Wayne and Bruce hope you enjoy our first e-zine of 2003. It is our intention to continue sharing the ideas of creative teachers, schools and innovative educational thinkers. We invite you to visit our website to share the ideas we have gathered. www.leading-learning.co.nz

This newsletter, coming from Taranaki New Zealand (the current residence of actor Tom Cruise!) has been written by Bruce Hammonds. bhammonds@leading-learning.co.nz

We know how expectations for schools have intensified over the past decade or so. We believe that it is now more important than ever that teachers and school add their ‘voices’ to the educational debate – a debate that has been, for the past ten years, dominated by technocrats, bureaucrats and politicians, all removed from the reality of the classroom.

We now have approximately 2500 free subscribers. Our goal for 2003 is to double this number and we particularly want to gain more classroom teacher members. When you visit our site add staff member’s e-mails – just ask them first! ‘Print friendly’ newsletters are also posted on our site.

Those of you who have e-mailed appreciation of our e-zine and site have encouraged us. Bruce is more than happy to receive your feedback.

To subscribe or remove your address go to our website – it is a simple process. www.leading-learning.co.nz/newsletter.html

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WHAT’S IN THIS E-ZINE. –Beginning the School Year!

1. The beginning of a new year - a time for reflection.
2. Notes for a beginning teacher- or for any teacher beginning the year.
3. Reflections for Principals
4. Heretical Ideas.
5. Ideas for your Teacher’s Only Day.
6. Leadership and school culture – all there really is!
7. Favourite web-sites about teaching/learning
8. Final thoughts – a time for heretics and revolutionaries.

1. Beginning a New Year - a time for reflection.

The minds of teachers in the Southern Hemisphere are now beginning to think about a new school year after a summer holiday break.

With this in mind we have focused this e-zine on assisting schools and teachers begin the school year in style. Beginning teachers will by now begun to appreciate that teaching is one profession where there is no gradual start – from day one it is as if all teachers get ‘thrown into the deep end’.

Before school starts it is important for teachers (and schools) to take time to reflect on their beliefs about learning and teaching. Successful schools and teachers are able to articulate what is important at their school – what, as Michael Fullan educationalist writes, ‘is worth fighting for!’

Only when a school or class is aligned behind shared beliefs can true learning begin. Time spent before school starts, clarifying the schools philosophy and what attitudes and shared values underpin all actions, is well worth the effort.

When a learning culture is established teachers have a common language to align themselves behind and to ‘self reference’ their actions against. Achieving such a quality learning community is a creative process, one that is continually evolving and changing. Schools that see themselves as such a learning community have the best future strategy of all to thrive in unpredictable world.

‘The future is not some place we are going to but one we are creating. The path to is made not found, and the activity of making it changes both the maker and the destination.’
Australian Commission for the Future.

For ideas to create a shared school vision www.leading-learning.co.nz/creating-vision.html
You might like to download the Te Ara Vision, Values and Teaching Beliefs. A number of schools have customised this document to suit themselves.

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2. Notes for Beginning Teachers

A few years ago one of the editors was talking to a beginning teacher at the beach who was worried about what he would be expected to do the next week when he would have to take charge of his first class. With this in mind Leading & Learning wrote newsletter offering suggestions. Since then many schools now pass it out to all teachers at the beginning of the school year. Even experienced teachers find beginning a new class a mix of excitement and uncertainty.

www.leading-learning.co.nz/newsletters/begin-teaching.html

Ideas in the newsletter cover a number of aspects that may be useful to discuss during a Teacher Only Day before school starts.

Some advice we gathered from Jane Bluestein USA reflects similar ideas. Some of her points were:

1. Both you and your students will be entering the class with ‘Great Expectations.
2. Be friendly with students but remember your students expect you to be responsible and in charge.
3. Make sure your students have plenty to do. Over-plan. Undirected kids turn spare time into classroom disruption.
4. Don’t assume your students will have the skills you may expect. Find out what they can do and build on these.
5. Don’t try to do everything at once. Start slowly and keep things simple.
6. Keep routines simple at first. Focus on thing students can do.
7. Treat student’s ‘mistakes’ as positive opportunities to teach new choices and skills – small successes build trust and confidence. Only develop one new skill at a time.
8. While autonomy may be wonderful don’t be frightened to ask for help. Other teachers will be pleased to assist.
9. Things will go wrong! Treat such times as learning opportunities. Remember, as time goes on, you will become more organised and confident.
10. Take the time to ‘pat yourself on the back’ for the risks you have dared to take.

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3. Reflection's for school leaders.

At the end of the last year many schools will have completed a School Review. Ironically ‘successful ‘ school find it hardest to be innovative - why change a good thing? ‘Moving schools’ question everything and continually open to new ideas. Quality learning communities review themselves as to how well they achieved their vision and beliefs To often we have been satisfied with school reform rather than school transformation.

For ideas about aligning your school read:
www.leading-learning.co.nz/school-vision/ensuring-alignment.html

If you really want to make a difference in your school you first have to face up to failings of current reality. In particular schools may need to ‘review’ requirements that have been imposed on schools. Many compliance requirements may now be ‘ barriers to learning’ themselves. Standardised curricula, the requirements to assess endless learning objectives, may well have been some distant committees ‘vision’ but they have, in reality, become more a ‘hallucination’, or worse still a ‘nightmare’. Only a few inspirational school have moved beyond their conforming ideology – an ideology tied into the faulty assumptions of a now suspect Market Forces audit and accountability culture. As a result many school seem to be suffering from ‘terminal bewilderment’, always wondering what new idea will be imposed on them next. Hardly the conditions to encourage innovation and creativity.

The Ministry of Education, after creating a decade of confusion, has at last felt the need for ‘revisionism’ with their amended National Guidelines. Essentially the Ministry was playing ‘catch up’ with innovative school but the changes were welcome none the less. Schools however are still receiving mixed messages as central government, through requirements for ‘target setting’ and sending of strategic plans to distant ‘officials’, add further bureaucratic demands.

If the Government really wants NZ to become the creative country it talks about, then the school system need more than feeble revisionism. We wait in anticipation for a vision based on schools to become the focus for community revitalisation and the realisation of every student’s talents. Currently schools are too often isolated from each other. We also wait in anticipation for the Curriculum ‘Stocktake’ to be completed. From what we have heard it will be another chance lost for showing intellectual courage and leadership.

A quality school engages the hearts and minds of all involved, students, teachers and parents. Such a school, harnessing this ‘power of three’, changes itself and in turn it’s community. Transformed schools have regained control of their ‘own story’ and do not blindly follow someone else’s ‘plot’. They have their ‘act together’ and thus are able to unleash the creative energy of people who love what they are doing.

As Jack Welch CEO GE, says
‘Control your own destiny or some else will!’

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4. Some heretical ideas to reflect on.

1. Stop running schools through clear folders and policies – focus instead on shared vision values and teaching beliefs. Reject managerialism, become leaders, and create school as learning communities. School have been over managed and under-led. Remember all ‘bottlenecks’ occur at the top of the bottle.
2. Focus on simplicity and quality – do fewer things well. Go through all your folders and toss out ones not used and simplify the rest. Ask the teachers which ones they use.
   The amount of paperwork does not equate with quality learning! The opposite may well be true!
3. Place value on the creative teachers and get them to share their ideas with other teachers. Every school has creative teachers but too often they feel threatened by obsessive paperwork requirements. Research tells us that it is in-school differences that cause student failure. All teachers need to be able to articulate the beliefs that all agree to share.
4. Place the emphasis where it belongs – on the ‘artistry and craft’ of teaching. What are the common teaching strategies that all classrooms in your school should reflect Develop a Learning Policy – the key policy for the school?
   www.leading-learning.co.nz/newsletters/vol01-no05-2002.html
5. Who needs Curriculum Delivery Plans that define content for 3/4 or years ahead? Face up to the idea that the process of learning is as important as the content, or more so. Instead plan collaboratively at the end of each year 6/7 Rich Integrated Topics for the following year. Research the Queensland New Basics Rich Topics. Use Google.To ensure the ‘big ideas’ (strands) are covered check topics chosen against them – far simpler than obsessive planning
6. By all means assess literacy and numeracy but remember they are only ‘foundation skills’ - how many students leave your school, or class, loving learning? Assess what you value. What future attributes will learner’s need?
7. Focus your school or class on developing the talents, passions, dreams and gifts of all your students rather than achieving content goals. Assess student talents by developing an Individual Talent Profile. Each student needs an Individual Educational Programme.
8. Assess your school using the ‘ Wow Factor!’ As a staff walk around rooms, what do you see, hear and feel? Do this in Term 2 or 3 as part of School Review. Can you ‘see’ the students ‘voices, culture and identity’? Develop criteria for teachers to assess the quality of their learning environments.
9. Be as concerned with ‘messages’ the school gives to students, parents and visitors as fancy graphs on the computer! Statistics it seems can prove anything! Ask students and parents how they feel about the school and what they would like to see more of. Do all involved in the school share a collective dream, a common spirit - a cohesive culture of continual experimentation?

The agenda of the future is all about the art and the craft of
teaching. For quality teaching and learning ideas visit:
www.leading-learning.co.nz/quality-learning.html

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5. Ideas for a Teacher Only Day before school starts.
   Refer: www.leading-learning.co.nz/begin-teaching.html

1. Discuss what were the five best things that each teacher did last year. Beginning teachers would learn much by listening to such conversations.
2. Introduce teachers to the vision, values and teaching beliefs of the school. Can any staff members articulate them – give a chocolate fish to those who can!
   www.leading-learning.co.nz/newsletters/vol01-no05-2002.html
3. Discuss what makes a quality class. Why do some classes work so well – what is it these teachers do? Make use of the expertise of such teachers.
4. Consider students you deem ‘at risk’ What would it be like to be particular problem student in a class – what would they experience? How could you make it a more positive learning experience?
5. Agree to welcome all student and their parents with a smile on day one.
6. First impressions are vital. Prepare a handout about the School Vision and Beliefs to go home on day one.
7. Discuss (in teams) exactly how each teacher runs their daily reading programme. How consistent are they? Define the elements of a quality reading programme. Do the same for math programme. Focus planning the first day and week for both reading and maths.
8. Plan out together a timetable (a ‘scaffold’) for the first week. This will assist beginning or new teachers. Introduce the ‘three step planning method’ of teaching:
   (1) Introduction, to outline goals/activities
   (2) An activity (activities).
   (3) A ‘Wrap Up’ session to discuss how it all went.
9. Collaboratively plan a simple environmental unit (or any unit) to start the year – and share class management organisations. Plan together four simple group activities.
   www.leading-learning.co.nz/newsletters/classroom-management.html
10. Discuss in pairs how teachers are going to get through day one – and week one. This will benefit new teachers.
11. Have definite ‘scaffolds’ defined to layout all school exercise books. Develop some consistent standards that, once in place, students can innovate from. School books ‘present’ a clear message to students and parents.

‘Teaching is characterised by a collective and individual amnesia – the consistency with which the best creations of its practitioners are constantly being lost to current and future peers.’
From Charles Lovitt Australian Educator.

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6. Reflection on Leadership and School Culture.

Inspirational leadership is vital if schools are to be transformed. Inspirational leaders tap into peoples needs to be part of something great. Terrence Deal and Kent Peterson, in their latest book, emphasis the over-riding importance of leaders in the creation of a dynamic school culture. Without a culture that supports and recognises the importance of certain kinds of learning goals, changes and improvement just won’t happen.

Culture is what people pay attention to; it answers the question, ‘What’s important around here?’

The features of positive learning culture are:

1. A widely shared sense of purpose and values that is consistent and shared across all staff members.
2. Group norms that reinforce the importance of staff learning, focussing on the need for continuous improvement.
3. Teachers who take responsibility for all student’s learning rather than ‘blaming’ outside causes.
4. Collaborative and collegial relationships between staff members – people trusting each other and sharing ideas.
5. A real focus on professional development, reflection and sharing professional practice. Staff interact to improve their teaching craft.
6. A school with a personality – a unique culture. One which all involved identify with.

Visit our site www.leading-learning.co.nz/vision.html for ideas to help you create your school as a learning community.

Run off the Te Ara School Vision, Values and Teaching Beliefs.
www.leading-learning.co.nz/download-files/te-ara-vision-and-beliefs-number2.doc

A number of schools have customised this Vision to suit their local circumstances. There is no point in inventing wheels!

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7. Web-sites with focus on Teaching and Learning.

www.teachersmind.com all about the importance of teacher beliefs and assumptions
www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class See descriptions.
Covers a range of teaching strategies e.g. Multiple Intelligences, Constructivism, Co operative learning, Inquiry Based learning etc
http://learnweb.harvard.edu/alps/tfu
Some wonderful practical idea based on work of Howard Gardner and David Perkins. Covering Generative Topics, Planning Formats, Goal Setting, Assessing for Understanding etc
www.leading-learning.co.nz/quality-learning.html Ideas from NZ.
www.habits-of-mind.net learn all about the Intelligent Behaviours of Art Costa. Excellent site

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8. Final thoughts - a time for heretics and revolutionaries!

Yesterday’s success has never mattered less. Today’s success has never been more fragile. Tomorrow has never been more uncertain. And the courage to lead the change that it takes to thrive has never been more important.

What is needed is radical thinking. To succeed it will require more than retreating back to the basics. This is no time to wallow in timidity. Most creative people who are successful have been so in spite of the system not because of it! There is nothing wrong with conserving the best of the past but courage is needed to move into the future. The best strategy is to continually innovate and keep what works. While alignment is important, perfect alignment is death! Variety and creativity are the key to evolution. New voices are required for new thinking. Heretics invent the future. Ideas always come from the fringe. Those in power have too much to lose, no matter their fine rhetoric. Innovation comes from looking at the world through different lens – the business orientated market forces lens has passed its use by date. We need anew vision for education.

Reinvention of community to create a kinder more caring and more successful society and the development of the creative talents of all citizens would seem to be a vision well worth the effort! Competition and accountability has all but destroyed the trust and professional judgements that were once a feature of our society.

These are the areas we need to be reflecting on. Schools need to collaborate with each other and their communities to create such a vision.

All the best for the New Year – Kia Kaha – have courage.

Wayne and Bruce