Nawton School

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Leadership style

Hoyle (1974) talks about professionality and extended professionals and I see my role as encouraging and empowering people to be extended professionals. That is, teachers who are learning all the time. I believe, that as a leader, you have to model learning, you have to be open to change, and you have to be enthusiastic about change. You also need to enjoy leadership.

I am very patient, and I respect the dignity and rights of others to be themselves as long as there is a sense that we are all trying to make an effort.

In a situation where you are trying to change the existing culture many people are moving out of their comfort zone into zones of uncertainty. People often feel hurt, as there is a certain amount of loss associated with change. I believe it is my role to support, encourage, and empower others in the change process.

I spend time in classrooms because I believe that is where you find out what is really happening in your school, and whether it is happening the way you thought it was happening.

Leadership is all about having the big picture and knowing where you are heading. It is not only about knowing where you are going today, it's about knowing where you are going to in the future.

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Where we are at

The challenge for me is to break down the barriers of existing hierarchical structures and the balkanisation that Hargreaves talks about. It is to create professional learning teams and a culture in which teachers talk about teaching and learning, observe each other teach, plan, design, research, and evaluate the curriculum and evaluate student outcome. The aim is to create a culture of positive teaching and learning and to become a professional learning community.

The school consists of some teachers who have been teaching at the school for 15 years plus along with young teachers who have recently trained as teachers. We also have one bi-lingual and five total immersion classes and associated Māori consultation processes as part of our rich culture. There are 7 percent Asian and 7 percent Polynesian children at school as well. These factors present significant challenges.

One of the keys aspects of change for us was the employment of a second assistant principal and the development of a flatter management system. Within this structure, each of the four management personnel was attached to a team (Junior, Middle, Senior, and Rumaki) to help improve communication both ways. A senior teacher heads each team, and the designated management team member attends all meetings. Both of the assistant principals teach.

The school has a vibrant layer in which the children from a diverse mix of ethnic backgrounds bring their own vitality and another dimension to the school and school life.

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Where my ideas come from

I model my leadership approach on a lot of things and a range of people. For example, when I was first a principal in a two-teacher school, the principal in the adjoining school took me under his wing and used to say to me, do this and do that. Some of those things have lived with me for 20 years. Recently, however, I have been reading John Hattie's writing (PDF, 130kb), in which he talks about effective teaching. He argues that the most important person in the school is the person who shuts the door on the classroom at nine o'clock in the morning and starts doing the job. I also believe that that person's role is important and needs supporting so that the teacher can continue to develop so that they can do the best possible job for children.

I read a lot of educationalist's work and this has influenced what I do. For example, I have incorporated some of the ideas and strategies from the following educationalists into my leadership practices:

• Prof. Michael Fullan and his work on effective change agents requiring knowledge and expertise regarding content and the process of change
• Prof. Geoff Southworth who argues that principals need to lead the curriculum
• Dr David Stewart's - Quality Learning Circles approach
• Prof. John West-Burnham and his ideas on creating environments that allow objectives to be met
• McGilchrist, Myers, and Reed's work on Intelligent Schools
• Peter Senge's theory and practice of learning. He talks about leaders being the people who walk out in front, who are deeply committed to organisational change and to change within themselves. But most of all that that person can come from any level within the school, that they don't have to be the nominal leader at the top.

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What we've been doing

I started by looking at the classes and getting to know the children, the teachers, and their styles and approaches to teaching. I had to find out what the community wanted and believed about education before setting a direction for teaching and learning. As all members of the board of trustees were new to their roles, we too had to form a relationship and decide together where the school was going. Slowly we began to realise what was important to us and to the school and had to marry those concepts.

This led to a range of actions. We developed a home/school partnership through whanau, and promoted our vision and progress through community/school newsletters. We reviewed things like the charter and the policies that were in place.

We reduced the number of staff meetings, but focused each meeting on professional development. As 50 percent of our students are Māori, we introduced a te reo section for about 10 to 15 minutes to help support teachers with pronunciation and te reo. We introduced a professional learning teams approach based on Dr David Stewart's ideas on quality learning circles. At each staff meeting there is a 20-minute discussion based on a reading or a starter question. This strategy has started to change the way that people perceive things and has started to develop some of the discussion, and conversations about the school and learning we were seeking. Each meeting also has a professional development component based on a theme such as literacy.

We developed our school-wide goals, and some statements of expectations. We tried to encourage people to be involved in the question, "What is learning?" We have focused on getting some standards that are fair to the children and some expectations that would guide us in our development.

Our collected data showed that children couldn't use information skills very well. At the same time, we recognised that our library was so small that it wasn't conducive to this activity. So, we restructured our 5-year property plan so that we could redevelop our library and include an ICT suite sooner. This has had a big impact on the culture of the school because it has sent a message to the community that we value learning in that area. In addition, children use the facility at lunchtime, showing teachers that children also value that sort of learning.

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How do we know?

I think that one of the biggest challenges for principals is knowing if they are doing a good job. I believe, as a leader, we are relying on many different things. There is feedback from students, teachers, board members, parents, and visitors who come into the school.

However, one of the most valuable systems of feedback that I get is my principal appraisal. It is a year-long process from the goal setting through to the visits and the feedback. This becomes a formative process where the appraiser comes along and says, "Well, this is your stated goal and this is how far we think you have reached towards achieving it". When the appraiser challenges me to answer," What do you need to do next?" I believe that principals need to challenge themselves by finding an appraiser who will expect them to grow and develop.

I also know that I am doing a good job when teachers start to call into my office and say, "I had a really great day, this has gone well for me." I think that this feedback tells me that the message is getting through. It indicates that the existing barriers are starting to disappear because teachers now want to talk about teaching and learning. By opening discussion they are exposing themselves to new ideas and possibilities and are providing the principal with the chance to challenge, influence, and encourage reflection.

I believe that we know that we are doing a good job when the discussion in the professional learning teams moves beyond the superficial to reflection and to the discussion of practice and its impact on children.

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Where to next?

The next step for our development is to continue along the path towards a learning community. I know that we have a long way to go yet with our aim of getting people to continually work together. I would love teachers to talk more, to think more and to communicate more.

So the next focus for us is to start looking at how we can support teachers to develop more skills so that, as author Roland Barth says, "When teachers' talk together they talk about programmes, they design programmes, they work together collaboratively". We have made a start on those things.

The next challenge for us is to keep building on that so that the children at the end of the day are getting the best possible from the teacher in front of them, and that the teacher is doing the best possible job they can to make student's learning effective.

Carpenter, McMurchy-Pilkington, and Sutherland make the point that effective teachers engage in personal and public reflection as they enjoy discussing education and are motivated by sharing with and empowering others.

Early in my career, I spent a lot of time with colleagues debating about teaching and learning. Over the past decade, however, I believe that teaching has become such a busy activity that many teachers have stopped talking about education. We now need to get back to discussing teaching and learning, and to achieve that we have to make time to do so. We have made a start by introducing our professional learning teams, by attempting to reduce the number of meetings we have, and by using other means of communication for mundane tasks. We'll continue to look for new strategies to help us.

Reference

Hoyle, E. (1974) Professionality, Professionalism and Control in Teaching, London Education Review, 3(2), pp. 13–19.

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