Day 26 - Moving from vision to action

This post explores the idea of bringing your vision to life through practical strategies and empowering others. It is written by Rob Clarke and originally appears on learningarchitects.com

Effective school leaders instinctively grasp the vital importance of a shared, coherent, and inspiring vision for their school. They also grasp, and are able to put into action, the various elements that enable that vision to translate into practice. 

When it is fully manifested, this vision forms the very heart and identity of that community, acting as the foundation for a curriculum and a culture that is responsive and ‘flexes’ to the specific needs and aspirations of everyone involved. This is equally true of the new schools I am involved in as well as those that have existed for a while.

But very often, a school’s vision remains just that – an idea or a set of aspirations that forever remain on the horizon. A significant proportion of schools never quite manage to turn them into reality, and this is not due to any lack of commitment or genuine desire to effect change. Could this be due to a lack of tangible strategies the leadership has to draw from perhaps? Or perhaps it is the mistaken belief that the vision will somehow magically take everyone in the right direction once it has been decided upon and shared.

The successful implementation of a vision does not happen by accident, and the good news is that taking a few simple steps can quickly point you in the right direction and start the process towards transformation.

This transformation begins with the school’s leadership and staff clarifying its vision and the goals that support the realisation of the vision, then taking action consistent with those goals. By then designing and implementing defined, measurable strategies and actions, the school has the ability to mobilise the whole school community towards achieving its fullest potential. Indeed one of the workshops we offer ‘Developing Your School Vision’ enables leaders and their teams to identify the goals and behaviours they choose which will take them closer to this vision.

David Taylor (2014) describes some of the practical steps in effecting change management, from initiating a formal plan, discussing and revising ideas, to establishing how progress will be measured, anticipating problems and ensuring all the necessary resources and supports are in place along the way. Crucially, he also notes the critical role of communication throughout this process, which he sees as the key predictor of success in effecting change.

“As leaders, if we do not communicate clearly to inspire the correct [I prefer the words ‘consistent and/or ‘aligned’ rather than the term ‘correct’...] actions and behaviors, our visions and all related initiatives will fail.” (Taylor, 2014)

Vision and action are interdependent and intertwined throughout this process of improvement and innovation: without strategic action, the vision will never be realised, and without a coherent shared vision that your team has committed to, no one will be inspired to action. When these elements are present, there is limitless potential for positive transformation. Tony Robbins summarises this nicely with his views on the importance of execution in this short video which you can see on learningarchitects.com here...

As the driving force behind the vision, the school leadership and staff must provide the focus for the actions which build towards the vision, discussing it and supporting it from a place of enthusiastic and authentic commitment. They must manifest the new vision, demonstrating that it is tangible, right now, even if it has not yet been achieved to its fullest extent.

One very practical approach is to take the vision and treat it as a lens through which schools can evaluate various activities (for example: such as staff professional learning meetings, board meetings or new initiatives) to ascertain ‘how has this brought us closer to our vision for student learning?’ This is one of the many practical strategies that can ‘give your vision legs’.

This sort of leadership does not need to demand “buy-in”; it naturally calls forth genuine, wholehearted responses and calls to action, and consequently empowers everyone in the wider community to become a fully engaged changemaker in their own right too. It is on this firm foundation that progress can be made towards making this shared vision a reality that you can see, touch, hear and feel in your school.

It is written by Rob Clarke. Rob is the founder of learningarchitects.com

#ELS15 - Core Emerging Leaders' Summit

Now this was good professional learning. Having your head in the books and churning out essays and assignments is one thing, but nothing beats getting together with colleagues (in this case fellow middle leaders from across the South Island and across all sectors of education) having conversations and getting your head around some of the latest, most exciting and most innovative trends in leadership.

The Emerging Leaders Summit is an annual event run by Core Education, that I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to attend in 2015 (thanks Burnside High School for investing in me, and two fellow Burnside middle leader warriors - Dunc and Higgy - to attend). This year the summit was held at the newly opened St Margaret's Middle School building, another fabulous MLE that has risen out of earthquake rubble, showcasing the amazing things that can be done with built environments to support great learning. Core's senior advisor in future-focused education, Mark Osborne, was the facilitator and he did a fantastic job - striking a nice balance between thick and fast presentation of thought-provoking material from a range of edu-brains, and allowing time and space for laid-back discussion to flow between colleagues (why can't in-school PLD be more like this?).
There is loads I could blog about from #ELS15, but I think I will focus on the two aspects that, two months down the track, I keep thinking back to the most...

Change Leadership - Mark Osborne

In this session, Mark reminded us why change is hard, and by extension, why leading in an environment of change is hard too. Understanding how to soften the blow of change has a lot to do with exploring the emotional side of the change process, which is quite tangible to me given my experiences over the years leading in a post-earthquake environment, but also now that I am working in an organisation that has had years of success working in 'traditional' ways, and therefore has personnel that are emotionally attached to 'traditional' ways of doing things. Mark reminded us, via a Heifetz quote that "what people resist is not change per se, but loss", therefore that 'brick wall' feeling that leaders sometimes encounter when exploring new approaches is born out of emotion, not necessarily bloody-mindedness.

At the core of successful change leadership is building a collective vision - vision that is arrived at via thorough exploration of the team members' values and beliefs...a process called 'storytelling'. Visioning and storytelling increase change readiness because it fosters ownership of the change process by all. Decisions that that flow on from the visioning process are easier to arrive at, because you can use your collective values and beliefs as the reference point...

"It's not hard to make decisions...once you know what your values are"
- Ron Disney

2. Leading with Design Thinking - Steve Mouldy

Steve has got an incredibly interesting and pragmatic views on 'modern learning', given that he lives and breathes it in his teaching role at Hobsonville Point Secondary School, one of New Zealand's newest schools and a school that has embraced 'new' (whatever that means) ways of doing things with gusto. I appreciate his perspective as a secondary teacher because there just are not that many experienced modern learning/flexible learning voices coming out of the high schools - it has naturally been the domain of primary and middle schooling to this point. Steve has also got a dry, sardonic wit and is not afraid to spit out buzzwords, acronyms and fashionable ideas with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Steve was presenting his thoughts on Design Thinking, a problem-solving approach that has been adopted at HPSS in both a leadership/structural and a pedagogical sense. He walked us through the DT process (immersion, synthesis, ideation, prototyping and sharing), using the 'problem' of staff meetings as an illustrative example. I particularly enjoyed the 'ideation' part of the process (100 ideas in 10 minutes), which my group conducted on one of St Mag's snazzy whiteboard tables. 

What is Design Thinking about?

Ideation: solving the problems of the world (and staff meetings) on a whiteboard table.  

Steve left us with a take-away challenge is grounded in the human centered nature of the DT process. He challenged us to go back to our school and "observe, question and empathise" to see learning through our student's eyes and capture what they experience. After all, schools are for them more than us. 

There was so much more to take away from #ELS15, and perhaps they will be the subject of future blog posts, but I will have to sign off this post with just a snapshot of the other content we were presented with and some questions we were invited to discuss..

• Learner Agency (Andrew Cowie)....what are the features of learner agency? how do we promote genuine student involvement in the learning process and decisions about learning?
• Why Become a Leader?(Neill O'Rielly) what is the role of a teacher? (to cause learning to occur)...Okay...what is the role of a leader? 
• Mahia te mahi: Maori Leadership Models (Tahu Paki) how do we ensure our leadership practices are culturally responsive? 

Jack Goodfellow - Assistant Head of Physical Education at Burnside High School 

Dare you to move

By Jon Keelty, Deputy Principal, Thorrington School

jon.keelty@thorrington.ac.nz

+Jon Keelty 

@jonkeelty 
Blog

I have been involved in digital innovation in schools for a long time now. There are so many exciting ideas and approaches that have developed in the last 10-15 years. The advances we have made in the area of pedagogy and learning design with technology have helped to transform the way we teach and the way students are approaching their learning. Technology underpins many important emerging visions for modern learning. It is one of the core “deep learning” skills identified in Michael Fullan’s groundbreaking “New Pedagogies for Deep Learning” project.

Image: iPad Curious Learners by Fancy Jantzi, on Flickr

1. ACCEPT that this is a part of your teaching toolkit that you can longer afford to be light on. It’s here to stay and it is becoming increasingly important for you to have these skills to be able to contribute positively in your teams and not be a burden on others.
2. BUILD on our existing strengths and knowledge – choose technology use and digital strategies that you know will enhance learning based on research and your understanding of how kids learn. After all that’s what schools and students need to make it successful – teachers who can apply and filter these initiatives through a lens of pedagogical expertise! If you have a growth mindset, apply it and supercharge your tech initiative.
3. CONNECT with other teachers who can support your skill development and who will benefit from your ideas and input. Working together is part of what we do as a profession and we are seeing many exciting developments in team-based approaches to teaching in modern learning spaces which are fantastic for teachers to be continuously developing and honing their craft alongside their colleagues. A personal learning network is only a few clicks away – social media is a rich source of wisdom, encouragement, innovative new ideas and support for any teacher who needs it. Don’t just sit and wait for the next course to be offered to you – go out and design your own learning by accessing the global network of educators who are more than willing to lend a hand!

Billions of dollars have been spent around the globe in education to improve infrastructure, upgrade technology training and increase access to devices for students in a variety of ways. There are many frameworks which have been developed which focus on marrying good pedagogy and learning design with effective technologies. It is not good enough just to put technology in front of our kids and think that they can do it themselves. Our kids are fearless risk-takers when confronted with new tech – but they often need a lot of guidance and support to use technology to improve their learning – that’s where we are ideally placed to have the most impact!

And yet there are still many teachers and leaders who have a view that technology is an added extra or even a “distraction to real learning”. We talk about our “digital natives” in a way that implies that this revolution is about them and not us. There are many ways that we can enhance the learning of our students by the use of technology – but there are also some exciting ways that we can improve the way that we carry out our roles as teachers.

Technology is still an area where many teachers feel hesitant, under-skilled, disempowered and even fearful – but it doesn’t need to be that way! It is way past time that we lived out our vision for our kids for ourselves. Here are three easy steps to take:

Is it time you got your passport out and shifted your mindset? Become a digital immigrant.

I dare you.

Choose to be More at Clarkville

What’s it taken to CHOOSE TO BE MORE at Clarkville?

From Pene Abbie, Principal, Clarkville School

We are a small, semi-rural school on the outskirts of Christchurch, people used to say they wanted to send their children to our place because of this – being small and rural!

It seemed that these two traits immediately determined a culture of great learning.

Those of us on the inside knew it took more than this and we have spent the last seven years “reshaping our learning culture.”

So what does this mean – and why, if our learners are doing pretty well, would we want to do anything differently?

The process of reshaping the learning at Clarkville has required deep scrutiny of all we believe about great learning and all we know about great teaching. It has required us to consider our world and the world of our children and look beyond what we already know and into what we have no clue about.

The result of this thinking and dissecting and inquiring has been to firmly place the learner at the centre of all we do, be and understand.

What we know is it is no longer enough to fill up a child’s day with learning activities or fill up a child’s head with knowledge- school is no longer the bastion of learning so instead, what we must provide is experience based in relationship, authenticity, choice and high expectation.  A day full of richness that causes engagement and motivation and results in achievement!

So what do we believe?

WE ARE PREPARING OUR LEARNERS FOR THE FUTURE

We will be people who know what to do when we don’t know what to do

This means we will provide learning experiences that

•       encourage and inspire creativity

•       demand collaboration and connection

•       enable personal academic success

•       help us to be adaptable self managers

•       challenge our thinking and make us wonder

•       require us to problem solve and take risks

•       promote effective global and digital citizenship

THERE ARE NO LIMITS TO LEARNING POSSIBILITIES

We recognise and seek the learning opportunities in every experience

This means we will experience learning that is

•       anywhere and anytime

•       lead by anyone

•       personalised and authentic

EFFECTIVE LEARNING IS INFLUENCED BY ENVIRONMENT

To meet our needs we develop and use learning spaces in innovative and creative ways.

This means our learning environments

•       promote collaboration, sharing together and working independently

•       allow for flexibility and choice,

•       are defined by all of us

•       exist within and beyond the school boundaries

•       develop a legacy for the future

WE ALL BELONG HERE

Our sense of belonging and ownership comes from having strong learning-centred relationships

This means as a community we will

•       Know you and value what is important to you

•       Build, enhance and restore relationships

•       Communicate effectively and openly

•       Expect to work together successfully (no matter our age, position or ability)

Nice rhetoric you may say but what might that look like? What evidence do we have?

We regularly host visitors interested in our learning culture. Our MINT think tank students act as tour guides for these visitors. The tour begins in our junior team where our five and six year olds start the day ( at whatever time they get to school) with ChILL in the morning. This is a self-regulated, inquiry learning based discovery time. Children make choices, justify these choices, engage in activity supported by teachers, parents or peers and then reflect on what is new or refreshed for them today. They don’t wait for learning to happen! There is no bell, no gathering of groups for explanation and instruction, no waiting for all learners to be present or organised, learning is just happening.

The Tour would then proceed through our other three learning teams where you would see groups

of 40-60 students with 2-4 staff co-teaching across traditional single cell learning spaces. The learning that is happening is deeply embedded in the key competencies, strongly self-regulated and personalised according to individual needs.

Teaching comprises running workshops, which children choose to participate in – if that sounds a bit free range what needs to be understood is the depth of expectation on the learner to be accountable for their progress and achievement.

You will see children managing their learning virtually and in real time. You will see learners moving, collaborating, and choosing a space that best suits their learning needs.

At times you will see vertical groupings, teachers teaching all learners across the school, whole school inquiry contexts and shared rich language learning experiences within and beyond the confines of the school.

You will not see Modern Learning Environments- although two team spaces have now been renovated to allow flexibility and collaboration. But you will see contemporary teaching and learning practice.

But  most importantly is what you will hear – particularly from our learners. The following quotes have been taken from feedback and reflections given by visitors at our place in the last 12 months.

“Student voice is powerful at Clarkville. Students are involved in the planning process, as part of a team made up of students from years 4-8. They will even attend BOT meetings as necessary. Younger students often get to contribute their ideas as well”

“Students are very aware of their achievement. They have learning pathway folders that contain their goal sheets and reflections, peer feedback, learning maps and learning stories. A Year 8 student explained to me that he knew how to read his Asttle data in order to know his next learning steps in Maths. Students opt into workshop style learning as necessary. Teachers are not necessarily teaching groups of students, they are teaching based on the student's next learning steps” ( MLE PLG Blog post)

“The children were our tour guides as we moved through the “Discover”, “Explore” and “Aspire” groupings, where the involvement and ownership of the self-directed, guided inquiry program was truly stunning. Without exception the children I spoke with clearly expressed what they were doing and learning, and where it connected with the whole plan for the day, week or even the year.  How the children could readily talk about their learning with enthusiasm, wonder and a strong sense of purpose was the most impressive aspect of the whole experience. They loved talking about what they were learning! It was more than just the normal question answer thing, it was an interesting conversation.” ( Masters students – Transforming Education in Christchurch Masters paper University of Canterbury)

“These articulate confident, patient students answer our questions, show us their work, discuss their learning goals and keep us to time. Impressive young leaders! We glean information about their current Inquiry, the positives of modern learning for them and their views on book storage, BYOD and beanbags!” ( Hereora Cluster Newsletter)

We are passionate about how we work at Clarkville, we love the engagement and motivation the learning experiences engender in our young people. We are aspirational and focused on “CHOOSING TO BE MORE” BUT we are not “the way”; we are “our way” and although we are described as an MLE using MLP there are two things that are very apparent.

-        This has been a six year cultural transformation not an overnight airplane flight to a new destination or new building.

-        and the more I hear about MLE and MLP the more I think this is really about great teaching, great learning experiences , strong learning based relationships and recognising and valuing the influences our learners have beyond the world of school. We have a responsibility to be engaging, authentic, connected and inspiring and that is a much more complex job than it was last century. If you make the investment – its worth it.