Well-being

I've read a lot of really good blogs recently about teacher well-being, and what a tough nut it is to crack. Depending on whether you come from a leadership point of view or a chalk-face view, you will have different interpretations of where the problems lie, and what the solutions might be.
@kevbartle talked recently about the tokenism of some approaches (free tea and coffee anyone?), or the tick-box approach we are often forced to adopt by external agencies who also want to be seen to be "doing something" to solve the problem. Surprisingly, none of them seem to work. Surprisingly.

For what it's worth, here is my contribution to the debate. I hope it gets to the nub of the problem:

The first given in the debate is this: The business of schools is to produce students who, be it through good exam results or just more ambition, self-respect and belief, are ready for the outside world. We are there to give them "life chances" in the jargon. In a utilitarian view of education, they are the product which feeds the economy, and the product has to be top-notch. From a more humanitarian perspective, students are individual humans whose contribution can improve society if we have done our job well.

The second given is that our job as teachers and school leaders is to deliver that. The ultimate needs of the students must come above our own. Unfortunately, this very often includes the needs of staff well-being, or the needs we may have as normal human beings to have a life. We have chosen a career which, if we let it, can degenerate into a massive black hole for all our energies.

In this context, my contention is this: If students are the products of the system, we are the craftspeople who shape the product. We, and I realise I am risking derision for my choice of words here, are tools. If you're happy for me to carry on with this analogy, it works like this: A craftsman chooses how well he keeps his tools. He can buy them cheap, use them until they wear out, and then just get rid of them. Or, as is the case with real craftsmen, you can look after them carefully, keep them sharp, and produce excellent work with them for a long time.

For me, the well-being debate boils down to this: As a school leader, do your actions contribute towards wearing the tools out prematurely or do they contribute towards keeping them as sharp as possible for as long as possible?

To make my point, under which of the two categories would you place the following activities?

• Free tea and coffee at break-times
• Creating support systems around the school (ICT, SIMS, First Aid, school comms etc) which just work reliably day in day out
• A reliable and easy-to-use VLE
• Time to meet in teams to plan lessons together
• Audits of lessons, learning objectives, marking etc
• Staff socials
• Timetables which minimise split classes, room changes, etc
• Timetables which give staff time to socialise and discuss daily problems
• Setting up a staff well-being committee
• Staff freebies, such as health insurance or discounts on well-being services
• Thinking hard about any new initiative, and whether it adds to or distracts from the "main thing": Teaching and learning.

To me, anything which allows teachers to teach more effectively and more efficiently is a sharpening tool: Anything which gets in the way of that is blunting the effectiveness of the tool. Ultimately, that will have knock-on effects for the outcomes we produce as schools.

The perpetual anxiety of education

This blog post follows a series of events which have clearly contributed to its central idea: These events include (in no particular order), a summer holiday where I truly reconnected with myself for the first time in ages, a set of excellent exam results across the Faculty I lead, a first half-term which nigh-on wiped that feel-good factor out, a Middle leadership meeting that left me feeling the overwhelming weight of national educational change coming soon, a well-being meeting where we tinkered around the edges but never really got to the crux of the problem, and a graded observation which was Good (with some outstanding features) but didn't really reflect what I've been doing this year.

What I've been doing this year is mostly consolidating a range of pedagogical tweaks I've learnt, mostly thanks to Twitterati (@headguruteacher, @HuntingEnglish, @ICTevangelist, @jkfairclough, @kathydarlison85,  @hgaldinoshea and @ragazza_inglese to name a tiny proportion) but also some fantastic colleagues at my school, and formalising them into concrete lessons via our new FROG OS VLE (a school development area). The VLE has been useful in helping me get to a really deep level of flipped learning, which I've always wanted to do, to the point where I have several classes where some students are now lessons ahead of others, and really powering through the learning. It has increased the independence of a significant number of the most motivated and able students I teach, and at the same time highlighted just how teacher-dependent some of my least able are. It has also, frustratingly, pushed me back in pedagogical terms by preventing me from combining the VLE with all of the great things I've learnt from two years of working with iPads, because the two won't talk to each other. All of which is irrelevant to the actual post, but you need the context to see why this topic is important to me.

The feeling I have at the moment is a horrendously negative feeling that I hate, because I'm not that man. I see myself as a positive person, someone who leads by example and encouragement. But at the moment I feel like quitting. I don't feel that moving up the career ladder to leadership positions is the answer, but I'm not enjoying where I am either. And I can't work out why.

Except today, it hit me. Like an epiphany. A more bleeding obvious epiphany you will probably never hear, and I appreciate that the first sign of publishing this will be greeted by a chorus of "Duh!"s, but here it is anyway. It's called the Perpetual Anxiety of Education. It's the result of the Accountability Matrix. Yes, probably very similar to the one your heard about in the Wachowski brothers' film, but not quite as entertaining. It starts with targets. As soon as targets are formulated, your job is to meet them. Aspirational or not makes no difference, you still have to meet them. And as a teacher, you spend your entire year in this state of anxiety about students meeting their targets. This of course is exacerbated by senior management, who have the same worries, but spread across the whole school, and with often only indirect power to do anything about it: Hell with a side order of chips! The less control you have, the more anxious you are likely to be. Hence the plethora of "accountability measures" deployed in order to keep checking that everyone is doing their utmost to hit those targets.

Copyright: Jantoo

As a teacher, this constant surveillance makes it very difficult for you to put it out of your mind, hence why I called it a perpetual state of anxiety. And there are few teachers who can do their job effectively without communicating this anxiety to the students. Thus the students themselves are also afflicted by the same perpetual anxiety. Ask the Year 11s in my mentor group who, despite my support and encouragement, feel this overwhelm from all sides. Because of course it's not simply teachers who are putting the pressure on, but parents as well. Are their kids doing as well as the others in their class? In their year group? In their school? What about other schools? Could we be sending our kids to a better school? What about the education system itself? Is it too soft? Is it "fit for purpose"? Is it really preparing my child to do career capital battle with that wiry, hungry little Singaporean kid I hear so much about in the papers, with his 25 hours extra tuition a day on top of his fifteen hours of regular school, per day...? Perpetual anxiety.

Now let's go back to this situation in schools. We have leadership whose job it is to deliver the targets, who have least classroom time to do it in. Their only weapons are by proxy, and they have to deploy these increasingly atomistic dictats to get the rest of their staff to get to "best practice" at all times: Do you have your MUST SHOULD COULD? Do your students know their targets? Their Working at Grades? Was the homework you set meaningful? Was it marked that day? Was it responded to in a meaningful ongoing dialogue which lasted until seconds before the exam? Did you push the students along at the perfect pace for them to cope while maintaining consistently high expectations etc? Don't get me wrong: This is NOT an anti-SLT rant, because I've been on the verge of going for these sorts of positions myself for a year or two, and the thing which has always stopped me is this very question: What would I do differently? You see, I think the vast majority of teachers and leaders are good people with the best of intentions, but these are too often warped by the target culture. The accountability matrix. What happens when you meet your target? That's a moot point to be honest. Because the vast majority of teachers only hit their target when the exam results come out. Even if you've hit them beforehand, the criticism is that you've under-estimated your target, you haven't been aspirational enough. So here's a higher one. But once the exam results are out, we have a week to celebrate the achievement of 51 weeks of anxiety-ridden stress, before 1) sending the students off to their next life stage, which will be even more target-riddled than the last, and 2) beginning a whole new round of targets of our own. Hamster-wheel, anyone?

Copyright: Cartoonstock.com

And then we come to the staff well-being meeting. Where nobody can work out quite why staff aren't responding über-positively to the Friday morning cakes, the fruit bowl in the staff room, the staff silly jumper day and the disaggregated day off. These are drops in the ocean of a culture which is otherwise dominated by doubts about whether you could be doing that little bit more to hit those targets. The anxiety is the permanent, low-level background noise which defines the existence of many teachers on a day to day basis.

What's the worst thing about this state of perpetual anxiety? I'm not sure that this is just about education. There is a very good argument for saying that this pretty much covers the majority of our social ills at the moment, in a society which seems hell-bent on better and more rather than sufficient and happy. But I know which I would prefer if given the choice of how to live my life. And that's a BIG "if"...

In defence of Media and Film

I was quaking in my boots a little when OFQUAL published their list of subjects being considered for "reform" (or not!) a few weeks ago. And lo, there it was: Film is disappearing. One of the hardest, most engaging courses I teach, as well as one of the most enjoyable. Going. Going. Gone.

Those of you who follow these developments will know how this story goes: Two hours later OFQUAL rescinded their own publication, claiming that Film should not have been on the list (here if you're interested). Huzzah and hurrah. 

But then it struck me that, rather than feeling happy at this, I should have been more than a little indignant at the fact that we have to defend our subject's validity YET AGAIN! So I decided act, and to take their consultation document: For all the good it did. A series of anodine and difficult to disagree with statements which will eventually secure tacit agreement for the measurements they were going to take anyway, I suspect. So I wrote to them. This is my open letter to OFQUAL, in defence of Media and Film Studies' place on our curriculum.

To whom it may concern

I am writing to you about your online consultation concerning the reform of GCSEs and A Level qualifications. Having filled in the entire document online, I was disappointed that that the consultation document provided no opportunity to argue for the continuance of Media or Film Studies at GCSE, AS and A level, so this letter is a direct appeal in support of these subjects for your consideration in reforming them.

First, for the vast majority of the students I teach, Media and Film Studies are the most important subjects they learn, despite also studying so-called “traditional” qualifications alongside them. I teach in a highly academic school, and we do not teach for passes, we teach for excellence. Of the students I teach, seven in the past year alone have been nominated for national and regional awards for their Media and Film production work (including BFI Young Film-maker of the Year). I doubt that they would ever have achieved this level of quality of their own volition, without someone to introduce the subject to them in the first place through passion, rigorous academic study and through practical experimentation. These are the media and film professionals of the future, but they need time to master their arts. Students who arrive at university to embark on Media or Film as courses they are studying for the first time are at a clear disadvantage according to my former students, and the fact that mine have been training in professional skills since Year 10 means that one day, they WILL join the industries and move these industries forward innovatively and creatively, and keep the UK at the very top on international media and film production, with all that this entails for National economic growth and prosperity.

On an academic level, I would draw your attention to the already demanding nature of assessment: GCSE involves extended comparative writing which motivates many to improve their linguistic abilities; A level examinations are currently substantial essay-based examination papers. Both subjects include assessment of research skills, as well as analytical skills. These are the bedrock of the “traditional” curriculum we seem to be returning towards, so why would we withdraw subjects which reinforce such skills?

Second, there is a popular perception of Media and Film Studies as “soft” subjects, which I would disagree with fundamentally. The vast majority of my students will also tell you that Media and Film were far tougher courses than their “academic” counterparts. In part this is the fault of the mass media itself and its largely biased reporting of the subjects: The tabloids have no qualms about labelling our subjects as lesser subjects compared to the “traditional” subjects being pushed by the present government. The fact that the broadsheets put inverted commas around the word soft does not in any way absolve them of blame for reinforcing this perception, in my opinion. The message from the media is clear: Studying media or film is an easy option. 

However, I would argue that OFQUAL is equally to blame in this process for not countering this perception explicitly with evidence. I would contend that the level of demand at both GCSE and A level is very high: Students analyse film and media texts in exactly the same way as they do in English, except that they must take account of not only linguistic characteristics of texts, but also the way the layout, camera angles, editing and sound work in tandem with these linguistic features. This adds layers of meaning which are very subtle, additional to those studied in English, and indeed constitute an entire language of their own. And this only covers the textual analysis aspects of the courses. Film and Media Studies also require that students understand why texts are the way they are, by taking into account institutional, social, political, economic, historical and technological factors which may influence meaning and interpretations of texts. While this is a skill which is taught in English, I would argue that the up-to-date nature of film and media studies enquiries makes it much more challenging for students to interpret the influence of these contexts, as they are not doing so with the benefits of hindsight, or with the help of “expert voices” to guide them. Media and Film students learn a basic framework of analysis, but from there they are applying this to texts which are so new they are largely untouched by academic study. They have to apply their learning very subtly, often drawing in a range of material which benefits other subjects, such as History, English, Philosophy and Ethics, Sociology and Psychology.

Third, I would argue that the range of topics which are studied at GCSE and A level is also extending for students. The subject involves more than a study of mainstream popular film and media texts. It involves the study of texts from other cultures around the world, in other languages (my own students study Spanish, French, Iranian and Cantonese/Mandarin texts), and asks that we understand those cultures so as to be able to discern their influence on particular films, and their influence on our own culture. These are skills which are incredibly demanding for students between the ages of 14 and 18. Furthermore, film and media texts act as a cultural resource and a way of gaining access to experiences and cultures, and raising important issues relevant to society today (including, ironically, the idea of media bias and media agendas, and their influence on the political agenda, the reason that you are carrying out this consultation in the first place, one might argue: See point 2 above).

The media and film industries shape, and arguably construct, the terms of people’s perceptions, the way people think, their attitudes, values and beliefs. Students need to understand the role of the media in that process if they are to have any chance of becoming engaged, active and reflective citizens within our society. If we deny them these opportunities, we can only blame ourselves when society somnambulates into a future of fear, despair and obsequious conformity. We owe our students a better future than that.

I hope that you will give the above arguments the weight of consideration they deserve when considering how the subjects should be reformed.

Yours faithfully

Mike Gunn

If you want to write to them with your own equally passionate (but undoubtedly more eloquent) supporting letter, please feel free. The address is below:

Ofqual,

Spring Place,

Coventry Business Park,

Herald Avenue,

COVENTRY

CV5 6UB       

PS Rest assured: I didn't post cartoons with my original letter to OFQUAL!

                                                                                                             

Leadership secondment: a great experience

Those of you who have been following my blog over the last few months will know/have surmised/been told/have no idea whatsoever that I was seconded to our leadership team for the past two terms. I can honestly say it probably came at the worst possible time for me, with a colleague who had just left the department and not been replaced, having to take on their exam classes, dealing with some serious personal issues of a couple of colleagues and trying to be a decent father and husband (the last two have been more or less accepted as optional by my family for all but the month of August each year, but that doesn't mean I stop trying, or at the very least feeling guilty about failing!). By the end of the process, however, I would say that it was one of the most worthwhile professional things I have done in the last few years.

The reasons for this might be divided into two: The worth lies in what I achieved (which is open to debate) and what I experienced. The latter I think is the most important, especially given the paucity of my achievements. I'm sticking with it as the most important thing at any rate. So what did I experience?

1. The opportunity to organise a whole-school project

Anyone who has read the non-leadership-y blogs of mine will know that the other element I've been captivated by this year is the potential for mobile technology to transform learning. Because of what I'd been doing in the classroom, other colleagues and leadership were getting interested in what I was doing (or wanting to know how I could justify all the expensive iPads at least). Having discussed the potential of the iPads, and the way they were transforming the teaching and learning in my classroom, it was clear that this was a way forward which could really benefit the school, but as I've written elsewhere, we were in no financial position to afford a 1:1 iPad programme. The compromise, which actually turned out to be far less of a compromise than I would have thought, was BYOD.

The scope of the project itself was huge: It consisted of getting SLT and teachers on board, getting technicians on board and working out how to get the network ready, getting student involvement, getting Digital Leaders trained, and trying to manoeuvre a lot of different elements into place simultaneously which gave me a sense of playing twelve-dimensional tetris permanently for seven months. It's arguable that there is no better training for Assistant Headship than exactly this! The whole project is now an integral part of our next three year focus in school, on the personalisation of learning, so I will genuinely be able to say that I have had an impact on teaching and learning across the school which, by the time the project is fully rolled out, will have affected every single student's learning. When you're a middle leader trying to take that next step up the career ladder, this is often the missing link, the whole-school dimension, where candidates come up short.

2. The opportunity to lead CPD

I have rarely worked in a school where there has been such a relentless focus on high-quality CPD, and where the majority of it has been provided by our in-house experts. The BYOD project gave me the chance to lead some of the individualised training our school runs for its staff in order to develop them all as far as we can, and also offered me a chance to view the principles and logistics behind that training programme. For my part, I was able to deliver CPD on how teachers can make use of mobile technology in their teaching and learning, to provide high quality assessment for learning opportunities, and to give students a huge amount of choice in how they learn, and how they present their learning. The CPD I delivered also gave my CPD co-ordinator a good idea of how advanced these practices were, and she in turn gave me the opportunity to deliver similar training to other teachers at TeachMeet Brum (1 and 2) and TeachMeet Cov, as well as at the Coventry Teaching and Learning Partnership. These consequently provided me with networking opportunities with other far-sighted teachers, middle and senior leaders and exposed me more importantly to doubts and questions about what I was introducing which were both sincere and legitimate. By the time I'd gone home to reflect on those questions and obstacles, the planned whole-school initiative was beginning to become much more water-tight, and much less likely to fail. That kind of high-level scrutiny and collaboration has been really useful in formulating my ideas, and also in giving me the confidence that the ideas themselves are worth carrying out from the point of view of enhancing teaching and learning, rather than being just another "initiative". My best moment was when a friend who is high up in the IT industry told me (after a half hour grilling me about our BYOD plans) that he couldn't find a flaw or a gap in them. High praise indeed. For the first time in my career I don't feel as defensive, and I don't see criticism as a negative, but as an opportunity for reflection and growth. Again, a real benefit to my career, no matter which direction it heads in from now.

3. The opportunity to observe a high performing leadership team

The chance to see how a high performing team operates, and what characterises them, was another key learning development for me this year. I got the opportunity to see how this team was shaped by strategic thinking and planning, long-term plans, conviction that your plan will do the job and get the best results, constant checking of the data, digging for the detail and the stories behind it, a focus on excellence rather than initiatives, a daily togetherness and opportunity to talk about operational matters, weekly meetings which were purposeful, focused and always about how to get the best for our students.

Copyright owner: Randy Glasbergen

I got to see that, while middle leaders and below often think of SLT as purely results-focused managers, they were actually focused now not just on the results, but also on the adults they wanted our students to become: There was review of the curriculum experiences of the students, their extra-curricular experiences, and the out-of-school opportunities we offer them. We spent time looking at different curriculum models such as the IB, the Middle Years Programme etc, and thinking about how closely the experiences they offered matched our aspirations for our children. Oddly enough, the current turmoil within our educational system served me well, as I got to see a team focus on the basics of the educational experience, and prioritise the things which really matter. I came to see that outstanding curriculum, teaching and learning, student experiences etc are never the result of accident or chance.

3. The opportunity to contribute

Within this context, I also had the chance to contribute to the above debates and see whether or not my own ideas stand up to scrutiny at such a high level. I think that's probably all I need to say on that section. They weren't laugh at. To my face, anyway. From my point of view, big win.

4. The opportunity to see how high-performing teams are forged

One of the most significant aspects of the secondment for me was seeing how high-performing teams are built and exploited to get the best out of each person. Like any good classroom, the team were divided differently for different tasks and projects, sometimes clearly in light of what they could bring to the project from their own expertise, but at other times to develop more latent skills which each member of the team perhaps needed to work on to become a more effective and rounded leader. There was a constant theme of support, and wanting to maximise the talents within the team, but also a feeling that they were constantly being asked to move forward, and become even better, even more balanced as individuals. What did I learn about myself within this environment? Well, apparently I've got some decent ideas. I have a focus on systems and strategy which will serve me well, but I also have a good eye on people, and hopefully won't ever put the systems above those people delivering them. Within a high performing leadership team, I held my own, hopefully, and would consider I had a shot at most AHT jobs. Having said that, you can probably see through the number of grammatical qualifiers and self-deprecations in the last few paragraphs that I haven't quite shaken off the demons of my own self-doubt. What I did get to see was that this isn't an entirely negative flaw, and that it also makes me a reflective person, which will again serve me well for the future as I try to grow professionally.

One interesting exercise we undertook as a whole team was a ColourWorks exercise, run by a company (ColourWorks, surprisingly) which asked us to answer a series of random and somewhat irritating questions and then presented us with a bunch of results about our leadership style. Considering how meaningless the exercise felt at the time I was doing it, I have to say that the results were stunningly accurate and insightful. I have  20+ page document at home about me and my leadership style from which neither I, nor any of my family, colleagues or friends have been able to fault more than about three statements. Interestingly, I am less gregarious in leadership than I like to think, and more reflective and logical. I am not pushy, or fiercely driven, and I always value consensus and people. As a result, I think I might be cut out for leadership up to certain levels, but not Headship. I am a good team player, and I can always help others improve their own ideas further, but I'm not necessarily a top leader. Perhaps it's a question of happiness or personal priorities: I find myself not driven enough by ambition to want to disrupt a work life balance which brings me great happiness and satisfaction as well as challenge. I'm not looking to be in a rut, I'm not wanting to coast: I genuinely want to be the best teacher and leader I can be, and to make a difference to as many students as possible. But I think at the very top you need a certain amount more self-belief and, let's face it, cojones, to take on those challenges and assume responsibility for everyone under you. One thing that does occur to me, however, is that someone like me, who doesn't allow things to get in the way of my own happiness, also understands how important this happiness and sense of personal satisfaction are for staff well-being as a whole, and that is an excellent attribute to have on any leadership team.

5. The opportunity to see where middle leaders fit in

As a middle leader I understand my function within the school much better now, and what opportunities I have to be able to help the leadership team by speaking up on matters whose impact I am better placed to understand than they perhaps are. This has also given me far more confidence to express those views, and I've noticed the same confidence emerging in others who have also had the same chance to undertake a secondment as I have. My bond with these people has now become much stronger as a result, and I can see that one of the points of offering secondments to middle leaders is to build this capacity for growth, self-discovery, development, and confidence. Similarly, from the leadership team's point of view, seconding middle leaders allows LT to gauge how broad or parochial the views of school issues are to those middle leaders, as well as how practical, feasible and strategic they are, so that when these middle leaders are consulted on matters affecting the whole school, the leadership have a good deal more faith in the feedback they get if they know the middle leaders in question can see things from both sides of the fence.

So in conclusion... 

• I enjoyed the experience thoroughly
• I enjoyed the challenges, and really enjoyed the whole-school responsibilities
• I learnt an immense amount about how schools function, about how leadership works, and about myself and my own style of leadership
• I learnt that leadership teams have real people in them too! And I learnt how to curb my natural tendency to bow in deference to superiors
• I would recommend this to anyone, even if it's just to see what lies on "the other side of the fence"
• If I hadn't been doing this on my full time-table, I think I would conclude that I might be able to manage a leadership job!

And finally, I would say I have learnt this, which I would like to pass on to all potential leaders, of the present or of the future:

Leadership without clearly defined core values, and aims which are consistent with these values, is nothing. Leadership without integrity is nothing. Leadership without reflection and questioning is nothing. Leadership without clear, consistent, transparent communication is nothing. 

There's a reason we are given twice as many ears as mouths, but once you're done using the ears, make sure that what you say is true, committed and strong.

Oh, and if any of you are thinking I could easily have describe Michael Gove here, go back and re-read the ears thing.

Now, who's going to give that job...?

Unfettered Leadership - A Thunk

Quick mini-post today. Forgive the fact that it wasn't just tweeted, but I thought that the quality of responses would be better from comments rather than tweets.

There has been much inspirational talk over the past week by the #Vision2040 group about the future of our schools, the direction of the curriculum etc. I started a bit of blue-sky day-dreaming about how I would run a school if there were no shackles, and then realised how hard it was to come up with concrete answers. Lots of platitudes and generalities and the like (I'm good at them!), but nothing very specific. So in the spirit of thunkage so popular on Twitter, what I want to know is this:

If Michael Gove was to de-politicise education entirely, including his present accountability systems, and you had free rein to do as you liked in your schools, what EXACTLY would you do or change?

Answers in the comments section please. I REALLY want to know what you would do...

Teacher's health

Teachers' Health: What Are We Doing Wrong?

This blog goes back to one of my pet bug-bears, teachers' health. Unfortunately, it needs a bit of context. Bear with me, the points I'm making are worth it. In my opinion at any rate. Which hardly constitutes the most ringing endorsement, but it's the only one you're getting...

The other day I met up with a friend of mine who used to study taoist arts with me for many years. We taught t'ai chi together for well over a decade, studied therapeutic massage, diagnostics, acupressure, Chinese Medicine, and eventually she went on to become a professional acupuncturist and a lead teacher of acupuncture at one of the country's best acupuncture colleges. She regularly used to treat me in a preventative capacity, as is the idea in Chinese medicine: You treat people to keep them well, not once they're ill (stable door-horse bolted scenario). In fact the Chinese used to have a system whereby doctors could not charge for their services when you were ill (you couldn't earn money to pay, after all), so the whole medical system was predicated on the importance of prevention rather than cure (as is the case within our own system, which also happens to be so profitable for the major pharmaceutical companies incidentally. I'm just saying. And digressing apparently).

It has been a while since my last treatment, but this one provided me with a hell of a shock. According to my acupuncturist, my health has seriously deteriorated in the last eleven months, due to factors which can be solely attributed to teaching, despite the fact my western doctors tell me I'm doing everything perfectly. I eat well according to Western orthodoxy, I get above average amounts of exercise, and I generally look after myself. Nothing wrong, excellent health. Only I know different. I can feel that all is not well. And now I have someone telling me the same thing, someone telling me she can measure how far my constitution has been depleted. I am working at a pace which, in her own words, is constantly pushing the limits of what I am capable of withstanding, and is digging into my reserves of energy every day, not just occasionally. But they're reserves I say, that's what they're there for. And when I have no reserves left, apparently, that's it. Life essence spent. Grave time.

Not a nice thought. Especially for my family.

Now I'll be the first to acknowledge that doing an ASLDP course at the same time as a secondment to leadership, a whole-school project and running a faculty on a full timetable is a struggle, but to be honest I didn't think I was pushing it that much. My body on the other hand knows differently. And therein lies the problem: My brain seems to think it knows better, and rationalises all sorts of things which are bad for my health, to the extent of saying that this is what constitutes "normal" within the teaching profession. So here are a few of the things we're doing on a day to day basis in the teaching profession which are harmful to our health, and not to put too fine a point on it, are killing us slowly by using up our reserves of energy...

Obeying our seasonal rhythms
We've just come through a long hard winter (and I'm not even sure it's finished yet, dammit!). During that winter, every animal in the natural kingdom spent more time sleeping, expended less energy, and generally took it easy in a hibernatey type of way. Plants do the same in general: They die back, they collect their essences back into their roots, conserve their energy, distil it even, and then get ready to burst forth beautifully when the sun returns and the days lengthen. What do we do? We have our longest term, followed by an alcoholic holiday, and then straight back to work for more of the same. We leave the house when it's dark, and get home when it's dark, and then carry on working, despite the clear messages from the rest of the natural world: Rest up. And then we take our holidays when there is most energy around to be doing things, and most daylight. The beginning and end of school years are utterly at odds with the natural world, from which we are becoming ever more separate. If we had any sense, we would start in February, work our way up to our best learning in the summer, and as Autumn came and went we would harvest that knowledge (with exams, I guess), and then rest over Winter when the cycle is done.

Speaking of which... We get decent holidays in this job. So everyone keeps reminding us. But how much of your Easter holiday did you take, I wonder. Me? I spent four days on a students trip and a week in school running coursework and exam prep sessions. I doubt I'm unusual in this respect either. Whether it's because we need the time to catch up on work we've not managed to get done during the hectic term, or simply because of the guilt we feel every time someone berates us for the length of our holidays, I like many of my colleagues just seem to keep working through them. How strange.

Obeying our daily rhyhms
We can all relate to the concept of a body clock, especially when suffering from jet-lag after a long plane journey, or a really late night and lack of sleep. Your body functions in such a way as to take advantage of the 24 hours in a day, with different organs peaking at different periods according to Chinese Medicine.

As an example of this, you can see your stomach and spleen (both linked to the Earth element in TCM, which is in charge of nourishment) come online in the morning, when you need your first meal of the day: A meal eaten at that time is more effective than at any other time of the day, but how many teachers do I know who "skip breakfast" just to get in early?
(I could have used the Large Intestine between 5-7 a.m. as an example of the best time for bowel movements, but you're probably eating as you read this, so let's move on...)

All of this is fairly self-explanatory, and indeed self-evident if we stopped for a minute to listen to our bodies. Instead, we tend to listen to our schedule, our timetables and our piles of marking, which results in many of us skipping lunch, or even working through them, also no-nos in TCM. You see, in TCM, every organ is linked to functions, emotions and other areas of the body. Since we're on the Stomach and Spleen organs, I'll tell you that these are linked to the Earth element, with their functions being tied to the imagery of earth: As the source of sustenance, as the "mother" nurturer. Oddly, the emotion linked to this in Chinese medicine is called "pensiveness" or "over-thinking". It is often equated to worry and anxiety. And because the organ-emotion relationship works both ways, people who are doing a lot of thinking or worrying while they eat are actually impairing their stomach and spleen functions. Hence, when we worry, we often say we "feel sick", or that our stomachs are "tied in knots". In fact, for all the goodness you're getting from your food, you may as well not be eating most of it.

Meal times are a natural pause in the day, a time to down tools and switch onto another frequency. A time to come together and socialise and share. I don't know about you, but I have yet to work in a school environment which is conducive to that. In fact, I've heard arguments for ever shorter lunch and break-times based around the fact that "the kids will get out of control". And so we as teachers have to take another hit to our health, sometimes on a daily basis. I know that doesn't take much to distract me from eating at lunch.

Similarly, how many of us go home at night and start back on the work straight away? How many of us literally get up from the dinner table and start thinking straight away, or marking? What digestion time does that afford us? And did we even have time to savour the meal we've just eaten to give us sustenance? Did we even cook it? Or did we trust Messrs Sainsbury and co to do it for us and all we have to do is bung it in the microwave, because it's "convenient" and gives us yet more time for that all-consuming work? Because we know how much the supermarkets prioritise our health over their cheaper, more profitable ingredients...

Working with our bodies
Much of what working with our own bodies is about concerns obeying their natural rhythm, but there is more to it than that. As bi-peds, we have been walking on two legs for a long time now, and our spines, bones and musculature have aligned themselves to work optimally that way. Go ask a chiropractor how much harm we are doing ourselves sitting down for such long periods each day, leaning over the books. And it's not just your back: This constant slumping, and allowing the shoulders to hunch inwards constricts the lungs, and squashes the heart. As someone who is used to breathing very deeply, the last few months of unconscious stooping have resulted in a tangible shortness of breath. How do I know? Because we used to do one exercise based on holding one's breath years ago, which I used to be able to do for over a minute. Last week I had trouble getting to thirty seconds. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Our constant availability to students means we take few breaks, and when we do get time on our own, we tend to plonk ourselves down and power through as much work in one sitting as we can while there are no distractions. So far, since this shock diagnosis, I have taken a break very consciously every ten minutes while writing this blog. I can't say I've done anything less than an hour of sitting at a time over the last year.

Not only that, but the "work hard" attitude means we innately know we are missing out on life on some level, so we adopt a "play hard" attitude. I know teachers who glug a bottle of wine and half a kilo of chocolate on the sofa on a Friday night, because they've "earned it". Don't get me wrong, I don't object to alcohol and chocolate. But the lack of moderation is a ticking time-bomb if it becomes a regular part of your lifestyle and is, I would contend, a direct result of our working habits, and that's the root cause of the problem.

By the way, in case you're interested, in TCM the Liver is linked to the Wood element: It's function is the even distribution of energy throughout the body, and the smooth expression of emotions: If you have sudden mood swings, or energy blockages (highs and lows), then they can often be attributed to damage to the Wood element.

Working with our emotions
Which brings me nicely to emotions... In Chinese Medicine, there is no separation between the mental, physical, spiritual and emotional. All are linked, and therefore you can work out your own diagnosis from looking at the types of emotions you display regularly more than others. Or don't display. Because in Chinese Medicine, everything is about balance, and the lack of expression of emotions is as noteworthy as their over-expression. Controlling our emotions as "professionals" may also, believe it or not, be damaging to our health.

My teacher always used to explain it to me like a pressure cooker: You can keep the lid on as long as you like, but if you don't vent steam sometimes, you're heading for an almighty explosion! Repressing our emotions is unhealthy, but at the same time we have to be careful about being cavalier with wilfully expressing everything and damaging our students' sense of self-confidence for life! I'm not advocating that. But on the other hand, did you know that based on population averages, there is a disproportionate number of  primary school teachers who die of heart attacks? I got this from a couple of doctor friends of mine who have both noticed this pattern during their careers. My acupuncture friend explains it thus: The heart is linked to the Fire element, which is in turn linked to the emotion of joy. The constant (and sometimes false) expression of joy in some these teachers, she reckoned, places a huge burden on the heart's function, until... Same thing happens to comedians I am told. The healthy solution is to be true to your emotions, and not repress them. Easier said than done in our job.

Working with our spirits
Nourishment of the spirit is one area which on the surface of it, we would seem to be getting right. After all, the spirit is nourished by giving, and we do that every single day: It's why we call it a vocation and not a job. We are dedicated to giving to others. But the spirit needs to be nourished as well. And I've noticed that if I'm going to give a great deal every day of my life, then I work best when I surround myself with people who also nourish me, who are positive and don't act as a drain on my energy. That support mechanism is important, but even more important is to give myself time for nourishing myself. "Take a moment", as my wife says. Taste and savour the food and wine, smell the flowers, feel the sunshine on my skin. Open my lungs and breathe fresh, ion-y air. Laugh at the tiniest of silly things my daughter does, and join in, because the marking can wait. Be. And ignore the nagging compulsion to Do.

We have developed in our profession, and it may be in the modern world as a whole, a high-tempo lifestyle which is always switched on and has become the norm to us, so much so that we don't even realise the changes which have happened to our working patterns over the last few decades. I didn't anyway. Now I'll be honest and say I thought that I was doing all of the right things to look after my own health, as I've always taken it as my responsibility, and refused to abdicate responsibility for my health to someone else (I've yet to find anyone with as much of a vested interest in maintaining my health as I have for starters!). But the prognosis this week tells me I haven't been doing it well enough clearly, and I wasn't aware of it. I am losing my own sensitivity to my health, apparently through over-working. That's a shocking fact. I realise that I am complicit in this society's increasing distance from natural rhythms by virtue of not doing anything to oppose it.

So what is the solution, and what is the point of me writing this? Well, like many of you bloggers out there, I'm writing it to crystallise my own ideas, and to work out what I do about the problems I'm identifying. I realise this blog has offered no solutions, and I'll be honest and say that I don't have them as yet. But I am looking for them, and I will be testing them, and if they work, trust me, I'll be on the blog immediately with findings! Above all, however, it is NOT a call for sympathy: It is an externalisation of a thought process I need to work through for myself, and for those I love. I would partly be grateful to know that it's not just me who feels this, and I would be even more grateful for any answers. But above all, it's for me, so I hope you'll forgive me indulging myself this time out.

Hopefully you'll notice that the publication of this blog, my last for a while I think, is timed as a deliberate reminder to us to be good to ourselves as we start the new term, and as we re-calibrate our professional courses in accordance with our personal values and priorities. And as a reminder to myself, should I continue to work towards a leadership path, to think about how I set up a working environment which nurtures the bodies, minds and souls of every single person in that establishment, over and above the exam factory requirements. This I do solemnly swear...

Making Learning Irresistible

Mick Waters
Making learning Irresistible

Last  weekend was my first experience of the Coventry Learning Partnership Plus conference, and unfortunately I didn't really get the full flavour of all the excellent workshops going on because my school volunteered me to run one! What I did have was the privilege of hearing Professor Mick Waters talk to us on the Friday night about making learning irresistible. He talked for 90 minutes. It barely felt like 10.

I talked to several people afterwards about what they'd taken from the speech. We were all inspired, but could we put our finger on what exactly the thrust of the talk had been? Could we hell! This blog is my attempt to try and draw some conclusions from what I heard, and summarise where Professor Waters thinks we should be heading in education, a direction I have to say from the outset that I whole-heartedly agree with.

By way of personal context, there has been a lot of talk in our leadership team at school about the role of character in a child's education, about teaching more than simply content, "subjects", and even learning skills. Our current education system seems intent on reducing the really important things we teach our children to lip-service, as it is perhaps not deemed to be measurable, valuable or, dare I use the jargon du jour, "rigorous". This isn't a party political point, as I think the last government's focus on targets, attainment etc are equally blame-worthy in this respect. And nor am I saying we shouldn't be accountable for our results. I am simply arguing that our present focus on what can be measured has created an unhealthy obsession with those things over the other important areas of our educational remit, namely to help students to discover who they are, what they can do, to foster their curiosity, to nurture their talents and interests, and to get them to understand how to accomplish their goals meaningfully in a way which is as beneficial to society as it is to them. Children who care, rather than children who spend, perhaps. Though I'm told this is bad for the economy. By which of course we mean the rich folk at the top of it. Moving on...

Professor Waters' starter for the ten is the contention that, in order to prepare for and learn about the outside world, the UK for some reason corrals students behind a fence, in institutions where we actually ignore and fall behind the real world all the time. We are obsessed by the need to get on, get through the content, and miss out on the chance to make things come alive. In our efforts to have our students undertake "meaningful" activities all the time, while taking the register for example (we make them do planner checks, numeracy activities, give them tonnes of information etc), we fail to realise that the real world is always there to be tapped into.

Our focus on results has another very negative effect on students: We label them. And we label them in a way which stigmatises them deeply, despite the fact that what we are labelling is transient. One child can't do equations yet. Another has difficulties focusing at a certain time of day. Another can't get to grips with a couple of particular subjects, so we label them "Not achieving 5 A*-C grades"! Here's the thing though: If you were to grade yourself in different subjects at different times, how would you fair? On a scale of Outstanding to Unsatisfactory, how would you rate your own abilities in relation to gardening, decorating, writing, taking photographs, playing an instrument or learning a language? I imagine few of us would be excellent all-rounders, but that's not to say we don't have serious talents in one or more areas: Just look at Einstein. Bit of a failure in school by all accounts. Likewise, students are at different levels in different subjects at different times, but our need to measure things makes it easy for us to focus on the numbers and not the child in front of us. Do the numbers really tell the story? Oddly enough I was listening to a Radio Four business programme the other day where several chief execs were agreeing on this very point, and saying that the data they got on their desks every day was a deeply inferior diagnostic tool compared to direct contact with their people on the ground floor and their customers. A lesson for us all perhaps...

So back to the students: Most of us start out positively in school, but even with the best of intentions, because we can't invest sufficient time to master a skill to the outcome level we want, we end up as "disillusioned triers" who give up on our ability to learn it. Waters does a great experiment with kids: He asks them how they would rate themselves in all of their school subjects. Apparently you never get more than 40% say they're any good at something. But if you ask them about how good they will be at driving and learning to drive, and whether they'll be any good as drivers, they respond overwhelmingly positively. About something they've never tried before. Is it the learning experience which puts us down, or the labeling which occurs along the way?

Similarly we could ask as professionals whether a teacher whose lesson is described as "satisfactory" is actually a satisfactory teacher? Or is this just a label? A snapshot. Under pressure too. Like a terminal exam even. Strikes me as a bit unfair to judge us this way on an annual basis, never mind judging a whole school every four years using that method. But boy do we bust a gut to get the "Outstanding" label! Professor Waters' conclusion was that the Outstanding teacher teaches good lessons consistently, but more than that: He or she also looks after the lonely child in the corridor. Is the latter any less important that the former? Are the teacher who have left a life-long impression on your lives the ones who taught tight formulaic "Outstanding" lessons every day? Or the ones who cared? Who took the time to listen to you? Who took a genuine interest in you as a person?

Many Outstanding schools are outstanding because they follow "the trudge", and they do it well, and have hit the right formula. The relentless focus on "5 A*-C grades", "RAISEOnline", CVA, the systematic monitoring, the countless interventions: All of these serve to get as many students as possible over that finish line which the data says they should cross, based on mathematical probabilities and algorithms we shouldn't question because they're far too complex for us to understand. And then they suspend the timetable for a day occasionally so that they can do a whole-school activity which will provide the rounding out of their characters (!) which society also requires. Are we really delivering that? Not according to Mick Waters', industry, the government, the parents or the Daily Mail!

A futures learning outlook

What we really need is to focus on what we hope for our students. The government is more focused on the core of knowledge, but we should be producing rounded human beings, and enthusiastic, curious learners. An outstanding teacher's role is to raise the spirits and self-esteem of their students, and to raise their gaze so that they look up at the world around them and see themselves as part of it. Our role is to help them find out who they are, and how they can make a positive difference to the world, and find a sense of their own happiness within the roles they choose for themselves. Our curriculum should be based on the big questions, with students clear about how the small matters fit into the bigger picture. It should prepare them to tackle big questions, and connect to the real world every lesson. Every child should be able to see the relevance of lessons for life in the big wide world as it is today. But I would suggest that this is just one aim. The second, and more important one as far as I am concerned, is this: If we start by showing students how their learning connects to the real world as it is, we should also be fostering the kind of curiosity and thinking which will help them shape the society that we could have. Because demonstrating to students how they could fit into modern society means we implicitly accept everything about that society, including its values and priorities. And I for one think that this demonstrates a real paucity of ambition. I would hope that our children can do a better job of society than we have. But it's unlikely to happen if we persist in telling them that what we have now is the only way it can be done.

The best summary of this perspective I've ever seen was written by a man named Kahlil Gibran, in a brilliant book full of wisdom call The Prophet. Given the daily vacillations in education policy and debate in this country, these thoughts help to anchor me as a teacher and a parent.

Your children are not your children. 
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. 
They come through you but not from you, 
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. 
You may give them your love but not your thoughts. 
For they have their own thoughts. 
You may house their bodies but not their souls, 
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. 
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. 
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. 
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. 
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 
And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. 
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; 
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. 

Leadership - A different perspective

I remember a while back posting something (undoubtedly trivial - I can't remember what it was at any rate!) on Twitter which caused my first ever Twitter argument. It came as a bit of a shock because, while I know there must be good and bad on Twitter as anywhere else, my experience for the first few months had been entirely positive and incredibly helpful! PLN, best CPD in the world, all the clichés people use about Twitter had been true. And yet here was a full-blown argument, conducted in less than 140 characters. Its brevity made it no less ferocious. It was the ninja one-inch punch of rhetoric.

What was more stunning was the topic of the argument. My transgression had been to quote "The Art Of War", an ancient Chinese text by Sun Tzu, in an educational discussion. This was deemed "wholly inappropriate" amongst other things. I was told firmly that this had "no place in a discussion on pedagogy or education at all for that matter". Oh well. That's me told.

Two things I should make clear in response to this:

1) I think you can learn from anyone or any event. What a bad one looks like is as instructive as what a good one looks like. The amount you learn is dictated by your attitude as a learner.
2) I don't think this blog is being written to justify my position or opinion, in response to someone having a go at me. I'm not that insecure.

On the contrary, I'm writing this out of a genuine sense of wanting to explore what the ancient taoists can teach us now, about life, about teaching, and about leadership (my new hobby, apparently, as one of my team informed me today!). I've been interested in Oriental philosophies for a long time, so this will be the first of many posts (I'll get back to normal education-based posts soon enough, don't worry, and you'll still get cartoons at the end: Fret not.  But if @KevBartle can digress into poetry, then I can bloomin' well go East. So to speak. Anyway, here are my first findings...

What Taoist Philosophy can teach us about leadership

Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter Three - Strategy

There are three ways in which a ruler can bring misfortune to his army:
If he orders the army to retreat or advance when it cannot effectively do so, this is called “hobbling the army”;
If he attempts to administer the army when he does not know how, its warriors will become frustrated;
If he commands the officers without proper insight into how they function, this will undermine their confidence.

Okay, so let's forget the military metaphors for a start, and focus on the essence of what's being said here, and how we can apply it to our work as leaders of schools. "If he orders the army to retreat or advance when it cannot effectively do so, this is called “hobbling the army”." Leaders have to have a strong sense of vision. Without it, it's difficult to know where you're going. And someone who doesn't know where they're going is either static or going round in circles ineffectually or, worse still, following every prevailing wind. But a leader with vision is only half the story. A leader with a vision has a plan. But he must also have the means to execute the plan, the tools for the job. A leader cannot do anything without the right tools, the tools to do the job effectively. That means getting the right team around you, the right mix of skills, the right structures and systems for effective action, the right staff, the right attitudes, the right environment and resources, the right attitudes from students, and a level of support from parents. Don't get me wrong: I'm certainly not saying that you replace people who disagree with you, but you certainly need to explain your plan, your rationale and your methods openly if you want to take them with you on the journey. You can't skip that step. Attempting to move a school wholesale in a given direction without laying the groundwork first just doesn't work.

"If he attempts to administer the army when he does not know how, its warriors will become frustrated."
There are a couple of things which strike me about this line. The first is the word "administers". As school leaders we might object to it, because it implies that we are more or less pen-pushers. Me, I like it. It's not saying that school leaders do nothing, but it's a useful reminder that impact in schools comes from the contact with the students, and that's down to the huge number of teachers and other staff we have at the coal-face. If we as leaders made most impact, surely we'd have more leaders than teachers. But that's not the case. The war is fought on the front-line by the soldiers, not the generals, and while it is entirely wrong to think of educating young people as a war, the metaphor still speaks to us about the relative importance of teachers and leaders.

The second thing the passage raises is the issue of competence: An incompetent leader will often put obstacles in the way of effective teaching and learning across a school. Sometimes teachers with integrity will try to point this out, but leaders can be less than receptive about criticism, and so sometimes these same teachers will simply circumvent these inadequate systems. As a result they'll be labelled as undermining the system. Fine line, isn't it? The onus is on us as leaders to be really reflective about how much more effective each of our systems is actually making the school.

In addition, that line raises a further issue, which is whether or not you as the leader need to be competent in all areas. I would argue not (if you've ever met me and are aware of my numerous flaws, you'll understand why I come down on this side!), but I do think you need to have people in your team who are good at the things you're not good at if that's the case. If you're a big picture person, make sure you have a details person in your team. And ultimately, all of this comes down to whether or not the leader is humble enough to recognise their own short-comings and either deal with them (good) or turn them to his advantage by helping others to advance themselves through their skills (excellent).

"If he commands the officers without proper insight into how they function, this will undermine their confidence."

You need to know your team, and their strengths and weaknesses, and you need to know their roles, the complexity of their roles, and what they do every day. One senior manager I used to know had a habit of responding to problems by saying that staff "just had to... (Insert small extra task here)". All very well, but you sometimes got the impression she'd forgotten everything else the staff were doing already, or how much had been added gradually through time to their roles and responsibilities without taking anything out of the mix. A good leader still appreciates where their staff are coming from, what they do daily, and thinks about how their own actions impact on the effectiveness of their staff. If they don't, the staff will often grow resentful, lose confidence, and lose their confidence in their leader. "Are my ideas making us more effective?" should be a mantra pinned to our desks, if not tattooed on our foreheads (though I can understand the argument that the kids find tattoos like that uncool and your kudos with them might go down the toilet!).

By the way, as I write this, it strikes me that I may be entering an egg-sucking granny style scenario, and I appreciate it's not rocket science. I think I'm just saying that we need to systematically step back from time to time to look at how what we do impacts on the students, their progress, their character development, and the staff and their work-life balance too.

OK, time to stop rambling. If this is useful, I've only really scratched the surface of one taoist tome so far: There is plenty more where that came from, but if it's not useful, please let me know and I'll stop cluttering your bandwidth with this rubbish.
(If it is useful, please let me know too: I'm not insecure, but a little approval is always a nice thing. Ahem...)

What I'm learning on SLT secondment

I've been a Subject Leader since my second year in teaching. Virtually every time I've been appointed to lead a department, the appointment was to say the least fortuitous, if not utterly accidental. I have never felt the need for promotion, and have only ever gone for promotion consciously when I've got to a point of such frustration with the "I could do a better job than that" attitude that I've just gone for it. Never have I really believed I had much to offer at any level higher than middle management.

However, the school I work in at the moment have a habit of giving people opportunities to lead, and I've taken everything that's come my way in the last year. Again, none of this is out of any egotistical desire to be in charge, but much more out of curiosity, to see whether I actually have anything to contribute at SLT level: I'm not 100% convinced yet, but... Amongst the opportunities I've been given have been a place on the Aspiring Senior Leadership Development Programme, and a secondment for two terms onto our Leadership team. Over the next few months, I'm hoping to be able to blog about what I'm learning, and share it with anyone else who might, more fool them, be interested in what I have to say.

So let's start with this: Over the last few weeks it's been a privilege to observe first hand the remarkable group of people that is my SLT. I'm not saying this to suck up. None of them read this blog (I think). It would be embarrassing if they did. Not to mention a waste of their time. So this compliment is just between you and me, you understand?

I have always been impressed by the unity of the team since they came together three years ago. When I was seconded, one comment I received from a slightly cynical colleague in another school suggested that once I was on the team and could see what went on behind closed doors, "I'd soon see where the fault-lines were": But no...

Lesson One: Unity of purpose and vision
When you lead people, you have to have their confidence, and they have to believe you know where you're going, that you have a clear rationale for going in that direction, and that you know how to get there. Importantly, if you're in charge of a team leading another even larger team, then that SLT has to be behind your ideas, otherwise you get the sort of back-biting that undermines the team and the leadership completely. When the weavils start gnawing at the rudder, don't be surprised if your boat goes nowhere. Is a phrase you're not likely to hear again today...

So getting everyone on board is a very powerful tool in inspiring confidence.

Lesson Two: Keep it simple, stupid.
Uncontentious is a good way to get everyone behind your general principles. Teachers are all pretty well-intentioned people, or at least started out that way. They come to the profession with a desire to make a difference, and your leadership vision has to reconnect them to that original moral purpose they came with. They have to feel they are coming to work every day to do the thing they wanted right from the off: Change the lives of young people for the better. How you achieve that vision of success for young people can be debated ad infinitum within SLT, openly and honestly, but as long as you agree your general direction, then there is strength in your position as a group leading the school. The main thing is the main thing.

Lesson Three: Communicate the vision clearly and often
Alignment is a word much used on the ASLDP, and I must admit it is a word which is easily mistaken for coercion, which naturally gets people's backs up. But if you don't have a set of values and principles behind which people can align themselves, then why would they follow your direction? Learning to communicate your vision to the staff, and overcoming the suspicion people have of anyone who wants to go into a senior role, is a fundamental part of your job. Remember that most teachers came to teach young people, and therefore may well have a pretty legitimate suspicion of anyone who seems to want to "escape the chalkface". Your reason for being a member of SLT has to come through loud and clear in your words, but most importantly in your actions: It's about service. As a teacher, you can serve students. As a member of SLT you can serve students, and you can more importantly serve teachers in order to help them to do their job better. Repeat, in case you didn't get it first time: It's about service, and communicating your mission to serve others.

Lesson Four: Put in place the right systems
The word "system" conjures up a mechanistic view of management which most people hate, because they're people, and nobody likes to think of themselves in a box. But your systems are for two purposes: To make it easier for teachers and students to do their jobs, and to monitor and interrogate how that can be done even more effectively. Good systems of accountability should be light work, but provide excellent evidence upon which to act. If you are systematically asking the correct questions, the answers you come up with can automatically be looked at, and take into account individual variability such as student or teacher performance. But it's important that those questions be asked, that the story behind the figures be found, and that the knowledge that they bring is on the table for discussion.

Lesson Five: Create an effective team
A group is not a team. School "teams" are often inherited, and made up not of people who have ability and aptitude to lead the school or carry out specific tasks, but more often of people who have been teaching longer or have specific experience in schools. However, if this is the culture which exists in education today, we have to work with that, rather than bemoaning the fact that we can't just fire someone and hire the right specialist, as they might in industry. It's important to develop our leaders into a team, as they will model everything the school aspires to be: SLT should work towards becoming...

• A team with shared purpose
• A team which builds up complementary skill-sets and capacity (the right "chemistry", if you will)
• A team which reviews the school's activities and processes (as well as its own) constantly for refinement
• A team which learns from its mistakes and moves forward
• A team which develops its emotional intelligence in order to make dealing with teachers and students more effective
• A team which trusts its own members, the teachers it serves, and which is in turn trusted by staff and students to run the school in a direction which is mutually beneficial to all

Lesson Six: Everything is about development, not blame
Common purpose should always overcome individual egos. If it doesn't, the result when interrogating certain data or findings is that people get defensive and therefore will not give the whole truth if they can avoid it. An openly debating culture within SLT such as I have witnessed at my present school allows all the facts to be put on the table without embarrassment so that everyone can look at what can be getting better. Just because you've been put in charge of an area doesn't mean you're bound to have all the ideas, and sharing your results, your doubts, your qualms etc allows others to contribute, allows you to get multiple perspectives, and ultimately allows you to come up with better collaborative solutions. But if your team doesn't have that open culture and common sense of purpose, you have to build it first.

Lesson Seven:
This one's for the SLT rookies out there. When someone asks you if you would like to take the minutes, the answer is no. Or a more polite version thereof. And if at the end they congratulate you and say that you have got "your turn" out of the way, what they mean is that the busiest agenda of the term is now over. Mwa-haha-haha-haha...

Next they'll be saying it's my turn to pay for the SLT team-building curry outing...

Leadership and wisdom: Why us and them?

I'm in serious mood today. None of the usual frivolities. OK, you might get a cartoon at the end, but until then, I'm talking business...

I don't know about you, but I often have decent ideas which I'm developing at some bizarrely insane time of the day, when suddenly I will read someone else's blog which just, mortifyingly, turns out to be the perfect expression of what I've been struggling to articulate for so long. Today was such a day, when I read Kev Bartle's blog on line management, and the need to build a relationship of trust between manager and line managee (he made that word up by the way, not me). This line caught my eye: "And I trust that they (the people he line manages) are in this job for all the right reasons, as I hope they trust that I am in the job of senior leadership for all the right reasons." An admirable attitude.

However, this line highlighted a problem I have perceived, which has puzzled me throughout my career as a teacher and middle leader: The divide between SLT and "staff". If we just flip his statement on its head a moment, we perhaps start to see what is at the root of many a disjointed relationship between SLT and staff. Everyone always assumes teachers are in the job for the right reasons, but very often line management relationships break down because those being managed don't quite trust that SLT are in their jobs for the right reasons. Sound harsh? Think about it: How often are people sniping behind the backs of SLT members in your school? Is it only when the senior leader in question is not up to the job? Or is there a natural tendency amongst teachers not to trust SLT?

This isn't a problem middle managers suffer from as much, I don't think. While staff within a department can resent being managed by particular subject leaders on a personal basis, in my experience this is rare, and often down to a clash of personalities or perhaps rival ambition. Essentially, becoming a subject leader is about having ideas of how to teach better within a subject, and wanting to create a system through which this can be organised more effectively day to day. The fact that Subject Leaders still teach a hefty timetable shows the people they are managing that they are still 100% committed to the day to day nitty-gritty of the chalkface. But move towards SLT and suddenly things might change. Teachers seem to have a natural suspicion of people who are promoted to leadership positions, and it might be because they can't fathom why anyone would want to leave the classroom, which was after all the reason they came into the profession. The only reasons people seem to come up with are reasons such as greed (more money) or wanting to get out of the classroom (less work). Neither is a particularly positive reason for wanting that promotion.

One thing you'll pick up from the last paragraph is that I'm already using "they" to refer to staff, which posits a "we" of senior management (and I'm not even senior management yet!). I don't like that at all. However, it does seem to reflect the way staff think SLT view them, and it's a very real obstacle that must be faced, acknowledged and overcome by SLT if they are to be successful. I work with some superb colleagues in my faculty whose trust I have fought hard to gain over several years, and whose interests I have very often put way before my own, even when my own were important to me. But I am aware, and I don't think it's paranoid imagination, that having been seconded to SLT recently, there is now that degree of suspicion towards me and my motives. 

As SLT members it's vital to communicate our mission clearly to teachers, to make them see that our role is as much about people as teaching is. We may be part of a "system", we may have a grand title such as being in charge of "Teaching and Learning","Community" or however your school chooses the nomenclature of SLT, but those roles are still fundamentally about people. They should be about getting the best experiences for every single student, and should be equally about getting the best professional experiences for every single teacher and associate member of the support staff. They deserve to be happy and fulfilled in their lives and roles, as much as the students deserve the best educational experience possible. Our role in this context is about serving the needs of these two communities, and everything we do, say and set up should be transparently and obviously about facilitating that, and releasing people to fly. As @KevBartle said in his fab blog, "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free". Although I think he may have nicked the expression from someone else: Attribution is one of Twitter's main problems!

How you convince the people you manage of this is a matter of personality, I think. There are no hard and fast rules. Our ASLDP course, for instance, discussed whether Heads should go to the staff party a while back, with clearly this question on their minds. Some said they should, and they should be seen to be able to "get down with the staff" as I believe they say on da streets, innit. They should even be willing to get drunk in front of their staff, some said: Shows they don't take themselves too seriously. It's a bonding experience. Others said quite vehemently that they should remove themselves and allow staff to get on with the fun without feeling they were being watched. I could see both sides (typical Gemini, apparently, whatever that means!). I don't see any good reason for Heads not to be involved in staff do's, but not because they feel they have to play a role. That is the most phoney thing we can do, because people see straight through it. You have to do what comes naturally to you, and lead in a way which aligns itself with your character. For me, that would include attending staff quizzes, nights out etc, but the line would be drawn at drinking (not something I wear well), singing and dancing in public, which have always embarrassed me, way before I was even a teacher. I'm not going to be able to change those things just because I suddenly have to lead people or want them to see me bonding with them. But ultimately I do need to convince them that I ought to be treated as a person, rather than a manager, and the best way to do that is to do likewise back.

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to another interesting argument I heard on TED a while back, and one which supports the assertion that we should foreground people over systems when leading schools: The idea is that whatever we do, we mustn't make systems or procedures the whole answer, because the unintended consequence is to take away our wisdom to decide human issues on a case by case basis, and the virtue and morality to treat people like humans. This might seem like a bit of a non sequitur in the context of what I've been talking about, but it says more or less what I've always thought about how we lead people: We deal with them as individuals, we highlight their strengths, we look to help them fly if they need help, and we get rid of any obstacles if they don't. And rather than trying to "catch them out" (credit to @SimonWarburton for this expression), we work on their weaknesses in the same context as they would, knowing that they will want to deal with those weaknesses as much for themselves as for anyone else. They don't need us on their backs in addition to dealing with them, they need us on their side. That level of trust and integrity is important to have between you and the people you work with. And it might just make them less inclined to think of you as "them": Credit to Pink Floyd for that line...