Adrian in his session mostly encouraged us to reflect and then articulate our reflections on how much our institutions are organisations that actively seek to learn and to grow. He talked a lot about relationships within an organisation and how important it is to seek to develop every relationship and to learn something from them. I think here all of us have a very close relationship with a few individuals within the school but probably have very little idea of what is happening in the working lives of others and of what we could learn from them. For me, one very thought-provoking strand was to reflect on what we as an individual have learned recently (most of us could probably answer that question with a little thought) but also who else knows about what we've learned. If individuals are learning something, it doesn't necessarily mean that the institution is learning as a result of this. Sometimes (I think maybe always) it is necessary for this knowledge to be expressed and shared and linked with the growing knowledge of someone else in the school. How often do you feel that you are working very hard and learning a lot about teaching, but that your work is not always appreciated?
We were asked to reflect on conversations that happen within our schools and encouraged to a) start more conversations ourselves, especially with people that we didn't always have conversations with, and start them with a view to learning something. b) think after conversations about what we had learned as individuals but also about what the institution had learned b) think about the group size of a conversation and whether it was the most effective.
I'm not sure I've expressed some of my thought very well here. Adrian is somewhat more articulate than myself, and has promised to email his session notes (but I am still waiting. I shall edit this poist and add them when they arrive) Final thought from this session - do we learn through working? or do we work through learning? and shouldn't it be the second of these?
Maggie Farra's session came from something of a different angel as she is Operational Director at the National College of School Leadership and is much more involved with leadership in schools (primary and secondary) and how to develop leadership in young people. She talked a lot about ensuring that leadership is sustainable and the need to ensure that leadership is distributed in the sense that others feel empowered to lead, that the environment encourages learning of leadership, that leaders believe in the ability of all to improve.
The diagram below represents the 3 areas of individual, organisation or team, and system (for us this would definitely be bigger than the school and would represent the whole system of English language learning/teaching etc. both in this country and overseas)
The idea here is that we all operate within each of these circles. Learning occurs where 2 circles overlap with each other. For example, the individual learns from the team and also the team learns and develops through the individuals who interact with it. For leadership, all 3 circles need to overlap.
I think the key concept is that the organisation consists of every individual, that evryone needs to be taken account of, and that everyone is responsible for this. If you want the organisation to be led well (or to learn as per Adrian Underhill's talk) then everyone has things to contribute. But do we always lead when we are able to? Do we always contribute our thoughts and ideas? Do we have any idea what the thoughts and ideas of other members of staff or students are? Maggie said that she had used a system she calls the "Cloud 9 file". The rationale for this is that staff will often not come forward with thoughts about the organisation because they may find themselves with additional work as a result. Even if it isn't as cold-blooded as this, I'm sure most of us have had ideas that never go any further because they are still a bit half-baked or we aren't clear in our minds how they could be carried forward. The Cloud 9 file is literally a file that is kept in your office/staff room/wherever and people actually record these half-baked thoughts. Others can browse the file and add comments or even act on the ideas if they feel inspired to. And the file can be brought out occasionally at meetings or other forums. I liked this idea and thought it might work well in a small school like this.
Other key points that made me think:
- our conversations should be about learning (rather similar to Adrian Underhill's ideas don't you think?)
- professional speed dating. Everybody (including students) go through a kind of speed dating process where everyone spends about 5 minutes from everyone else and learns somehing from them. Try it in your classes?
- over-listen to those who tell you what you most want to hear. Don't avoid those difficult conversations because those are the ones we learn most from.
- leaders should be ambitious for their organisation , humble about themselves, and confident about the future. recognise that learning is incremental and involves mistakes. We recognise that mistakes are part of the process for our students, even within our teaching, but it's also true of leadership.
I'm aware that this is rather a stream of ideas and thoughts but I am trying to find more learning opportunities in everything I do and I guess I'm using this forum to try to share what I'm learning and will continue to try and do so. To me the important thing is to want to learn, to want the school to learn and improve, but to start with myself and hope that other people will do the same.
Comments and replies warmly welcomed.
2 comments:
Sounds very interesting- the leadership thing is particularly important for those teaching young learners (teenagers) as it's a time when they are finding out about thses skills within themselves. I feel it's really important to give every student the opportunity to use any leadership skills they have or learn these from others to experiment themselves. As far as the Adrian Underhill talk goes, well i think we learn through working but i suppose it depends on your definition of these terms as to whether or not your agree with this! I do also think it is incredibly important to have quiet time (reflection time) at work, where you don't feel obliged to talk about your lessons/ students with colleagues. School is a particularly condusive place to do this and sometimes you just need the space and quiet to do it in. In my view, 20 minutes quiet, individual reflection can be worth an hour of duscussion. (Hope no one takes any offence at these comments, it's just the way i like to work!!)
No offence at all Julia.
I agree that it is really important to have that time reflecting and that talking about it to other people doesn't always help you as only you really experienced the situation you were in. The important thing for yourself I would say is to ensure that you are learning from your experiences in the classroom and the quiet reflection.
Where it does help to talk about your classes is when the quiet reflection still leaves you with questions in your head and sometimes talking something through can help you to come up with answers you might not have reached otherwise. And also talking about experiences you learn something from can help other people too.
I think what I took away most from Adrian Underhill's talk, especially several weeks on, is the importance of the whole institution learning and all of our obligation to make sure this is happening.
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