Including All Students

I was reading through the ERO Report entitled Including Students with High Needs [I know a bit geeky]. It provided the following as a summary of effective practice when providing for students with high needs...

• Strong ethical leadership and standards
  This was reflected in...
  - A commitment in the face if challenges
  - A caring culture
  - Experienced and able leadership and staff
  - Management of the available funding


• Coordinated and informed approaches
  This was reflected in...
  - Teamwork, systems and relationships
  - Working with families/whanau
  - Effect use of information
  - Management of school transitions

Innovative and flexible practice

There was more provided in the reading but to me it reflected that these components should be reflected in how we meet the needs of all students. Our role and attitude to meeting individual learning needs is foundational to any success in our learning community. A school wide culture and approach is central to developing continuity and consistency in practice. We should always be willing to learn more, reflecting, modifying and refining our practice.

We do not have a many high needs students at our school, going by the ministry's definition, but we do have a school full of individual learning needs that requires us to be the best we can be to meet them.

It has challenged me to consider what type of leadership I am providing that will support the continued development of a culture that seeks to include the learning needs of all students.

A New Generation of Teachers

It is a noticeable trend in schools today, the baby boomers are reaching retirement and the proportion of younger teachers is growing. Often beginning teachers can be seen as a risk and an unknown quantity. I have recently read an article "Realizing the Promise of Generation Y" which explores the challenges and opportunities of young teachers in our schools.
There is no doubt they bring to our schools...

• high technology skills that in most cases they seek to use creatively.
• a desire to make a positive change in the lives of students and the school as a community.
• and in most cases a want to do their best.

The key to the article was the need for us to focus on harnessing the "promise and potential" that these teachers hold. To do this we need to...

• Provide a supportive leadership that involves regular feedback and focused collaborative development.
• Increase the emphasis on supportive and trustworthy relationships. We need to make sure are developing a positive, welcoming, caring atmosphere. This adds to job satisfaction.

No doubt there are risks to employing young staff.

• They are not long-term career orientated.
• They tend to have high expectations about what their career should offer them.
• Often young teachers self confidence and motivation can be seen as arrogance my more mature teachers.

We need to have a differentiated understanding to staff support and development in the same way we are seeking to differentiate the curriculum and learning for our students.

We need to build up our young teachers for the future of our teaching profession.

Collaborative Leadership

It seems the labels are always changing but the basics of effective leadership remain the same. I was reading an Education Update from ascd.org this morning which was discussing instructional leadership. It lead with the quote...

"Effective instructional leadership requires communication, visibility and accessibility on the part of administrators and teachers and a commitment to collaboration."

It seems that the basics of effective collaborative leadership continues to require...

• Building and nurturing shared leadership and decision making.
• All stakeholders having a voice.
• Principals in classrooms and sharing in the teaching and learning process.
• Building of trusting relationships.
• Ongoing self review and reflective practice.
• Leadership by example. Principals as lead learners.

It made me consider again what culture of collaboration am I establishing. I am seeking to establish a learning community culture where...

• There is a clear focus and expectations.
• Systems and structures encourage collaboration.
• Professional development is shared and school wide.
• Staff are given regular formative feedback on the effectiveness of teaching and learning.
• There is opportunity and support for shared leadership.

The theory is awesome, the challenge is to allow for the practice to reflect the theory. Not to allow the busyness of the role and the challenges of people to drag me back to the often base level of self sufficiency.

Growth Learning Rather than Busy Learning

It is constant challenge to target learning to the individual. In a large class it is not an easy feat. Often the management of the class can override the effectiveness of targeted learning. I have just finished reading an article entitled "Even Geniuses Work Hard" By Carol S. Dweck [Copy of Article].

The focus of the article is on how to make learning meaningful for students so that they are challenged, enjoy effort, are resilient and value self improvement. The author calls this a "growth mindset".

To develop this growth mindset requires...

• Creating a culture of risk taking.
• Emphasising challenge, not "success".
• Giving a sense of progress.
• Assess for growth.

The challenge for us as teachers and leaders in education is to develop classroom programmes that are formative. That is they are focused on developing an on-going ability for our students to grow and development, not just a series of mastering levels to be attained. Difficult to do in our current climate of national standards. But not impossible given the scope each school has to develop their own curriculum. It has challenged me to consider what culture our school fosters. Achievement levels or a growth mindset that sees students seeing learning as an opportunity to be as smart as they want to be.

What do you think?

Homework - The Age Old Frustration!

Don't know about you, but homework seems to generate some of the biggest debates and most regular issues within schools. I have just been reading an article called "5 Hallmarks of Good Homework" by Cathy Vatterott [http://ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept10/vol68/num01/Five-Hallmarks-of-Good-Homework.aspx]

The article identifies 5 fundamental characteristics of effective homework...

1. Purposeful
   Everyone should be clear about the academic purpose of homework. Is it to provide practice, develop understanding or apply knowledge and skills?
2. Efficiency
   Are the tasks begin set efficient in the amount of time they take versus the evidence of learning they show?
3. Ownership
   We need to generate "a personal relationship between the student and the content". We need to be giving them choices and relevance in their homework.
4. Competence
   One-size-fits-all homework does not reflect the different competencies within a class. Students need to be able to complete homework independently. therefore consideration needs to be given to quantity of homework as well as the structure within homework.
5. Aesthetic Appeal
   How homework looks is important. It needs to be inviting.

We as a staff have reflected this year on homework, it's purpose and guidelines for it's implementation. One key area we have identified is the need to make home work timebound rather than quantity bound.

So what are your thoughts on homework? Have a say!

Insights for Success

I have just finished reading an article in the latest Educational Leadership Magazine, Leaving Nothing to Chance by Karin Chenoweth. The article explores what lessons can be learned by leaders of what can be classed as 'challenging' schools who have raised student achievement.

The starting point has to be the quality of the leadership of the school.

From here the author identified five common traits or lessons...

• It's everyone's job to run the school.
  We need to lift ourselves our of the mire of day-to-day crisis and trust others to deal with much of this. We need to set clear expectations that grow a shared ownership and commitment from all to be continually improving and involved in the decision making process.
  
  
• Inspect what you expect - and expect that all students will meet or exceed standards.
  Principals need to provide the critical eye over expectations. We need to be monitoring what we have set as important.
  
  
• Be relentlessly respectful - and respectfully relentless.
  We need to model the attitude and values we expect from others. Tolerance, respect coupled with high expectations.We need to set the professional expectation that all students will meet or exceed school expectations. Decisions are not made based on personal preferences, but rather on student achievement needs.
  
  
• Use student achievement data to evaluate decisions.
  Student achievement data needs to be used to either confirm or reconsider decisions.
  
  
• Do whatever it takes to make sure students learn.
  We need to be dynamic, creative and often adventurous in order to meet students learning needs. This won't always be popular.

School leaders must be guardians of their students' future, not of their staff members' happiness.

It is important that I understand what my role is. I am the students advocate, with the task of creating the conditions under which children will learn.

SHARED LEADERSHIP - Your decision, our decision, my decision!

I was reading an article, "The Lure of Consensus" in the latest Educational Leadership magazine. [www.ascd.org] It was discussing the difficult we have as principal when it comes to keeping everyone happy. In reality, we can't. Our role will always contain a degree of confrontation and conflict. This is often a very draining part of our role. The article emphasised the following points...

• "Consensus is like lukewarm vanilla ice cream, with no sauce."
• It is important to make clear who is responsible for what decision making. There are your decisions [other party decides], our decisions [collaborative decisions] and my decisions [when we have to make the call].
• "Shared leadership doesn't mean principals abdicate making decisions; it does mean being thoughtful about who decides what."

So with a strong push for collaborative leadership, of which I am supportive, it is important to make sure it is understood who is responsible for what.

The following link provides some information of the Educational Leaders site.

http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Distributed-shared-leadership