Mark's Learning Log

Today a report is being released on principal workload. The report based on a national survey of 1,100 principals shows that while most love their job many are finding that “endless paperwork, dealing with abuse or grievances from angry parents, and the lack of administrative support in schools, were taking their toll.” 

Unfortunately responses that point to schools making staffing decisions whilst true are also short sighted and often just stir up principals. Most principal’s tend to use staffing resources to lower class sizes or appoint a special needs teacher. The public pressures make this a win lose situation.

Currently I am working hard to change teachers and parent perceptions on the value of instructional leadership as opposed to a management model. Instructional leadership builds teacher capacity and increases dialogue about teaching and learning. When teacher learning spirals upwards student learning is sure to follow. This model needs leaders, as the lead learner, where the action occurs in classrooms.

In order to spend up to two days in classrooms principals need time – time created with new office systems and administrative support. I have spent some 3 months changing some of the office systems, my office layout [shift filing cabinets out]  and in the future additional administrative support in the form of a personal assistant to organise my 3 days in administration. The trick is not to wait too long to get into classrooms as the perfect scenario never arrives.   

Yes the workload is never ending and sometimes we have to say NO – to teachers, parents and children and go home and spend some time with our support team – the family. My current strategy is get involved with my kids sporting teams [coaching, team manger, car transport] which forces me out of the office.

Last year I remember several conversations with principal colleagues in Toronto who spend time in one another’s school supporting instructional leadership. This builds a deeper understanding of one another’s pressures and challenges. You are not alone is perhaps the greatest support for dealing with pressures. The principal’s in Toronto are selected quite differently and as a consequence, I believe don’t quite have the silo mentality we do. However that’s perhaps another post.

As for the title of the article quoted in my heading – I’m trying to drink a litre of water a day with the bottle on my desk or by my side – so that I can enjoy that big glass of red at night.  

I was looking at a colleagues blog from the UK recently and saw this cartoon attached to an entry about why head teachers were paid more than teachers. http://libertonheadsblog.blogspot.com/

The title of the article comes from a quote by John Dewey [1859 – 1952] an American philosopher who is widely renowned as a leader in the progressive educational reforms of the 20th century.

At this week’s leadership meeting, the first for 2008  we spent some time talking about instructional leadership and what that means for principals and team leaders. In my opinion the research evidence that instructional leadership has a greater impact on student learning than other styles of leadership [eg transformational] is now very compelling. The problems confronting us as leaders today included what strategies or innovations do we focus on and do they promote teacher conversations and reflections about teaching and learning that will make a difference with student learning.

As a starter to the conversation we looked at Professor John Hattie’s work on the effect sizes of various strategies on student learning. John spoke at the ASCD conference in Sydney last year as well as internationally in Hungary and is currently at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His presentation can be downloaded from my resource list. John has a definite view from his research, which uses a very substantial data base of students in mainly OECD countries on what strategies or innovations have a larger and more positive impact on student learning. His presentation challenged us to list in effect size order some innovations and strategies. There were some surprises here eg class size with an effect size of 0.2 as compared to teacher feedback and teacher – student relatonships at 0.72. His research on students repeating a year was confronting at -0.15. John in his presentation makes the point that class sizes is a working conditions issue and that by itself does not directly improve student learning.  

John also made the point that we need to set challenging goals for students and then provide specific feedback to students in terms of positive aspects of achievement and what needed next. However this is sometimes more easier said than done in an overcrowded curriculum where teachers are trying to teach multiple outcomes at the same time.

Anne Hamond, an educational coach we use to support teachers in the teaching of English [student writing focus] makes the point continually that we need to make explicit goals [one or two] for each lesson for the initial whole class instruction period or teaching group and provide feedback on those goals to students. That’s achievable!

Team leaders therefore have the responsbility when planning in teams to make these teaching points explict in the planning documentation and follow up conversations around student work at their next meeting. This is part of the work of instructional leaders. Our aim is to increase the percentage of time teachers spend talking and reflecting on teaching and learning from what some researchers have plotted at between 3-10% of their time per month to 50 – 70%. Then we can say we have a learning culture. 

We are also trailling the use of reflective journals for all teachers. Our intention is to make time during meetings for the purposeful act of writing reflections about teaching and learning at EPS. More on this later in the term. When thinking about reflections I’m reminded of a quote by Margaret J. Wheatley 

“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.”