teaching

#ILConf2014 The good, the bad and the beautiful

theprimaryhead2 Comments

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The Beautiful

Returning from the Inspiring Leadership Conference (#ILConf2014 to you) I realised that I really like Birmingham. This is a nice thing to feel, especially considering how the city’s education has been represented in the media recently. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting a city full of Trojan horses, indoctrinated children and extremist nutjobs skulking in the shadows trying to convert me when all I was trying to do was to find the damn car park; but I also wasn’t expecting to (whisper it or Bristol will get jealous) love the place.

The contrasting architecture of the equally gorgeous museum and library; the canal, with its gently flowing water, ducks and barges, allowing you to forget you’re in a massive city; plus, the sun was shining (I appreciate this isn’t actually down to Birmingham, but it helps). And then there are the people. The best way I can describe them, apart from being kind, friendly, helpful and nice, is, well the word I would use is: light. Walking around the city it felt light and breezy. There was a positive attitude that permeated the atmosphere of the city centre and made being there feel intimate: quite a feat for a major city.

The Bad

Before I start I should put this into perspective. We’re talking about a major conference with many, many speakers who were brilliant. For every speaker to be successful would be unrealistic and you could call me mean spirited for highlighting the odd one that didn’t quite hit the mark. But what I want to highlight here is a particular type of bad speaker. I’ve seen terrible speakers before and forgiven them instantly because of why they were bad: often at these events talented and successful individuals are invited to appear, but because they’re not used to public speaking they don’t deliver polished presentations peppered with gags. But you don’t mind because you can see they’re nervous and, more importantly, they have something significant to say. The message out-ways the delivery. No, these are not the people to whom I am now referring.

I am referring to the ‘professional speaker’. These are people who have tended to have worked in education for a bit and, I don’t know, maybe they found it too hard, got out, wrote a book and now go on tour. They’re clever, don’t get me wrong; they know how to get re-booked, and their performance is consistent with that of a cruise ship comedian. Experiencing them is like eating a fortune cookie: quite sweet, with a message inside that makes you think for a second, but then you realise that not only are you still hungry but that the message was blander than the cookie. Luckily there are some clues that you can look out for to spot these phonies and ensure you don’t waste your time with them again.

  1. Third person referencing. If someone repeatedly says their own name (especially when acting out a conversation they’ve had with a famous person) then it is more than likely this person is a pillock.
  2. Name dropping. If they continually keep mentioning the famous people they’ve met since leaving education, and if there is no apparent reason for the meeting except for the fact it might help sell the book or dupe you into thinking that they must be wise in order to have met said famous person, then be rest assured that this bit of the talk is drivel.
  3. Stand-up. If the ratio of material is more weighted towards jokes than insightful message, and if the jokes are lame observational comedy about education (‘you know the feeling when you realise you’ve used the wrong mug in the staffroom…’), then you can happily discredit whatever it is they’re trying to tell/sell you.
  4. Number of publications. If they’ve only written one book with a single premise and from that premise they set up a company and now travel around the country talking about this premise, and if during that time they haven’t done anything else that contributes to or evolves the premise in any tangible way, then that voice in your head telling you that this guy’s a bit of a sham needs to be listened to.
  5. Generalisation. If during the talk they make grandiose claims and big statements that everyone agrees with (education should be more than tests….all children deserve to achieve…tomorrow’s prime minister is in our classroom today…walk the walk don’t just talk the talk…breathing is quite good for you) then you can quickly deduce that this person is not challenging your thinking and has nothing of merit to add to the ongoing debate on improving education.

Now I’m not going to name and shame but all I will say is that there was a particular person who displayed much of the above; they were the penultimate speaker of the entire conference and they have written books which, based on what we learnt from their talk, I urge you not to buy.

The Good

The fact that I only have one person in mind when thinking about all that was bad about the three day conference should be a clear indication about how good the whole thing was. What amazes me about conferences such as these is that despite each speaker being completely different there is always a single thread that binds all their thoughts and teaching together. This year the link was learning from research, and using research on a local, national and international level to meet the needs of your pupils and communities. Now, whether this link comes about from similarities in governmental approaches to education on a global scale, or the conference organisers having a clear picture of what all these people are thinking and doing at this particular moment in time, or that maybe all the speakers Whatsapp each other the night before – whatever. It works and I love it.

I am not going to summarise what every speaker said but I will say why they were good.

It’s simple really: they are good. I mean they’re really good at what they do and they have achieved things, often on an international scale, that are way beyond us folks sitting in the stalls. Not only have they achieved but they understand why they have done so. They have vision. But that is almost the smallest part of their success. I mean, we all have vision, we all know what ‘it’ should be like, even the bad speaker. But that is why they are bad speakers: they only talk about the vision and they get applauded because we’re all sitting there thinking ‘yes, that is what it should be like, I think that too. Brilliant!’

The good speakers got where they are today because they realised that vision is not enough. From the vision comes the plan, from the plan comes action, from action comes evaluation, and from evaluation comes an increase in drive: do better and do more. And they keep on going. They’re still at it and they’ll never stop. That is why they inspire us and make us think beyond our vision. And they show us, through their examples and their contexts, that we can at least keep on trying to do better.

The diversity of speakers, many not from education, all had something tangible we could relate to and learn from. I would be very surprised if any single person who attended doesn’t approach their work differently from Monday onwards as a result of what we heard over the three days. Whether it will be a big thing like taking the school development plan in a new direction or a change in personal mindset or a tiny thing like an assembly idea (I intend to do all three), we will all move forward.

That is why #ILConf2014 was a success. We got to learn from the best.

FYI: I am available to give an inspiring and hilarious talk at the 2015 conference so @steve_munby and @InspLdrshipConf, give me call.

The real problem with insets

theprimaryhead4 Comments

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Planning an inset can be difficult. Lofty ambitions can often descend into days that are just easier to manage. I personally tend to fall into the trap of not thinking broad enough; I’ll have a brilliant idea as to how we’ll solve a particular issue and then the night before I’ll realise that Early Years or support staff will literally have nothing to do. This leaves me with two options: run around looking for middle leaders to come up with an additional focus within twelve hours or do nothing, buy loads of cakes and avoid making eye contact with any poor member of staff who is feeling undervalued.

There are, in my experience, three types of inset: the guest, the initiative, the catch-up.

The guest

This can be a high risk (it’s normally high cost too come to think of it) and involves booking an outsider; an expert to teach, motivate and inspire the staff. The Head’s dream is that in one day this person will have the educational Midas touch: transforming tired, stuck-in-a-rut teachers into energetic and free-thinking practitioners with the click of a PowerPoint. The fear is that the guest will come out like some c-beebies presenter coked up to the eyeballs and annoy everyone with their energy and jokes. Never mind that the content is golden, I can tell within five minutes that Sandra (the teacher who has been teaching Year 5 in this school since before I was born) has decided that whatever this performing little monkey is going on about is just a fad and that I’ve only booked them to put a tick on my school development plan. I can literally see the £2800 I convinced the bursar to spend on this clown swirling down the drain. Some of them are responding and making notes but in my heart I know that within two terms the impact of this will be hard to see. It’s a shame because all I wanted was to get the staff excited to remind them that teaching is fun and an opportunity to take risks but I can see that they have other things on their mind.

The initiative

I don’t need any guest this time because I can do it. I’ll stand up and present a ‘new dawn’ and a new way to do things. It’s been really carefully thought out by SLT, it is something we have to address and none of us can fail to see how it won’t transform the teaching and learning in this school and make us a step closer to ‘outstanding’. We plan the day really well too. Time to listen and learn, time to discuss and then loads of time in the afternoon to start putting ideas into action. It’s the perfect inset. So when the day comes and I’ve again forgotten about the support staff and have had to max out my visa on cakes to placate them, I’m still convinced today is going to be talked about for years to come as the inset that changed everything. It starts badly as the PowerPoint version in school is different to the one at home so none of the nice graphics have loaded properly and the font has reverted to comic-sans which makes me physically retch every time I click onto the next slide. Then I realise that the great idea doesn’t sound so simple now I’m actually speaking it out loud and then there are the questions. The annoying, niggly, not part of the big picture questions. SLT, I notice, remain mute at this point leaving me to respond to such weighty educational issues such as ‘will it interfere with PE timetables’ and ‘but I have PPA on that day’ and ‘so is this instead of maths or as well as maths?’. But I solider on, knowing that when they split up in the afternoons and start planning it out, they’ll see the genius behind it. At 2:30pm when I go for a wander I notice that every teacher has decided that they’ll plan it next week and for now, if it’s ok with me, they’ll mark their big writes from last week and try and organise next term’s trip. At 2:45pm I decide to go home and console myself that at least this inset failure didn’t cost me a fortune but then I remember about the cakes.

The catch-up

Even though every inset, no matter how focussed and inspiring, ends up with teachers doing some form of catch-up work, sometimes a whole day given over to this is no bad thing. Especially at the beginning or end of years when teachers can organise their classrooms, establish systems with their new teaching teams and really map out the year ahead. This is a strategic decision. Staff will welcome the space to breathe and get their ‘houses in order’.  This day has nothing, nothing to do with the fact that I’m too tired to try and think of anything exciting or that the bank has frozen my account due to the four excessive bakery orders that I keep failing to make the minimum payment on.

But then sometimes you get lucky all your strategic planning comes together. Your guest was perfect (and affordable) the idea is sound and all staff are involved and excited by the changes ahead. I am thrilled to say that I speak from experience having had a two day inset where my school managed to book @deputymitchell who worked with staff during the first day on blogging followed by a day of 2014 national curriculum topic mapping. The days were awesome.

I cannot recommend @deputymitchell enough. He was enthusiastic but grounded in reality that made all the teachers think that they can do this blogging thing and more importantly made them want to do it. By the end of the first session I knew that the inset was going to be ok and in a year’s time I genuinely think I’ll be able to point to some of the things going on in school and at some of our achievements and say ‘that inset caused this’.

The next day, I presented how our curriculum was going to evolve and teachers had the day to map out their breadths of studies, piece together topics and identify resources. They were focussed on that all day and I was continually interrupted by excited teachers checking if their big ideas for this topic and that topic were ok…I said yes to all of them after all I had told them about the ‘freedoms’ this curriculum gave us so could hardly so no.

And…all the support staff had two days of bespoke training and development and they loved it. Finally, they weren’t just sitting in on what the teachers were talking about or putting up displays. They were learning too and they were extra pleased that they will be expected to feed their training and skills back to teachers next term.

So in short, it was great but then that’s the real problem with good insets. All this motivation and seeing how the teaching is going to improve and knowing how excited the children are going to be and the difference it’s all going to make.

It’s annoying.

Why?

It makes me miss the classroom.

DfE – the E is for ‘Evaluation’

theprimaryhead8 Comments

So what was the point of some fools from Twitter talking to the DfE and an MP for 90 minutes? Well it was fun, I enjoyed it and it was a genuine pleasure to meet some of the many people I follow and respect on Twitter in person. But on reflection, I don’t know what the point was.

 
I think this mainly because there was no set agenda – well there was but we didn’t know it beforehand. We were an eclectic bunch too. I think if we had been picked for any other reason apart from we’re mouthy on Twitter and we blog, then, well I wouldn’t necessarily know what that reason was. We all care deeply about education, but our fields of expertise were disparate to say the least. That’s not a bad thing but did it contribute significantly to what the DfE wanted out of it? I don’t know, maybe they’ll blog about it.
It could have been more structured with a stronger facilitator. We did get side-tracked by ofsted, we couldn’t help ourselves but you could almost see their eyes glaze over when we did. I wanted them to say, ‘Oi, enough you lot. Let’s go back to the curriculum!’

 
As for Elizabeth Truss MP, well she turned up, she listened. It was quite impressive actually she was obviously listening before she actually entered the room because the minute she sat down, midway through someone’s point, she was nodding and muttering ‘yes, yes.’ under her breath – I was impressed. It was a bit irritating that she was constantly distracted by her phone and her assistant who kept bustling up to her to say in a hushed whisper ‘the car’s not going to be available’ or ‘the car is now available’ and finally ‘I’m not sure if the car is here or available’. But she certainly has the politician’s knack for swooping in and out of conversations with the appearance of knowing what was fully being explored despite being somewhere else entirely. She asked us questions, she listened to our answers and wrote down either our ideas to take forward or our names so she could plot our removal from the whole education system. Actually I noticed that on her piece of paper were little biographies of all of us and I tell you what? I need to seriously improve my twitter following, compared to everyone else I was a nobody! I could see it in Truss’s eyes when she looked at me as if to say ‘You don’t belong here!’ Maybe not, but I do know about differentiation which was more than some people.

 
But look, I don’t want to get into politician bashing just for the hell of it. I appreciated the opportunity and the time everyone took out of their day to attend and their willingness to have an honest and open discussion. What will it achieve…well I guess time will tell and hey, given the pace of change in recent times maybe we won’t have to wait that long. And if changes do happen because of what we said and you don’t like them, please write to:

@imagineinquiry, @cherrylkd, @debrakidd, @educationbear, @emmaannhardy, @heymisssmith and @thought_weavers:

they made me say it!