Leadership and the six keys

When I came across Rosabeth Moss Canter’s ‘Six keys to success’ they struck me immediately for their high transferability. I could think of so many different contexts in which these could be applied! Think of leaders in the classroom, leaders of students, leaders of teams or departments, leaders of curriculum areas or year groups, leaders of subjects, leaders of learning! We are all, each one of us, part of a team. 

I like the simplicity and ease with which one can remember these tenets and use them to take stock or evaluate one’s capacity to lead. They serve as useful reminders and are a great tool for introspection. 

Show up

Bring your complete self and be prepared to make a difference. There are days when everything that could have gone wrong, goes wrong, but you lift yourself up, rise up and show up. At that moment, half the battle is won. You have shown up and most of the time, everything else will fall into place. 

Have you ever tried to start a new routine? Committed to walking everyday? If you just get those shoes on and step out, 99.9% of the time you will get that walk done too. You’ve shown up! 

Make yourself available. Be accessible and allow yourself to listen, empathise and understand all perspectives. This helps you to make informed decisions. By listening, you are present and sometimes all that’s needed is your presence. 

Show up actively, eager to make a difference. The medical director of the hospital, Dr Max Goodwin, in the series ‘New Amsterdam’ greeted every single doctor or patient by asking ‘How can I help?’ His question showed and expressed a sense of purpose, an active engagement and an interest in every single person. He showed up with intent. He wanted to make a difference. 

Speak up

Every voice is important. Every voice needs to be heard. 

Stop and think. Is there anyone in your team whose voice you have not heard yet? Is there anyone’s perspective that isn’t being sought? The silent voices – are there any? 

A good idea is a good idea and can come from anywhere. It is important as leaders of learning to listen to ideas that aren’t always in-sync with our own. 

In his book ‘The Greatest’, Matthew Syed says, ‘cognitive diversity can strengthen individual, team and institutional performance.’ The greatest inventions and innovations didnt come from people who thought similarly but from those who offered a different perspective, who challenged. Groupthink is not something you want, if you seek innovation. You want diverging ideas. If there is a voice that challenges your thinking, you need to hear that voice, you need to pay attention because that may just be the voice that will spur you on to your next best innovation in the classroom or department! 

We all have the right to be heard. The ‘Power of Voice is about shaping the agenda and being ‘thought leaders’. Help children to find their voices. 

Look up

Look up to a better version of yourself. Look up to being a better teacher, a better person, a better individual than you were yesterday. 

Ever looked up at the sky? There is hope in the act of looking up. When we look up, figuratively and literally, we invite possibilities, hopefulness, aspiration, yearning and so much more.

Look up to clarify the why. The pace of everyday life can blur our vision and leave us with little time for processing, actioning and introspection. We need to stop, take stock and find the space and time to revisit the shared vision and goals from time to time. We need to remind ourselves of why we are doing this work. We need to tap back into the vision and purpose. 

‘Know what you stand for and be able to elevate peoples eyes from everyday problems to a higher vision and gain a sense of hope. Leaders who do this are in a position to prevent what Canter refers to as ‘hollow leadership’. 

Never give up

It is one of the most satisfying things to do something to the best of our ability, to know that we are making a difference. There is a deep satisfaction which comes from doing things that are difficult. It takes guts, a willingness to get things wrong, and to keep going back and trying. Again and again. The struggle is part of the process. Never giving up is about pushing through barriers, stepping back and regrouping. 

‘Being aware and genuinely ready to dig deep as individuals, as leaders, as whole-teams and as learning organisations is underpinned by the requirement to persist, be resilient and resolute all the way through the implementation dip(s) which Canter refers to as ‘the messy middle’. 

‘The skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders.’

Team up

Everything goes better when we are working with other people. Share ideas. You really are ‘stronger together’. Nearly everything worth doing is very difficult to do alone. Even though GOAT Kipchoge runs his marathon alone, an individual sport, he acknowledges the team effort that takes place behind the scenes.

Lift others up

Look for the good in others. Encourage people. Acknowledge and celebrate the smallest successes. The small stuff is the big stuff! ‘Sharing and giving back to others is fundamental to ensuring the Six Keys are part of a sustainable cycle of development, innovation and ensuring we can all be part of a system that makes a difference.’

References:

https://hbr.org/2002/09/crucibles-of-leadership

https://www.soniagartside.com/blog/2016/6/21/how-to-deal-with-the-messy-middle

Diana Osagie’s secret sauce for Courageous Leadership of Professional Learning

I had heard Diana Osagie deliver an online keynote during the FOBISIA conference in March this year. I came away inspired. Diana has a knack for storytelling and research has proven the power of stories. Stories connect you, not only to the teller, but also to the person who the story is about. Diana creates real characters in her stories. She gives them a name and who doesn’t know Sam or Mohammad in Yr 4? Who doesn’t have a Molly or Kaira in Yr 7? Her characters are relatable, they can be found in any context.

Not only does Diana tell stories, but the stories are short and they are referred to throughout her presentation. The repetition makes it compelling that you pay attention. Now, Diana tells her stories with such passion and conviction that you have no choice but to stop and listen. There are times when your eyes well up. There are times when the traffic down the road may have come to a standstill. Such is the power in her voice.

Last weekend, on 25th November, I met Diana at the FOBISIA CPD leaders conference in Bangkok Patana school. In person! I heard her speak and heard one of her stories live, face to face. And she was no different. Yes, she did everything I have described above. She had me gripped for the entire duration that she talked. Even during the Q and A, I learnt something to take away.

Diana was presenting to a group of CPD / CPL leaders from various FOBISIA member schools. Her mission was to fire us up to lead CPD even more effectively in our schools. As she described it, we weren’t just leaders of CPD, we were leaders of relationships for CPD. I quite liked that. We are all humans first, leaders next and we have to be master relationship builders.

The truth of the matter is : when you have effective teams and healthy teams you can achieve anything and when you have dysfunctional teams you can never achieve full potential. I have seen this pan out so many times year on year. The teams that are effective, thrive. They have a sense of collective efficacy and they are unstoppable. Do you know of any such teams in your school context? What about outside your school context? Which team in your school is working to its optimum? Which teams are unable to reach their potential? Why?

Diana shared some key messages through her story and I am going to try to summarise my take aways and also pose some questions that have made me think things through. Here we go, Diana Osagie’s secret sauce.

Secret 1 – Share the why simply and powerfully. The depth of why has to be clear, shared and understood. When your narrative of why is linked to something or someone real it has clear and tangible benefits. The why makes people sit up, listen and engage. The narrative of why encourages people to go to the depths of engagement and not become passive attendants. People don’t buy into the ‘how’ or the process, it is the strong narration of why that attracts people, it’s the why that keeps us on fire. The why needn’t be long, but it has to be deep. The story around the why can keep changing, but the why will be constant. As leaders of CPD what is our powerful why? Does everyone in your school know the why? How do you ensure that the why is explicit? How do you ensure that the why is constantly referenced as a measure of accountability?

In the same context, I had a look at Chad Littlefields work (thanks to EduSpark) and he takes it an important step further. The why needs to have a ‘so that’. We should be clear in our intention on how it will impact the needs of others. ‘We need to do … so that’ … Next time you plan a session with a goal / objective or intention, remember the ‘so that’. Listen to the power of ‘so that’ in Chad’s own words here.

Secret 2 – Your stuff, my stuff . The example Diana gave to elaborate this was perfect. In any organisation there are multiple ‘stuffs’ that take up priority. Each ‘stuff’ is someone’s responsibility, someone’s agenda. Whose agenda is it? As a leader of CPD my stuff is ensuring there is impact of CPD on student outcomes, that teachers feel they are getting what they need from CPD, that there is a balance between self chosen and school directed CPD, that there are ample opportunities for growth, learning and development. That’s my stuff.

Then there is the stuff of the teacher in the classroom, that teacher in the corridor on the 2nd floor. She has to plan for her students, ensure lessons are inspirational, respond to parent emails about after school activities, mark and give feedback to children and so much more. That’s her stuff. How can we make sure that both our agendas coexist and are ‘our stuff’? Diana suggests building and facilitating personal cycles of CPD to make ‘my’ stuff work. It has to be meaningful to the teacher and the stuff she is involved in day in and day out. How do we know that CPD is working? We need to get involved in their stuff to ensure that ‘my stuff’ becomes their stuff and the bandwidth for ‘our’ stuff increases.

Secret 3 – Let them eat cake and finish before they fall asleep. CPD must be comfortable, pleasant and enjoyable. It should be so good that colleagues want to get there early, they should run to come for any CPD opportunity! Can you imagine what that would mean? Get rid of the fluff from your session. Make it meaty and get to the crux quickly. If you’ve allocated 1 hour for it, get it done in 50 mins. Surprise them!

Secret 4 – Embrace diversity of thought – pursue it, seek other voices; voices that are quiet. Think about whose voice has not been heard. You should be able to work on your own, with others and also through others. CPD is not one person’s job, it takes many hands and many minds. It is also important to identify who challenges your thinking when you are planning CPD pathways for colleagues to engage in. Who poses professional challenge to the way you are thinking? We need to bring in trusted voices outside of people who wear leadership hats into the thinking process that underpins the CPD programmes. Who are the people you consult outside of your normal box? Are there any? We want these colleagues to help us think about what it will actually be like and feel like. We need them to help us think things through.

Secret 5 – The Croc Brain has to feel safe. When you pitch a new and beautiful initiative to someone from your neo-cortex, it is not being received in their neo-cortex! Surprise! Remember it’s your stuff! No one is interested in your stuff because … ‘Hello! I have enough of my stuff to worry about’. Human nature is that it will be received in their croc brain. Your beautifully thought out neo cortex ideas are received by the croc brain! The croc brain has an MS-DOS processor. The old, really old slow, floppy friendly processor. It sees the new initiative as dangerous. It questions ‘Do I fight or run?’ ‘Is it boring?’ ‘Is it complicated?’ ‘How can I ignore it or spend the least amount of time on it?’ These could be the first responses of a croc brain. The croc brain is a cognitive miser. It’s aim is survival. But if you can get past a ‘croc brain’ through stories, connection and a compelling why and make your stuff, their stuff, then there is hope!

Fast fact on safety! Did you know that according to google the number 1 characteristic of high performing teams was the degree of psychological safety that existed in the group? What it means is that when I showed up, did they have my best interest in mind? When somebody walks into your institution do they immediately feel that you have their best interest in mind?

Read more about croc brains.

Secret 6 – Novelty. What’s special? What’s the novelty factor? When I thought about this in my quiet moment of self reflection I immediately thought of our initiative of ‘Pedagogy, Practice and Pastries’, our reading room with the director Ms Vanita Uppal OBE. The novelty comes from the fact that there are only 6 places each month for primary and secondary colleagues to read and discuss a shared article with the head of school. The places fill up faster than you can ever imagine and you can only sign up once! What have been some of the most creative ways in which you have launched a new initiative? What was the novelty factor that made it a success?

Secret 7 – Visuals When a presentation has no visuals and lots of complex ideas explained through lots of texts, the audience is not going to offer you attention, they will offer you passive presence. Powerful visuals, minimal or no text is the way to go!

Secret 8 – Weave in Curiosity. Excite their senses, engage their emotions. Curiosity is the croc brain getting interested. It is addictive. The gap between what you know and what you want to know – that’s where curiosity lies. How do you ignite curiosity? Leave them wanting more!

Which one of the above secrets did you find most useful? How will you be able to apply it to your school context?

I leave you with a memorable moment from my first meeting with Diana Osagie.

Fan girl moment!

Does it have the capacity to stick?

I’ve compiled five of my current favourite ‘stickable’ thoughts that are rooted in research led by stalwarts in the field of education. Of course, they have their core applicability in the work we do as teachers but they flow just as seamlessly to life outside school as well. For me, they are powerful reminders and hold me to account when in a state of uncertainty or flux. I share these with you and invite you to contribute the thoughts that have influenced your professional practice. I hope these special words resonate with you as much as they do with me.

When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority

Karen Martin

This one is a biggie and applies to so many of us in a range of different contexts. 

Crazy to-do lists? Unable to identify what’s really important? Overwhelmed with how much there is to do? 

Prioritise! 

What needs your attention immediately? 

What can be put off until tomorrow? 

What’s for later in the week? 

Is there something that needs to have a sustained focus over a period of time?

A priority needs to be exactly that. A priority. It needs to be an attention grabber. 

Look at your list of ‘priorities’ today: what is the real priority? 

What is the priority in your subject development plan? Can you remember it? If you can’t, is it really a priority? 

How do you help your children prioritise to make them effective self-managers? Do you explicitly verbalise the strategies you use as an adult?

How does this apply to your curriculum? 

How does it apply to what you are teaching today?

What is the priority in your feedback to students? 

If you are one of those highly skilled self-managers, whether a parent or a teacher, what is it that you do to stay focused on your priorities? 

Fewer things in greater depth

Mary Myatt, ‘Back on Track’

‘Depth before speed’

‘Do less, better’. 

‘Cut the fat’.

‘Declutter the curriculum’.

‘Less is more’.

How often do we cram the curriculum with the unnecessary, the frills, the activities that sound good and ‘fun’ but actually make no difference to the intended focus? 

How often do we fill our presentations with more and more and clutter them with the unnecessary? 

Would you rather have a fully taught curriculum or a fully learnt curriculum?

To stay focused on fewer things in greater depth, I have to constantly ask questions like:

– Why am I doing this? 

– How will this make a difference? 

– What difference will it make to the learning if I didn’t do this?  

We need: 

● Fewer objectives that provide incremental challenge

● Deep rather than superficial learning 

● Time to engage fully and review, rehearse and practice

● Locate our own thinking and planning into the bigger whole 

Make it stick

Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel, and Peter C Brown

Overloading the brain with information will not lead to memory retention. We need to learn and relearn concepts in order to retrieve them. Hattie refers to this as stickability.

How does something stick with you?

What is it that you need to do in order to make new learning or a new skill stick? 

How do we make learning stick for our students?

The authors of ‘Make it Stick’ suggest that the two main goals of learning a new skill or concept are comprehension and retention. 

The following three principles are recommended to maximise the benefits of retrieval practice:

1) Effortful retrieval – the harder your brain has to work to retrieve the information, the more firmly it cements it in your memory. A desirable difficulty.

2) Repeated testing improves your ability to apply the knowledge in different contexts.

3) Corrective feedback to prevent students from remembering the wrong answer and to reinforce the correct information.

Other high impact strategies that make learning stick:

– spaced repetition

– deliberate connections

– teacher clarity 

– building structures and creating a context 

The word ’stickability’ has changed my classroom practice because my focus is now much more on learning and memory, rather than on students doing and forgetting. With this shift, lesson planning is sharper. The focus is to ensure that students leave the lesson with what has been learnt, not what has been done. 

Here are some questions to consider:

– What should students leave my classroom knowing or understanding?

– Why should this skill, knowledge or understanding stick with students?

– How will I make it stick?

– How will I know that it has stuck?

– If students become stuck, then what?

Practice before Performance

Thomas Guskey

This one resonates with me at so many levels and if there is one video that I can recommend, this is it. Differentiate instruction through mastery.

There is a difference between practice and performance. Do we recognise that difference? 

Ever tried learning a musical instrument? 

Seen a coach with an athlete? 

Trained for a marathon? 

Planned for a presentation?

Tried a new recipe? 

Hours of practice and repetition go on behind the scenes in order to perform on the day of the performance.  

My daughter learns to play the piano. It is one of the hardest activities she is currently involved in because it requires hours of practice. Does she put in the work? No points for guessing that one! When she goes from one class to another after a week’s interval, without having practiced the new bars learned in the previous class, she makes minimal progress. She retorts by saying ‘I don’t like piano’. I have no doubts about that, but as an adult I also know that it is because she has not developed competence yet. Will I let her quit? You know the answer!

I ask myself as I plan tasks for my students.

– Have I given students enough time to practice and rehearse the taught skill so that they are now ready for a performance? 

– Have I rushed them from performance to performance, from subject to subject, expecting them to have mastered all the skills without giving them enough time to practice? 

I quote Tom Sherrington 

…the first stages of learning a new concept involve creating a set of connections that allow us to make meaning from the elements that make up the concept, linking them together and binding them to knowledge we already have. Forming these connections requires some short-term rehearsal, establishing a unit of knowledge that is stable and coherent enough that we can later retrieve it. If we don’t establish a basic level of stability and coherence, there is nothing secure enough for us to retrieve.

As an athlete and avid sportsperson myself, I know practice is key because with practice comes competence and competence precedes confidence. This is what Zaretta Hammond calls the Progress Principle. When we know we are getting better at something we lean into it more, we stick with it more, we put in more effort. The more students can build their competence, the more they will hang in there.

Where have you experienced the progress principle? 

Rigour and enjoyment are intertwined

Tom Sherrington

Have you noticed how much fun you’re having when you are working just outside your comfort zone? The adrenaline rushes in, you are in a state of flow (Elena Aguilar, Onward). The work sparks joy. You don’t want it to stop. You’re aiming for high standards but that is almost a by-product of all the work, all the practice you have put in.

When I read this, I could draw an immediate parallel to my personal passions. 

When I train for different events, whether a marathon, triathlon or a swimmathon – the training is the most enjoyable part of the journey. The training, the everyday effort is rigorous. I hold myself to high expectations. The last kilometre, the last repetition of a speed workout, the last uphill repeat, these are not easy, but that is where the most satisfaction comes. The effort, the slay, the work you put in everyday also provides the most joy. Rigour is deeply intertwined with enjoyment. So much so that I come back for it the next day with a bounce in my step. Needless to say, I have been coming back to it for years!

Useful questions to ask:

– Do my students feel that rigour and enjoyment are intertwined in my lessons? 

– Is my material pitched high? 

– Do I feel that I have a strong command of the subject in order to anticipate misconceptions and build an incremental ladder of difficulty within the unit of work? 

– Is the work ethic in my class high?

– Is the focus on detail, accuracy and precision strong? 

Are there any statements that resonate with you? Are there any that have had an impact on your practice or had a positive influence on your life?

Do share them as responses to the blog. 

References :

So what is #Stickability?

Mary Myatt – The curriculum Gallimaufry to Coherence, Back on Track, Huh

Make it stick – Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel, and Peter C Brown

https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/zaretta-hammond-on-equity-and-student-engagement

https://teacherhead.com/2013/01/27/great-lessons-2-rigour/

What have you been Learning?

A teacher is a learner. A teacher is always learning. 

We hear this often. 

I spend a lot of my time reading. Reading articles, journals, books on education and research. 

I learn from them. A lot. Reading and research, trying out strategies, sharing and talking about them help me to become a better teacher.

However, learning something by stepping into the shoes as a student was a whole new experience for me. 

This blog post is about me as a student and what I discovered about teaching and learning through something that has nothing to do with the classroom, yet everything to do with it!

What have you been learning?

I started learning ‘Animal Flow’, exactly a year ago. Animal flow is a ground based movement, made fun, challenging and effective. This system is designed to improve strength, power, flexibility, mobility, and coordination for all levels of fitness enthusiasts. Animal Flow has something for every body! https://animalflow.com/  

I was fascinated by the movements and since I am not someone with great coordination, I was in awe of coaches and animal flowists who could move seamlessly between movements, in a state of flow, fully immersed, as if time stood still. I looked for an animal flow class and luckily found a coach in Pune who taught online classes. He goes by the name @psyschogorilla on Instagram.

As I engaged during my thrice – a – week classes, I noticed patterns that made me think about classroom practice and teaching. 

What makes learning stick? 

What makes learning achievable? 

I reflected on the animal flow sessions as a learner, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between what we do day in and day out for the best part of our day and identify what made it tick for me as a learner. 

It reminded me of always having the big picture in our minds but constantly focusing on the small steps that flow logically to help us reach that big picture. 

High quality teaching is high quality teaching. Whether you are a teacher of music or maths, art or athletics, the measure can always be identified by how well all your students are progressing. 

As you read this post, dear educators, do see parallels with our profession. 

Each animal flow class follows the same structure.  

1. The end is shared at the very beginning. 

My coach has pre-planned the final outcome : the summative task for the lesson. He is clear and specific about what he expects the students to achieve by the end of the lesson. Here is a sample of how the end is shared at the very beginning of the lesson. 

2. The goal post is clear and excellence is exemplified. 

There are no ambiguities about the goal post. There is clarity. The goal is exemplified. It is demonstrated as a perfect whole. High standards and what excellence would look like are revealed at the very beginning.

3. Anticipated misconceptions have been identified. 

The coach has practiced the final product himself and has identified and anticipated where his students might face challenges or will get stuck / fumble because he knows his students, is aware of prior learning and knows what he has and hasn’t taught explicitly. He is able to plan in advance the specific teaching points and plan for misconceptions! 

4. Learning is broken down into small achievable steps 

He breaks down the flow into achievable small steps that flow logically. Now these steps may be challenging but they are achievable. They are within the zone of proximal development. They are just right. 

5. Demonstration, guided practice and independent practice 

He makes his students practice each small sequence; first by demonstrating, then explaining and sharing useful tips, next by guiding them through that sequence, making them practice and then expecting them to practice that sequence independently until it is automatic. Once it has been mastered, he shares the next small sequence. Yes! It’s part, part, whole! 

The class then moves on to practicing the next sequence (which logically flows from one step to another) and join each of the sequences into a larger whole. Again, this is demonstrated, explained, practiced with guidance, practiced independently until the whole has been strengthened. 

This routine carries on, until each of the smaller sequences have been mastered in order to combine them together to make a flow. 

After each sequence, feedback is given and time to act on feedback is provided. 

6. Assessment for learning 

This final flow is then practiced a few times and then each student is expected to demonstrate the flow independently. At this point the coach is silent, he is observing, making mental notes and calling out specific steps when he notices the students are struggling. His feedback is spot on with specific areas that each individual needs to work on. He identifies what needs to be practiced and lets the students know. His expectations are high. Every minute of the class matters. Every moment is meaningful. 

7. Review and retrieval

Each class begins with a warm up and each warm up includes moves that were taught in previous sessions. 

Does this sound a little like your own lessons in the classroom?

Which strategies from here have you tried in your class? Which ones work best?

What would you like to do differently on Monday?

What have you been learning lately?

A year’s growth. Have you had it?

John Hattie in this video states that the real measure of progress is to evaluate if you have had a year’s worth of growth in a year’s learning. Even though he says this in the context of students, I am posing this to you. YOU, the most important learner, the teacher learner, the apprentice and the expert.

Michael Fullan, my favourite author on anything education says, “Every time there is change you also get deskilled (the context deskills you). You have to be humble to learn and you have to realise that you always have to be an expert and an apprentice”. If you want to hear more of this conversation click here.

So, have YOU had a year’s worth of GROWTH in the last year?

When I look back at my year in school, despite all the difficulties that the pandemic has brought, I feel it has also provided me time to reflect, introspect and prioritise what is really important. It has given me quiet moments (after very tough days of trying to balance working from home, being a parent and looking after the home) of deep reflection.

This past year, (I talk of the academic year from July 2019 to May 2020) I’ve been exposed to a range of CPD opportunities but I took advantage of the ‘work from home’ situation and in the last 10 weeks I’ve engaged in loads of learning (some at very unearthly hours because of the time difference from where webinars were being hosted). Many of these experiences have been driven by my personal and professional desire to want to learn and have been propelled by an eagerness to keep up with the latest pedagogical practices in uncertain times like these. What I would  like to call, the making of history from an educational perspective. Education post this pandemic, as many have said, should never be the same again. It is our opportunity to get freedom from the obsolete, outdated practices towards freedom to “what’s really worth fighting for in education”. (Michael Fullan)

The core message I want to share today is that professional learning is not something that is done to you.

Professional development can be provided to you but professional learning has to come from within. It has transformative powers. It has the ability to cause change and to impact practice.

But, there has to be an inner driver, an intrinsic motivation to want to develop and learn. You have to take charge of developing your own expertise as a teacher. You must be able to reset that button every now and then and ask yourself, “What’s my impact?”

An organisation can send an individual to workshops, conferences, seminars, arrange need-based CPD, in-house CPD etc but if there is no impact by way of change in attitude, behaviour, knowledge or practice, then really, there has been no professional learning. What you do with that professional development, the learning you put into action, the way you move yourself forward and onward in that journey, that is crucial.

Last evening, I took some minutes to write about the many opportunities I’ve harnessed  this year to learn, grow and develop my skills. I believe I have had more than a year’s worth of growth. As a teacher-educator I urge you to sit down and make a list of your year’s worth of growth. You will be surprised at how much you learn, sometimes even by default!

A conversation, a team meeting, collaborating with colleagues, a link to research, a book recommendation, a coaching conversation, a difficult conversation, reflecting on a conversation, observing a leader communicate effectively, noticing a high-quality lesson being delivered are just a few examples of ways in which you may have grown professionally.

Here is my list:

• Deepening my understanding of professional development vs professional learning
• Being part of Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s)
• Supporting School-based Action Research Projects
• Developing SOP’s (standard operating procedures) for CPD related protocols
• Deepened understanding of Assessment for Learning as a result of all the reading in prep for in house CPD
• Deepened understanding of feedback that moves learning forward
• Strategies to eliminate ‘opt outs’ and elicit response from all learners
• Learning to use the dictation app on my phone (a life changer), Microsoft teams and flip grid
• Deepened understanding of Approaches to Learning
• Culturally Responsive Teaching and the notion that implicit bias not only limits you but limits others – Zaretta Hammond’s perspective
• Listening to Chimanada Ngozi Adichie’s ‘The Danger of a single Story’
• Intercultural Competency in Education  – EdX course
• Global Goals for Sustainable Development
• Collaborating with the primary and secondary student council and colleagues on our ‘Monthly sustainable challenges’
• Passion Projects
• Webinars (so many amazing ones for free!)
• Preparing and constantly updating a list of free online CPD available during COVID
• Refreshing my knowledge of writing skills with Jane Considine’s #TheWriteStuffSessions
• Engaging in Coaching cycles with colleagues while trying to use the partnership principles with a dialogical coaching approach. Close your eyes and click on Jim Knight.
• Engaging in reflecting on lessons that were co-planned and co-taught
• Learning about the different roles of a coach (Did you know there were ten?)
• The Instructional Coaching group on Facebook
• Learning more about different coaching approaches and theories
• Twitter – following some amazing educational influencers, leaders, teachers (THERE IS NO BETTER CPD)
• Middle leaders training sessions as part of in-house CPD
• Preparing for and co-leading some in-house CPD sessions with colleagues
• Presenting at an external event like FOBISIA and #GlobalBrewEdIsolation, Listen here!

• Listening to keynote speakers like Ross Morrison McGill
• Collaborating with colleagues in preparation for presenting at an international conference which got cancelled! You can’t imagine my disappointment!
• Preparing for an accreditation related team visit which got cancelled. I’d been waiting for this for years.
• Listening to empowering stories about sports people (Kara Goucher, Shalene Flanagan, Des Linden), professionals, coaches etc
• Reading magazines and journals such as ‘The Reading Teacher’, ‘Educational Leadership’

• Following blog posts e.g. Doug Lemov, Cult of pedagogy
• Reflecting on podcasts, books, webinars (yes I write my reflections on an A4 doc after each session)
• Reading colleagues’ reflections on their learning on KMS (Knowledge Management System)
• Leading Read Write Inc

Books I’ve read this year that have contributed significantly to my growth:

• Teach Like a Champion – Doug Lemov
• Start with Why – Simon Sinek
• Life is a Marathon – Matt Fitzgerald
• Embedded Formative Assessment – Dylan Wiliam
• Innovate Inside the Box – George Couros
• Culturise – Jimmy Casas
• Instructional Coaching – Jim Knight
• PLC’s Better Decisions and Greater Impact by Design – Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher,
• Onward by Elena Aguilar
• The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Competence – Darla Deardorff
• Originals by Adam Grant
• The Coaching Cycle – Jim Knight

What’s on your list?   Care to share?

I’d love to know how you have grown this year.

 

Flex that Moral Muscle!

I’ve recently finished reading the book, ‘Innovate Inside The box’ by George Couros as part of a book study I was involved in.

This book study took place online, on social media (yes, there are many advantages!) and it included about 3000 participants including educators from around the world. Undoubtedly, it’s been a great learning experience and extremely powerful as a professional development exercise. The book study was initiated by the author and the role of the participants was to read the chapters prescribed in the allocated week and respond to prompts and questions, which led to reflection based on individual experience. In the book, Couros identifies 8 characteristics of the Innovator’s Mindset.

While reading the chapter, Empathetic, I came across Couros’ example of ‘Moral Muscle’, more commonly referred to as Moral Courage or Moral Integrity.

‘Being empathetic is critical to understandingdifferent perspectives and embracing every learner. One way to do this is to empower our students to speak out.’

Couros shares that often, students feel empathy but they don’t take action. It is our responsibility as educators to teach children to speak out and act with integrity regardless of the fear of social consequences. In his book, he recounts an incident which involved his daughter at the frontline. The anecdote stuck with me and made me introspect! Here is the excerpt.

‘When she was in first grade, a group of girls surrounded a boy with autism who was flapping his hands and mimicked him. She ran right over and announced, “Hey, ladies! If you want to mess with someone, you’re gonna mess with me.’

Do our students carry this dose of diva?

Do they have the courage to take action?

Do they have the conviction to stand up for what is right?

Do they believe they can change the world?

When I think about these questions in relation to our students, I believe my answer to each of these would mostly be, “Yes, absolutely”!

We offer our students a plethora of opportunities to exhibit and express their moral muscle. Our students believe that speaking out can make a change! With constant guidance and effective role modelling they are able to take action and this empathy courage-muscle is flexed when they are given the chances to stand up for what they believe in.

Students are encouraged to express their points of view through rational reasoning about issues that need to be voiced

– Through debates and classroom discussions

– They speak up in front of crowded auditoriums full of peers, parents and visitors about a range of issues from women’s rights to exploitation of the environment

– They share their thoughts and opinions both individually and in choral voices during events such as ‘ TBS RISE’, ‘Round Square conference’, ‘MUN’, ‘Anti fire cracker drive’, sing songs and raps about matters that are critical to our environment

– Engage in developing displays to build awareness and to acknowledge that all is not well with the world

– Reflect and respond to a range of perspectives about issues through texts, articles, videos, situations, dilemmas, simulations that are deliberately and intentionally brought to the forefront so that their voices are heard.

Their moral muscle is trained and flexed time and again

– Through the multiple global and environmental issues they are exposed to within the curriculum. 

– When they stand up for themselves and others, when incidents of teasing or bullying take place in the bus or on the playground, they have the courage to tell the offenders to stop and have the vocabulary to speak up!

– When they get involved passionately with community service events such as ‘Lemonade for sale’ to raise money for procuring toys for an underprivileged school or when they collect blankets to provide for those struggling in the cold.

– Making a plea and persuading others to join in is one of the many ways in which we as a school enable that voice to be developed!

– When they design monthly sustainable challenges for the community and support them by campaigning and leading from the front.

Students engage in these authentic and relevant opportunities from the very beginning of their learning journey in our school and these provide our students with a purpose to flex their moral muscle.

However, responding with moral integrity in a collective is far easier.  When most are doing the ‘right’ thing, it’s easy to follow suit. Isn’t it? But, how about when it comes to the individual? How about when the peers are on one side of the moral spectrum and one student feels differently? Does the ‘one’ have the moral courage to speak or act in response to when inappropriate behaviour, injustice or ill-treatment of any kind is being witnessed?

To further simplify and using very basic routine examples, how often has it happened that we have walked passed litter in the corridor, folders fallen off the shelf or bags strewn about outside locker facilities? How often have we seen a lone student correct that when no one is looking? How often would a student correct that when walking around the corridor with his / her peer group? How often has it happened that students have conveniently ignored that pencil on the floor or the books messed up on the library shelf? How often has it happened that students have promised to look after the environment and not waste paper cups in a pledge in the classroom but then conveniently pulled off 3-4 cups during lunch? How often have you seen a peer step up and tell that child that he is being wasteful? How often have you seen a child stand up and confront a group of students treating a peer inappropriately? 

I read somewhere that moral courage cannot be taught, except by example.

The moral muscle needn’t always be a voice, most often it is an action. An action. A quiet action.

Understanding the actions caused by integrity starts with knowing what is important and holding fast to that idea, even when it is not convenient or to your benefit.

Stories of moral courage fill our world. Moral courage is exemplified in a book like ‘One’ where ‘One’ stands up against the nasty one who bosses over everyone. The power of one voice!

 

Moral courage is the face of the strong woman, Eleanor Riese in the movie ‘55 steps’, who despite her daily struggle and physical challenges, is able to become the voice of thousands of others who are suffering like her.

I could quote thousands and thousands of examples but instead I would like to leave you with questions. I would love to read your responses in the comments below.

Where and how do you give your students opportunities for being morally courageous?
How often and when do you model flexing your moral muscle?
Do your students recognise injustice?
Do your students recognise behaviour which is inappropriate or which belittles or disrespects?
Do your students have the vocabulary to combat that behaviour?
Do your students have the courage to speak out even if they are the lone voice?
How willing are you to confront a tricky situation?
When was the last time you flexed your moral courageousness?

‘If you know something is wrong and you choose to do nothing, you become complicit.’
Michael Woodford

References:

https://twitter.com/gcouros – George Couros

https://www.icas.com/professional-development/what-is-moral-courage

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Silvia_Osswald/publication/232528056_What_is_moral_courage_Definition_explication_and_classification_of_a_complex_construct/links/0deec525ba6f9c4bbe000000/What-is-moral-courage-Definition-explication-and-classification-of-a-complex-construct.pdf?origin=publication_detail