productive conversations around practice, with each other and with external experts. As well as teaching our students, it was pockets of meaningful collaboration that sparked moments of professional delight. Working together with colleagues and engaging in robust dialogue, thoughtful reflection, and collaborative planning, provided a lightness, an energy, and a reminder about our shared moral purpose: educating each student in our school community.

None of this is perfect, but we are doing our absolute best. We remain committed to the learning, care, safety, and success of our students.

Someone asked me recently what I have been proud of, and the first thing that came to mind was: showing up. The challenge for those in schools is to maintain enough wellbeing, community, connection, kindness and belonging, to sustain us through what will continue to be a challenging year. During this break between terms, I hope that educators around the country are filling their empty cups by finding time to regenerate and to connect with themselves and with their families and friends.

Evidence-based practice for sustainable school change

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Graphic representation of my keynote presentation, drawn live by Pat Grant

Yesterday I presented the final keynote at the Association of Independent Schools NSW Evidence Institute’s two-day Education Research Symposium: Wrong way go back: A wayfinding approach to evidence-based practice for sustainable school change.

The keynote was based in the current context in which schools are operating; one of relentless global uncertainty, disruption, and disunity. Teachers and school leaders are tasked with working towards change within schools that is meaningful, sustainable, and best serves the current and future needs of our students and communities. So I sought to draw theory and practice together to articulate how I approach school change that sticks, energises, engages critically with evidence, brings the community along, and improves education for the betterment of students.

My keynote explored the metaphor of wayfinding—a purposeful, directive process of determining and adjusting our route between an origin and a destination—as a framework for guiding evidence-based educators. This metaphor is one co-author Claire Golledge and I explored in our recent chapter ‘Wayfinding: Navigating multiple identities for sustainable school leadership’, in the book Future Alternatives for Educational Leadership: Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Democracy. While anchoring ourselves in where we are and what previous research can tell us gives us a starting point for our work in schools, change that is meaningful and sustainable needs to also engage in futures thinking and wayfinding practices so that we might navigate the complexities and tensions of the current education landscape.

This presentation provided insights into what it means to be an evidence-informed educator and the definitions, possibilities, and pitfalls of evidence-based practice in education. I recommended Gary Jones’ excellent, sense-making book Evidence-based school leadership and management: A practical guide. I explored how a wayfinding approach to evidence-based practice can allow educators to act with a balance of systematisation and responsiveness, drawing together research and evidence with practice, futures thinking, and deep knowledge of context.

It was wonderful to be part of a line-up of speakers including Christine Grice, Mark Rickinson, Connie Cirkony, Jenny Donovan, Mary Ryan, Pasi Sahlberg, Jim Tognolini and Amy Graham.

My slides are below.

Staff wellbeing: Time and money

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source: @nikkotations at unsplash.com

In 2019 I blogged about the increasing concerns about teacher and school leader wellbeing. I’ve lately been thinking a lot about wellbeing in education. It was brought into stark focus during the pandemic reality of 2020. I wrote in this journal 2020 article in the Journal of Professional Capital and Community that:

At this time more than ever, we must consider humans before outcomes, students before results and wellbeing before learning.

I discussed wellbeing in this 2020 contribution for the special edition e-book Education Disrupted, Education Reimagined: Responses from education’s frontline during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, published by the World Innovation Summit for Education, Salzburg Global Seminar and the Diplomatic Courier. In it, I stated the following.

We need to put safety, health, and wellbeing before formal education, curriculum, pedagogy, and especially assessment. Community, connectedness and relationships need to be at the forefront of education decisions and practices. This is a time to focus first on the humanity in education, from a position of seeking to understand and accommodate for the complex circumstances of those in our communities.

Wellbeing continues to become a hotter and hotter topic in education.

Wellbeing is noted as part of a ‘right driver’ in Michael Fullan’s new paper ‘The right drivers for whole system success’ in which he argues that wellbeing and learning are inextricably integrated into a foundation based on equity, knowledge, engagement and connection to the world. The Association of Independent Schools of NSW has just launched a 12-18 month program on navigating whole school wellbeing. This week the Gallop Inquiry released its findings around the complexity and workload intensification of teaching, and the need for teachers to have more time to plan, collaborate, and monitor student learning. Ask any teacher what they need more of and the answer will be: time!

Yesterday, a UK educator tweeted about the use of school funds to send care packages to staff while they are in lockdown and working from home. A long thread of replies ensued, with a range of responses from ‘school leadership do/should pay for gifts and wellbeing initiatives for staff out of their own pockets’ to ‘this is improper use of school funds’ and ‘staff wellbeing is more than buying treats’. Many tweeters invoked the Nolan Principles, suggesting that buying food or paying for things that might be considered wellbeing initiatives for staff constituted unethical or dishonest use of school funds, or that every dollar or pound spent in a school needs to have a direct impact on student outcomes.

In my view (although it is something most of us do or have done), teachers shouldn’t be expected to buy classroom materials out of their wages, nor should school leaders have to provide staff wellbeing initiatives out of their own salaries. Teaching is a caring profession, but the trope of the hero teacher who sacrifices their own needs, money and health for the good of their students is unhelpful. Educators need to give themselves permission to fit their own oxygen masks first, so that they can serve others. Schools should be able to consider ways in which they can take care of their staff, appropriate to their own budget and context. Looking after staff takes time and money. A school leader’s time spent checking in with a staff member; a thank you card; tea and coffee in the staff room; providing relief cover for a teacher’s lesson so they can collaborate with colleagues, attend a course or address a personal matter; a morning tea; the flu (or coronavirus!) vaccine; investing in professional learning. At what point does spending money on staff and on developing the wider culture of a school, become controversial?

Wellbeing is one of the pillars of my school’s new strategic plan, so we are having robust discussions about how to support the wellbeing of all in our community, and about what being well really means. Our discussions are about culture, feel, belonging, workload, teamness, a sense of purpose and togetherness. Wellbeing and learning are the foundation of my school’s framework for our K-12 learners to explicitly engage with those attributes found to be those of people who continue to learn and engage in meaningful work throughout their lives.

Wellbeing (as well as learning and teaching) is at the heart of our new staff development suite, which is based in Martin Seligman’s PERMA framework, as a way to support staff’s (P) positive emotions, (E) engagement in valuable work, (R) rewarding relationships, (M) meaning in their work, and (A) achievement and feeling of accomplishment. The suite of staff development options is based not on evaluation and surveillance, but on a sense of belonging, authentic connectedness, vibrant professional community, purposeful collaboration, central purpose, and meaningful feedback. It is focused on the voice, choice, ownership and agency of staff. It takes time and investment in people. Professional learning, too, costs money, and is part of improving student outcomes and teacher expertise, but also about wellbeing through valuing and growing staff, and supporting them to reach their goals.

When it comes to staff wellbeing, as I noted in the above recent blog post,

Staff wellbeing is more than free food and fitness classes, although these can be nice to have. Nurturing staff wellbeing might take various forms, such as providing initiatives that support staff health, modelling sustainable work-life behaviours, maintaining predictable timelines, ensuring clear policies and procedures, streamlining communication, considering workload issues, ensuring a range of internal and external support mechanisms are available for staff, recognising staff efforts, celebrating staff achievements, leading with empathy, and making decisions with the needs of staff in mind.

Trust, too, is key to the wellbeing of the teaching profession. Schools need to cultivate cultures of trust. Teachers need to be trusted by parents, the media, and government. Trusting teachers to be the professional experts they are allows teachers to focus on their core business of teaching and supporting the students in their care. Looking after staff is key to retaining them within positive cultures of people working together for the good of their community. Nuanced attention to staff wellbeing takes intentionality, thoughtfulness, a framework for decision making, time, and often money.

Distance Learning 3.0: Ready to launch

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source: pixabay WikiImages

Today I shared with teaching staff our school Distance Learning Plan 3.0. While Western Australia continues—for now—in a bubble of semi-normality, we are aware, as other places in the country and the world show, that COVID-19 is an illness that can explode in a community at any time, despite the best precautions.

At my school, we enacted distance learning during Term 1 for a period of about three weeks, and then were ‘locked down’ during the two week school holiday break before students began returning to school for Term 2. We generated feedback from our community at that time, which suggested the following for our next round of distance learning.

  • We need to ensure we are differentiating our approach. Distance learning needs to look different for different ages and stages, and for different subjects. As a kindergarten to Year 12 school, students (and their parents!) require varied approaches to distance learning, relevant to developmental age and capacity for autonomy in learning. Older children are more likely to cope with increased opportunities for flexibility and independence; younger children need scaffolds, structures, technologies and resources appropriate to them. Subjects that are more content heavy and theoretical require different approaches to those that are more practical. We need to fit the pedagogical and technological tools to the learning purpose.
  • We need to support student organisation, structure and routine. For example, by setting out for students a clear structure to the day, and a clear plan for the day and week in advance so they can plan accordingly and be flexible and autonomous in their work.
  • We need to provide live video lessons and pastoral video check-ins, for learning and connectedness.
  • We need to provide a range of teaching and learning content, blending modes and approaches.
  • Predictable and streamlined communication works best. The Goldilocks approach is what we are aiming for here: not too little and not too much.
  • Workload needs to be manageable for students and teachers. My understanding from colleagues in Victoria and overseas is that long term lock down–including working, teaching and learning from home–is exhausting for all. Especially in the early years, set work for children needs to be manageable for parents.
  • Wellbeing is essential. Ill-being, trauma, anxiety and inequities have increased in our world during this global pandemic (which was preceded in Australia by a terrifying bushfire season). We need to build in time and encouragement for nutrition, hydration and physical activity, and regular breaks from screens and from the relentlessness of a life in constant lock down.

The main elements of our Distance Learning 3.0 model are the following.

  • Teacher instruction: in short bursts of 15-30 minutes, delivered synchronously (live) and asynchronously (for students to access in their own time).
  • Student collaboration: through virtual and online platforms.
  • Student independent work: in which students manage their own time and work autonomously.
  • Student reflection: in which they are encouraged to use metacognitive strategies, reflect on own learning and set clear targets for improvement.

All of these elements are underpinned by trust in the professional capacity and professional judgement of teachers as experts in curriculum (what they are teaching), pedagogy (how to teach so students learn), and their students.

key elements of our Distance Learning Plan 3.0 – wellbeing is central

Wellbeing is at the centre of our distance learning model. We have deliberately built in a focus on the wellbeing of our students, parents, and teachers by integrating the following.

  • Shortening lesson times and increasing break times during periods of distance learning.
  • Including one Student-Directed Learning Day per week for Years K-10. This day is a ‘non-contact’ day of learning in which students organise their time to complete set work, and teachers prepare, mark and respond to student queries. The day will be cycled through the days of the week, depending on when distance learning begins (e.g. Monday one week, Tuesday the next, and so on).
  • Paring back content to the essentials and rethinking the way students can engage with content.
  • Reconsidering the ways in which students can show their learning, and redesigning or rescheduling assessments where appropriate.
  • Continuing to act with kindness, compassion and empathy.

Our Distance Learning Plan 3.0 is the plan we hope to never have to use, but as I explained in my last post, it’s the plan we would be irresponsible to be without.