Middle Management

Leadership / Middle Management — No Comments
29
Nov 11

Planning with Middle Leaders in Mind

Given a fairly positive first core day, I was giving ‘planning’ more consideration that I usually would on a Monday afternoon. Specifically, when and how you learn to plan effectively. So, given the NCSL materials and the commentary from Maggie Swinnerton, this is a document I hope to share and get feedback on, from the colleagues I work with in Curriculum areas. Feel free to add, comment and reuse.

We often plan change with ready made planning steps. Not unlike those presented below (adapted from the NCSL Middle Leaders materials). More recently I have began to consider that we often overlook or anticipate the ‘change impact’ on you, the change agent.

Good Planning

  • Objectives
  • Actions
  • Responsibilities
  • Timescales
  • Resources
  • Measureable success criteria
  • Monitoring, evaluating and next steps
  • Review dates

Testing the Planning

Most plans fail because they are never tried or are implemented without any thought as to what might go wrong; Consider therefore;

  • What things might get in the way
  • What are the worst case scenarios
  • What you have ‘going for you’
  • Prioritises
  • Be realistic in your time expectations

Monitor, Evaluate, Review

  • Step back regularly and reflect on progress
  • Select a small number of key success indicators
  • Collect hard results and soft evidence (views, formal feedback)
  • Weigh the evidence and, if need be, carry out improvements

Remember your Vision

Your vision is not static, evolving with practice. When we change, we learn, how can that change process be included, or at least highlighted, as part of the implementation of the plan.

Clearly define the impact you are aiming to achieve. The evidence you aim to collect and evaluation processes.

The impact on the staff you are working with (both teaching and non-teaching) on students, parents, guardians and carers, the community, the governors.

Note to self; consider and reflect the impact implementing the plan will have on you, the change agent.

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Middle Management — No Comments
16
Jan 11

Pivot Tables

12 months ago I was shown pivot tables in Excel 2007. I was very impressed but I think I only had one real purpose to use them, when analysing ICT OCR National results. In all honesty, with just 4 grades (D, M, P, Working Towards WT), a fantastic ‘shared’ grades database written by a colleague, I ended up using Filters and COUNTIFs.

Now, working with the English Department, a much broader grading scale, coursework and exam grades, and individual question score reports I am back with Pivot Tables and first impressions, there have been some significant improvement to pivot tables in EXCEL 2010 and some useful new features, “Sparklines” and “Slicer(s).”

Levels of ProgressEveryone is under pressure to prepare the analysis and act upon it, to give every students the best opportunity to reach their potential. Pivot Tables enables me not only to analyse the data but to change the visual display of the data by which ever variable required at the click of a SLICE. In my example, typically by grade, gender, coursework grade, or class.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Coaching / Digital Learning / Leadership — No Comments
26
Jul 10

Dragon Notes of Fierce Conversations

Edtechroundup last night explored the best methods of sharing and encouraging staff to engage with technology, from that conversation I concluded the following summary.

ICT advocate would be well advised to consider the suitability of introduction (the time, place and readiness of the colleague) the delivery (f2f, email, CPD) as much as the product.

At the very least, the product / tool should somewhat be a) easy to adopt b) make learning more engaging or c) hold time efficiencies.

Speech-to-text apa Dragon Dictation meets ALL three criteria. To put my beliefs to the test, I am going to share Dragon Dictation with our Headteacher of Thursday, in the meantime I am using it to record my thought on Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott.

With that in mind, this time last year I recommended Dragon Dictation to another advocate at a social event only to find out that the app was a US centric, #fail. The good news, as part of their 2.0 upgrade, Nuance announced that Dragon Dictation now supports both U.S. and U.K. English. Its not that I can say its much improved, but as a first look, version 2.0 is promising, if not perfect. Apart from the basic speech-to-text, Dragon Dictation’s pop up tool bar allow dictations to be sent direct to email, text and and social tools and the auto save function has enabled me to make notes on complete chapters of Fierce Conversations before posting to my email. I would advise against using the 60 seconds limit of audio recording and stick to short, but important ‘snippets.’

I will continue to use Dragon Dictation as I read Fierce Conversations and I confident that when I come to review the book, the notes, quotes and reflections will feature heavily in the post. For example, the first note I made was to try act upon Scott’s recommendation to use the word ‘but’ less often and replace it with ‘and.’ Just reconstruct an every day example and I think you will agree, its makes for a subtle but and important improvement.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Management / Middle Management — No Comments
24
Jun 10

GTP to NQT (PGCE)

I am very pleased proud pleased to announce that Liam Nicol, our GTP student, successfully completed his formal assessment with Reading University. This was my first experience of being a GTP mentor, having mentored PGCE students in both PE and ICT previously, and I just wanted to share a few reflections on the GTP and make some loose comparisons to the PGCE from a mentors perspective.

The GTP offered plenty of class experiences and in school training supplemented by University lectures. In this sense I would expect this to be fairly consistent with the PGCE. The key difference is that a) you recruit the GTP and b) they work at just the one school (apart from a two week placement). As a result it is imperative you recruit with care.

I believe Liam benefitted from the single school experience. He really did develop strong relationships with the student and we were more confident in offering wider mentor opportunities, parent conferences and extra-curricular experience. Of course, if the relationship were fraught, I can see this benefit quickly becoming a drain. Continue reading →

Popularity: 38% [?]

Middle Management / Reflections — No Comments
7
Jun 10

John Wooden

John Wooden, affectionately known as Coach, led UCLA to record wins that are still unmatched in the world of basketball. Throughout his long life, he shared the values and life lessons he passed to his players, emphasizing success that’s about much more than winning.

Searching through a discount new and used bookstore one afternoon on a soccer roadtrip, I collected up four or five coaching / sports leaderships books under my arm and made my way to the counter. I had read most of the football manger biographies and went in search of new leadership stories from other sports. When in Rome, I picked out the greatest basketball and football coaches. John Wooden’s ‘A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court‘ and Phil Jackson’s ‘Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons as a Hardwood Warrior‘ were among them. Two fantastic sports coaching books, required reading for any coach.

As a young and aspiring coach / teacher, that small book served up one thought provoking anecdote after the other. I adopted / adapted many of his coaching techniques at Taunton’s College and I saw his simplistic, clear values impact upon the players I worked with. I softened my coaching style, coached less, shared more responsibility with the players and set fewer rules – but stuck to them. This book changed the way I coached and later the way I taught.

It is not a long book, I think I once read it cover to cover during a flight, but there was always one or two anecdotes that struck a cord with whatever I was currently coaching / teaching. Simple statemenst, values and maxims littered the book, but one maxim I can clearly recall from memory;

The best way to improve the team, is to improve yourself.

I went on to read a few other Wooden books, sadly, none were a match for the little blue book. The Amazon  reviews say it all, the American Amazon reviews show 77 of 79 reviewers gave the book 5 stars. The official John Wooden site.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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