Whats worth sharing? Teacher's returning back to school

As educators return back to their schools across the world, we all hold concepts of how to improve our practice. The careful, quiet solitude of holidays are crucial for teachers to reset their emotional exhaustion and allow us to raise our eyes above the day-to-day grind. It goes without saying that all teachers work during their breaks, but I hope we have all also had time to think, plan and re-orientate ourselves as professionals also.

Whilst we all return back to our schools, it is timely to consider not only our own growth and development, but also those of our peers and colleagues. We need to make use of our most precious resources and those that are hardest to share: our human resources.

Famously, Haim Ginott said:

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanizer or de-humanizer.”

Expanding this idea beyond the classroom, the core tenets stand, you are the crucial element in your workforce. As flipped educators and users of instructional video I urge you to use these tools, and your skillset, to leverage your own resources for the benefit of others. By putting time into these means, you free up yourself to be more human and present whilst allowing the core content to be available to your set audience.

Depending on your role and position within your school, your contribution within your school may well be different.

If you are primarily a classroom teacher:

Your work will impact the students the most. Whenever possible, take a moment to share with your fellow colleagues. Your stories, your resources, but most of all your presence Take a moment sharing your expertise with a first year, or early-career-teacher, share in their difficulties and offer them help and support. Shift your perspective and consider the way that you can and do lead people within your existing organisation, as we all lead, either students or adults. One form of leadership is not superior to any other, but the skills that underlay both are exactly.  

If you are an emerging or aspirant leader:

Don’t be bashful to apply your skillset to the work you do working with and leading adults. The concepts of Flipped learning are as leverage-able in the classroom as they are in a meeting room. Active learning and active engagement are even more important for leadership teams and professional learning communities. It’s my opinion that the core tenets of good leadership can be reduced down to the quality of two things: conversations and meetings.

In regard to meetings, the use of teacher and staff time is the most crucial elements within a system. Taking a flipped approach to these spaces is challenging but crucial, the core question to be answered remains: ‘What is the best way to use the group space, the human, face-to-face time?’

The answer leads neatly to the next point, conversations, putting agendas to one side, key documents set to be read beforehand, or explained within a video. Just as a flipped learning teacher becomes more adroit at selecting the best means for engaging students, building relationships and attempting activities that most teachers attempt once or twice a career. A flipped learning empowered leader better uses their human resources to engage in the crucial, critical conversations. To build and push forward a school’s mission and vision statements.

Whilst encouraging teachers to fully leverage their existing and developing skillsets. It is worth pausing to consider what forms this type of developing vision of school leadership might take.

Applying the same logic of flipped learning and active learning frees up space for those elements that are most lacking in schools.

-          Mentoring for teachers new to our profession

-          Coaching existing and existing staff

-          Lesson observation, via video or audio  

-          Lesson study and review with peers

Exploring the research and approaches to these four elements is something I will commit to in forthcoming pieces. These four elements all draw from the same concepts, building human resources by developing your own through engaging with other professionals.

Viviane Robinson noted that ‘Leading Teacher Learning and Development’ is the most impactful among her proposed five core elements of student-centred leadership with an effect size of 0.84. This is not an insignificant factor that places emphasis on the messiest, most complex and therefore an element most worth doing. Many nations suffer from high rates of teacher turnover and attrition from new teachers within the profession, in Australia these rates are as close to 40 and 50 percent of teachers leaving within their first five years.

For lesson observation and lesson study, these two concepts are of the upmost importance because as Phillip Hallinger noted: “despite 25 years of research and focus on instructional leadership, ‘the classroom doors appear to remain as impermeable as a boundary line for 2005 as in 1980’. Be that one professional willing to create a permeable boundary around your classroom, or the professional willing to engage with another teacher’s classroom through observation.

The message of this piece is clear, as we return back to school, make these elements a priority regardless of your role. Be willing to focus on the complex elements of schooling, engaging with peers and colleagues in a way that allows both to grow.

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