St Patrick's School, Kaiapoi
Maureen Kerr discusses changing from management to professional leadership.
Video
Clip duration: 3:57
Leadership style
"I practise shared leadership."
For me leadership is, firstly, about relationships.
I believe that, as a leader, you need to be able to relate to people, and to recognise that staff are at different stages of the learning journey. You need to be able to influence people so that they are able to attain the commonly shared goals that you have established together. You have to recognise that staff and students come from different models of learning so, as leader, I need to capitalise on that and maximise staff and community potential to create a positive environment where quality learning happens.
I think a leader needs to be intuitive, and needs to be aware of what is happening around the school. Responding to feedback is important and reflective practices are essential for effective leadership.
I also believe that we can make a difference by practising shared leadership throughout the school.
Where we are at
"We try to create self worth."
We have developed a collaborative school culture. We look at leadership throughout the school, and we try to share that leadership across both the school and its community. That gives ownership to all the members of our school community.
We have also developed a learning school culture that involves the board of trustees, the staff, and our students. The students are encouraged to be actively involved in decision making at the school from a very early age, but particularly once they reach year 8. At this stage they participate in the school council.
We see the culture in our organisation as being very much an 'alive' culture. So we are continually working on it. The teachers work hard to see that the students are exposed to current teaching and learning practices. Teachers are very familiar with research.
I think that we have developed a very lively, positive school culture. We are all committed to providing the best possible learning opportunities for our children. The children are happy and they see school as a fun, lively place to be.
Where my ideas come from
"...conduct that is ethical, moral, and compassionate."
Many people have influenced my leadership style. I listen and work closely with colleagues and I tend to model my work on what I see around me as effective leadership. I enjoy having the opportunity to discuss professional matters relating to education with colleagues and other principals.
I have also been influenced by my professional readings. As part of my Masters study on Educational Leadership with the Australian Catholic University, I was fortunate to be exposed to the work of Professor Patrick Duignan. In particular, I have gained from the ideas presented in his work “Authenticity and Leadership”, with its focus on understanding the human person, human dynamics and spirituality. I have been inspired by his quote, "Authentic leadership is the measure of a leaders' ability to influence self, others, and each other, to make extraordinary efforts to attain worthwhile and agreed goals and in doing so, elevate the human condition through conduct that is ethical, moral, and compassionate" (Patrick Duignan, 1999).
At the moment we are working with Dr Julia Atkin, whose focus is on powerful learning, and powerful teaching and learning. Her work on key characteristics of effective learners (PDF, 933kb) has also influenced me.
I have worked with Dr David Stewart as part of a mentoring group here in New Zealand and have enjoyed his work on leadership, especially work such as “The Reflective Principal” and “Tomorrow's Principals Today”.
What we've been doing
"Our teachers are now driving the changes."
To take account of our school and community's vision, we have introduced a number of strategies to support change in our school. These include:
- developing a trusting culture
- looking at the curriculum in full
- looking at the attitudes, values, and the essential skills, the characteristics that we want our children to learn
- questioning: "Are we concentrating too much on delivering the curriculum content or should we be developing learning skills more?"
- collectively deciding on a future direction
- ensuring that sound systems are in place
- continuing our programme of staff professional development through the MOE ICT Cluster contract
- practising our new teaching approach to thinking and learning
- encouraging individual personal development
- developing more focused staff meetings with prepared agendas and taking turns to run the meeting.
We have looked at the question of teaching and learning. As each teacher has worked through a practicum (a concentrated session with a facilitator), they have looked at the research available and then they have come into the classroom and trialled some of these inquiry learning or action research-learning strategies. The teachers are really buzzing about the whole change of emphasis.
Because this is quite a significant change in thinking in teaching and learning for us, we have worked hard to bring our parents and community along with us. At the end of last year we had a successful celebration of learning day where the children showed and showcased all the sorts of things they were doing here, and that was very well received.
The teachers have been very supportive of the changes that have occurred. I believe this has occurred because our school culture supports staff and we trust each other. We are familiar with risk taking and taking on board new ideas. In fact, now I am sitting back and the teachers themselves are actually driving the types of teaching and learning that they want to happen within the school.
How do we know?
"The students tell us what they think."
At the end of each term, every teacher completes a self-review about teaching and learning in the classroom. This is part of our reflection on how we are working as a school.
We do a lot of talking about teaching and learning at our staff meetings, at staff morning teas, and lunchtimes. Our conversations are based around what is happening for the children. We support and encourage each other and share ideas.
I respond to the feedback that I get from people that I work with, and from the students. The students are very honest and they are often involved in our end of year reviews and evaluations and they will tell us just what they think we should be doing and what we are not doing. We also get feedback from colleagues who visit our school.
Where to next?
"...helping children to cope in the society of the future."
We are now changing the focus of the way we look at teaching and learning. Our focus has turned to providing our students with the skills to be lifelong learners so that they can cope successfully in the society of the future. We are trying to equip children with skills of learning as opposed to concentrating on covering a crowded curriculum.
For us as teachers, this has meant that we have had to look at the way we are teaching. In turn, this is having a big impact on our students in terms of their self-esteem and self-knowledge. They are learning critical learning skills, and developing higher-order thinking. They are becoming inquiry learners as well as reflective learners. We will continue on this learning journey to encourage critical thinking by focusing on this pedagogy.
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