Middle Management

Leadership / Middle Management — No Comments
25
May 10

Ofsted Reflections

First, the number of requests for IT Services unsurprisingly peaked this morning. Ian, Alan and I were all in early for an early informal meeting. The next opportunity I had to speak to both Ian and Alan was…. 3:00 before meeting Ofsted.

Reflections:

  1. Ofsted relies on evidence, what can be proven, what was. Projects, even with very strong evidence securing that projection held little value.
  2. Teaching, differentiation was a clear focus and not merely of tasks set but in aims, objectives. A recurring theme in my recent PLN conversation.
  3. ‘The bar has been raised.’

So, day two offers our school the opportunity to showcase itself, lets hope its in the right light, differentiated light.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Digital Learning / ICT / Leadership / Management / Middle Management — No Comments
24
Apr 10

How Long Before…

I am sitting in the garden, relaxing, watching my little boy ‘pottle’ and play (Saturday 24th). I have a Twitter conversation in the background talking and exploring Teach Meet Moodle and I am browsing my RSS feeds. Meantime I have decided to write this post on WordPress for iPhone because otherwise I will forget what I was thinking (as it happens I forget to post it anyway). Watching my son pottling around the garden got me musing. What will education look like when my son goes to school? What will Secondary School look like? How will he learn? Will he go to ‘school?’ What will be the evolution of anytime mobile (anywhere) learning?

Education can rarely afford to be cutting edge, certainly not bleeding edge. We his school life be that different? Education is hardly renowned for expedient change. How long before the highly innovative technologies of NOW, those being explored TODAY (AR, location based information and multi-touch -ipad) appear in a classroom? I have written this post as a ‘time capsule,’ a marker of sort. I am pretty confident on the technology path for the next 10 years.

1-2-1 will be school driven. Netbooks have accelerated this particularly inroad. 1-2-1 projects will be initiating or commonplace in ALL schools 2-3 years.

Handheld learning? Will it ever arrive? Portability say yes. Data input makes the proposal more challenging. Nintendos clam shell DS, (2004) and Apples I Touch (2007) made little impact. Apples Ipad (2010) has plenty of media support and education speculation however Education’s pockets are not Apple deep, and Educations arms are even shorter. So that leaves the door open for the £200 netbooks for the foreseeable future. Until the tabletsphere works it way towards affordability we will have to swoon over the I-Pad and I-PadGenerations 2, 3 and more.

So will ‘mobile handheld multifunction communication devices’ (I gest) hold the answer? Mobile phones with a secondary input device might be an interim solution. This will only arrive when we have SMART priced as well as SMART phones. (sorry ASDA). There are currently more iphones in SLT than in Yr11 at our school! The shortfall will have to be made up by innovative learners and their teachers.

I think that should buy me at least 5-7 education years. During this time VLE will mature and be able to offer more realistic learning. Netbooks and wireless schools will be commonplace. The tablet changeover, running Windows 9 with Office in the cloud, may only then be edu-affordable. Personal own devices will then replace the formerly school run 1-2-1 projects. Well thats my 2 cents.

To conclude, a  minor point really. Can we also now safely agree that the term ’21st Century Learner’ is an outdated term, afterall he/she is now 10 and in September starts Secondary School.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Leadership / Middle Management / Reflections — No Comments
28
Mar 10

#newleaders – Learning on the Job

This past week was probably the busy week of my professional teaching career to date. Here are the reasons;

  1. New build IT procurement deadline (handed over to me in January)
  2. My wife was away from home Tuesday through Friday on a residential course, experiencing the demands of a single parent to a 19th month old son
  3. Whole print solution for the new financial year (Started in November and perhaps rushed through for April)
  4. Pending Ofsted and extended SLT meetings
  5. HOD interviews (February, interviews planned for pre Easter)
  6. Year 11 coursework deadlines – Headteachers demands for improved performance and increased students marking as the deadline draws closer.

Lack of foresight may be cited as a contributory issue but remove the ‘uncontrollables’ points 1, 2 and 4, I would feel this was perhaps unfair criticism.
What did I learn this week? Lets review the 6 identified factors.

  1. Spare capacity is essential. Always leave room for unforeseen requests, jobs, situations. It is essential to work efficiently and effectively, but not at full capacity.
  2. Simply, I gained more respect for single parent working families / staff and more appreciation for the teamwork and support my wife offers me every week.
  3. This links to capacity, but realistic time-scales are essential. Knowing we needed to be ready for April 2010, we started the print solution way in advance, so far in advance that at the start we thought we started too early. Simple lesson, those jobs that are ‘programmable’ plan with time to spare.
  4. The schools pending Ofsted means longer meeting. Somethings are not under your control – I am still unsure how to best manage / influence those things.
  5. I sincerely believe in investing time in recruitment. Recruitment is not the weeks leading up to advertising the post, its listening, observing and talking with teaching professionals at every opportunity. Our last three appointments have been recommendations or internal staff development.
  6. Results – teaching is about building relationships with learners to support learning. This year we held ‘Accelerated ICT Workshops’ in February half term (we were the only dept offering ‘revision.’) This has led to stronger relationships with students earlier, more students completing the course with time to spare, therefore more student peer support for one another and increasing capacity for staff to support the students less likely to achieve. Still the pressure remains firmly on us.

All this personal reflection in same week that Twitter offers #newleaders a range of tweets to digest. On the point of New Leaders, I have been collecting writings on the subject of challenge and inspire. Many of these have a leadership slant. I hope you can find a use for them or simply enjoy reading them.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Middle Management — No Comments
7
Jan 10

Perils of Innovation

As I move into the new year, I am aware that my role in our school has changed evolved over the past 18 months in particular, moving from middle leadership to whole school IT and ICT. Within this role, our Headteacher has noted my enthusiasm for innovation but also my caution. We aim to be at the cutting edge, its too risky to be at the bleeding edge. Regardless, innovation, whether it is from a middle or senior leader viewpoint, leaves us in a perilous position. Let me outline why as Hans de Zwart , newly promoted to the position of ’Innovation Manager,’ quotes Machiavelli The Prince (via Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations),

There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things…. Whenever his enemies have the ability to attack the innovator, they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly, so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable.

With merely 24 months experience in post, here are my top four recommendations for leading innovation yet keeping you out of the stocks;

  1. Whatever you are about to do, has probably be investigated, tested and reviewed. Grow your PLN and be a positive contributor to sharing good practice within that PLN. You never know when someone may offer your their support, pay it forward.
  2. Create a test beds for your ICT and IT innovations within school. Develop your innovations in micro, with pilot groups and with a range of users. This could be staff, technicians, students or any combination of these, before sharing the innovation. Our Digital Leaders (students in years 7-11) offer our team the most insight. We invest and plan ernestly as it is far easy to get an idea off the ground than it is to land it successful and get whole school traction, especially if staff lose confidence in the pilot during takeoff. 
  3. Support the innovators but dont ignore the bruised. The most important point is to to reduce within school variance. That simply means your bottom line must be developing faster than your innovators.
  4. Grow yourself. One of the most effective ways to accelerate and share innovation, is to accelerate your own learning. Again, developing a proactive and sharing PLN is very valuable to you.

This January we have final hit a point where our aspirations and work flow are in balance. The backlog is nearly clear and we have staff available to help land our main projects. The VLE now has dedicated management with in-classroom and teacher support. Year 2 of the netbooks ‘Laptops for Learning’ should in theory be more established and easy to implement. The new domain is structure and ready for migration at Easter and planned for Sept 2010. For once, we are cruising at 3000 feet but checking the dials daily.

Popularity: 3% [?]

CPD and INSET / LfM / Middle Management / Reflections — No Comments
15
Dec 09

LFtm Development Day

9:30am Our first Leading from the Middle Development Day.

Another welcoming start to the day, if a little tight for space. The opening discussions on protocols led to a sharing of our perspectives for the course, withand between delegates. Not an atypical start to a course however my frustrations was that a significant amount of time was allocated to professional themes.

‘As middle leaders subscribed to LFtM are we not lead professionals? I would like to think that we were aware that we should show trust, discretion, professionalism, honesty, that we were expected to participate and mediate constructive criticism of ourselves and of one another….’

I made these notes following the length 55 minute development day opening. By the end of the course and considering the confidentiality of some of the topics discussed during the day, it was important, if a little long winded.

Next, Boyatism – International Change Model was reviewed next and this was set in against a diaognostic model we had completed at teh start of the course. Now, I have to admit that the diagnostic model provided valuable feedback for me personally, but I am finding this review a little turgid. More on leadership and here we are being reminded that leadership change is not automatic, that change needs action, monitoring and reflection. This early into the experience, perhaps I should be more open minded and take more care listening to the conversation. Break….

How do we learn leadership.

Without question the main contribution to the delegates (and my own learning) was modeling positive leadership behaviour in others they have worked with. The needs around our table highlighted that the opportunity to learn / lead actions implemented to address ‘the really difficult, under-performing or inappropriate professional behaviour, were rarely offered. It was conceded, that the nature of these leadership opportunities / situtations made it almost impossible to experience. As a consequent, the most challenging leadership/professional situations may become sink of swim situations later on in our careers. Where / when do we learn these skills?

Time was given over to reviewing the diagnostic feedback we had received, but as I had already done (and posted) this. A little frustrating, I used the time to catchup on other duties / reading and so forth. Making notes about the expereince to date that you are reading here. In the lead up to lunch we review changed models, Moharry model and how you extend the influence the public / open content about you and your leadership. An interesting concept but perhaps more applicable to dispersing a leadership teams ‘public content’ than to that of an individual, IMHO.

The afternoon sessions focused on ‘Coaching.’ However, our triad were distracted and discussed the relevancy of coaching to our positions / role. Most importantly our conversation focused on whether you can coach or be coached when the roles are not disparate. We were still undecided despite encouragement to see coaching as a leadership tool. One interesting point I drew from a colleague’s response was that if we are to encourage coaching, should the coach be an external role, an employee not directly employee by the school but perhaps the county? If given an external coach, would colleagues be more open and the outcomes monitored more appropriately/skillfully? In truth, coaching in such a small team is a challenge, but to support coaching between colleagues may be an option. Given the time I might post and extend this conversation in the course forum.

To end, a number of tasks were set and some online expectations. Finally, identifying the coaching sessions with my coach at Hamble College, dates for Day 2. Thats a wrap for Development Day 1. Overall, 5/10. I enjoyed the peer conversation, unsure about the structure/content of the day especially as I had given up personal time to review the diagnostic model, that was then given to us on the day.

(I forgot to publish this post, so back dated it sorry).

Popularity: 2% [?]

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →