Together we can change the education world

Last Friday I was lucky, as a consultant at dk2, to facilitate the Digital Leadership: Collaborations & Conversations boutique professional learning conference - with 50 odd educators from 18 schools.

This event was held in partnership with the fabulous school leaders of Canterbury PS. 

Since early 2015, dk2 and CPS have been working together on an exciting project called 'Digital Leadership Hubs' where we work as partners to bring educational experts (like Professor Stephen Heppell and Eric Sheninger) to schools to work at the coalface with educators and parents and the wider school community to effect change.

The conference on Friday was the last of 3 exciting events we've worked together on with the CPS team for 2015...but no doubt the beginning of many more to come.

But enough of the promo talk...what did Friday mean to me? Of course, it meant something different to everyone who attended....but here's what it meant to me.

I'll start by wrapping some context around the event.

We began the day with the fabulous educational documentary by One Potato Productions Most Likely to Succeed. We had decided to ditch the traditional keynote after following discussions on Twitter about this new doco. After contacting the producers in the US, we were excited to be one of the first organisations to bring the film to Australia. So the film began......there was an air of anticipation and an open, growth, adaptable mindset by everyone in the room.

5 minutes into the film, I received a text from my son. He's just finished Year 12. He was devastated to tell me that his best mate's mother had passed away that morning: she had only been diagnosed with a terribly vicious form of cancer 4 weeks ago. 2 weeks ago, she was sitting with us at the boys' Valete Dinner celebrating the end of their secondary schooling. I couldn't believe it. As I looked around the hall at the faces transfixed on the film, I was trying to reconcile this loss with what was happening that day. 

It's been a month of losses. My dear Dad passed away in October. Although he had been unwell for some time, his passing has been life changing for me. He taught me most of what I know about what it means to be a good man, so my sons can grow up to be one, and what it means to be a leader who truly makes people, and doesn't break them. Every day I miss him - it's as much a physical pain as an emotional or psychological one. And while the fog is slowly starting to lift, the world post-Dad is a new and unchartered one for me.


So, back to the conference.

Here I was, now halfway into the film, trying desperately to compartmentalise.

Then it hit me....what learning can I take from these losses? 

Do I beat my brow at how unfair the universe is? 

Do I bemoan opportunities lost, lives cut short, the quixotic unfairness of living?

Yes, maybe, for a little while.....but in the end that really doesn't help anyone.

My friend had talked with me that morning about the notion of 'legacy'. He had attended dad's funeral and was commenting on how moved he was to see old crusty war veterans broken in sadness at the loss of a mentor, a comrade.

And that's where the most profound learning from the day came for me - legacy: a bequest; an inheritance; a heritage; a benefaction; an endowment; a gift.

What legacy can we  as educators leave our students?

In what state do we leave or change the education world for the students we teach? 

How do we make the world better for them so they can make the world a better place when they are leading it in the future?

The first step is to share and connect with each other - because it as as connected educators we can become a powerful PLN and our legacy can be exponentially grown.

It was a great day...but the days for working on making that legacy a reality have only just begun.

Willing to stand out from the crowd

I purchased this C Blair linocut a couple
of years ago during a trip to New Zealand:
I was motivated by the focus on an
individual being prepared to stand
out from the crowd.

Recently I was talking with an inspiring group of school leaders from the Mildura region in rural Victoria, Australia.  

I asked them to think about what sort of learning culture they had in their schools - were signs of learning visible and everywhere? Was everyone seen as a learner? Did their leadership team model learning and risk taking? Was the view of failure refashioned? 

How was change received and perceived?

And, how were tall poppies and those advocating innovation and change viewed by others? 

Were they encouraged and nurtured or crushed into silence because they challenged the status quo of complacency and comfort? (See image below showing the brainstorming of the characteristics of a learning organisation developed with this group.)

Then I came across David Gurr's article A Model of Successful School Leadership from the International Successful School Principalship Report**.

Gurr's article highlights some salient research about leadership that is relevant to those questions above that I posed to my colleagues. Part of his research draws on 15 stories of principal leadership success from 13 countries and identifies 11 key themes. These include: 

1. High expectations that are contextualised and reasonable;

2. Pragmatic leadership styles that enable them to be instructional and transformational leaders and, as and when it is needed, with a strong focus on ensuring improvements in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment;

3. Distributed leadership through which the input and effort of teachers, parents and students is valued;

4. Core, consistent leadership practices which include setting direction, developing people, leading change and improving teaching and learning. Additionally, other practices encompass strategic problem solving, articulating a set of core ethical values (moral purpose), building of trust, being visible across the school, building a safe and secure environment, building coalitions, ensuring equity, care of others and encouraging achievement;

5. Leadership that is heroic by challenging the status quo, fighting for the best outcomes for their students, having and sharing a positive view of their school community, fostering collaboration, leading with others and not leading alone;  

6. Building capacity - by being people-centred, these leaders enjoy seeing both tens students and adults in their school community develop - personal, professional, organisational and community capacity building;

7. Leaders who are trusted and respected act with integrity, are transparent about their values, model good practice, deal with people fairly, build ownership and involvement in decision making and consult;

8. Continually learning means that these leaders develop their leadership skills over time through a blend of on-the-job training, formal and informal professional learning, mentoring and sponsorship. These leaders are hungry for new ideas, open to new thinking, seeking new ways of doing things, exploring new opportunities for them and their schools and consistently developing their professional repertoire;

9. The personal resources of these school leaders include "acumen, optimism, persistence, trust...tolerance, empathy, alertness...curiosity, resilience, benevolence, honesty, openness, respectful and humbleness" (p. 140)

The standout paragraph for me was:

They have a strong ethic of care, empathy for others, value individuality and display the transformational leadership quality of individual consideration, believe in freedom and democracy, are good at balancing individual versus collective care, and so forth. Above all they are driven by the desire to provide the best educational environment they can for all students. Even in the most challenging contexts, they view challenges as obstacles to overcome rather than problems that are insurmountable, and so they are always looking to improve the learning environment. Perhaps using a spiritual, moral or social justice base, or more simply from an understanding of what is possible in education, they have the courage to what is right to help their students be the best they can. (p.140)

10. They are context sensitive  - they understand the context in which they   work, but are not necessarily driven or controlled by it. They "fine tune" their responses so as to achieve optimal success in the context of their own school;

11. They sustain success by involving others across the school community in deciding what is best to do, being resilient and committed, utilising a range of instructional practices as needed, continuing their own professional learning and have a positive attitude towards change.

And so, these leaders are insightful, empathic, change savvy and heroic because they are informed by their strong moral purpose and have a clear view of how to involve others, build capacity, nurture guiding coalitions and move their schools forward.

They stand out from the crowd, while standing within it and moving along as part of it.

Brainstorming the characteristics of a learning organisation with the #BastowLSDA
crew from Mildura. To what extent is your school a learning organisation?

**Article: David Gurr, A Model of Successful School Leadership from the International Successful School Principalship Project, Societies 2015, 5, 136–150, 6 March 2015

http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/5/1/136

A plan without a vision ain't no plan at all

I was having coffee with a girlfriend the other day and we were ruminating over all things education...I consider her a wonderful teacher, fantastic at establishing positive relationships with her students, smart, direct, enthusiastic and caring.

After the second skinny cappuccino, I asked her what she thought about the importance of educational vision and whether or not the leaders in her school had a clearly articulated educational vision - setting a comprehensive, cohesive and clear direction for her school.

I was a bit taken aback when she scoffed at me and said "spoken like a true consultant Nikki". She went on to say "we know what we're there for...we want the best outcomes for our students, doesn't matter what pathway they take".

I'll admit the denigrating consultant comment that hurt just a little...after all we know what everyone thinks of consultants even though I avoid this label and rather think of myself as an educator....but then I thought some more. 

I started reflecting on how I might've responded to me a few years ago when I was still working in school if I'd asked myself the same question........

Even when I was working as a teacher (in the same school she's now teaching) I yearned for a clearly articulated vision. I had a definite sense of my own moral purpose: I knew that I wanted the best for the students in my care; I was keen to explore innovations; I wanted to get involved in new initiatives aimed at further engaging them in their learning and making a difference. But I sometimes felt like I was doing this in a vacuum. I knew what drove my practice but I was unsure and unclear about what drove others or what the big picture was for where the school leadership wanted the whole school to go. I was seeking a sense of the vision for our school and whenever I looked for it, it wasn't easy to find.

And then I thought about a friend of mine who showed me his school MSWord templates with the succinct school vision statement on the header of every document and another colleague who is now a principal who has distilled her vision to 4 key words which form the acronym DARE; Diversity; Aspiration; Respect; Excellence. She has posted this on almost every wall of her school, in the stairwells, on their Facebook page and she uses this a lens through which to analyse any new initiatives she might want to introduce to her school or which her staff might be keen on getting involved in.

So, back to my coffee and my thinking about the importance of vision. A change plan without a vision leads to confusion. Vision encapsulates the thinking around the why and where you want your school or any organisation to head - it's your statement about a preferred future. It might be big picture thinking, but it captures the values and aspirations of the organisation. Without it, you're like a body without a head.....going nowhere. And of course, vision without understanding the capacity building required to achieve it, incentives to get people on board (extrinsic and intrinsic), effective resourcing and doable actions is an amorphous statement of hope without a framework of reality.

(Adapted from Knoster, 1991)

So, I might still be a bit sensitive about being labelled a "consultant" but certainly won't retreat from my addiction to and love affair with vision.

Time to set another coffee date and start again.

Thank goodness the world is such a small place!

Last week we finally met Eric Sheninger face to face, held our second #dk2digihub Digital Leadership Conversation at Canterbury PS and trekked to sunny Mildura to meet the school leaders who had enrolled for the BastowLSDA course up there in our first face to face workshop.

It was a huge week...but one which I am reflecting on now was full on connections and synergies - connecting with leaders during the lunchtime conversation at Canterbury PS, connecting with our mentors, meeting Eric and feeling like we had been friends for ages talking the same talk with shared philosophies and values about education, leadership, change and the place of digital technologies.  And then, the icing on the cake was meeting the Mildura group!

We were met with educators keen to know more, with open minded growth mindsets and an eagerness to connect with each other.

When we flew home that night, I felt inspired...by my mentor colleagues; my dk2 mates; by Eric; by the leaders we met that day. 

I felt inspired because we're on the same journey - we want our schools to be better and different. We want our students to connect authentically with learning that doesn't just engage them but that empowers them to be discriminating, informed, active, responsible and ethical global citizens.

On Thursday when I was talking with Michelle Costa (Principal of Melton West PS), we talked about this not just being a course - it's a process of winning over hearts and minds, shifting thinking.....perhaps it's a movement.

Why school leaders need to be good learners

In 2012 Michael Fullan said "the degree to which the principal participates as a learner  is twice as impactful as any other factor" in achieving school change.

So that's why we need school leaders in our school change teams. They need to help articulate the vision, and model risk taking, willingness to fail and demonstrate their own learning transparently, honestly and with candour. They need to lead from within and empower others to act, build ownership, interest and  draw on the intrinsic motivation of their staff.

So, as a start, let's have a think - as a school leader, how good are you at:

• listening to others
• being creative
• articulating your educational vision concisely
• demonstrating a positive attitude and a growth mindset
• coaching others
• motivating yourself to change
• motivating your staff
• showing your learning side, not just your leading side
• persevering
• being self-directed and accountable for your learning
• working in teams
• delegating and empowering others to act
• loving and valuing your employees
• authentically connecting with your school community
• celebrating successes
• acknowledging and owning failures
• evaluating initiatives
• articulating your moral purpose
• giving others license to try
• building leadership capacity - formal and informal - across your staff
• managing your time
• being organised
• adapting to change
• creating an environment in which great ideas can happen
• moonshot thinking
• handling criticism
• having critical conversations with staff when needed
• being resilient 
• prioritising
• collaborating and connecting with others not just in your school but across networks, locally and globally
• showing empathy
• critical thinking
• divergent thinking
• taking risks
• being willing to fail
• modelling all of the above?

The Teeter Totter Change Principle

Change isn't easy for everyone.

Some of us embrace it and run with it, and wonder why others struggle with it. But we are the ones who need to build our empathy for those who think differently...just because change is easy for us, doesn't mean what we do is better, it's just different.

And here's where the 'teeter totter' principle comes into play - our colleagues struggling with change can manifest a range of responses that we might find perplexing, but which are both justifiable and understandable if we give ourselves some time to reflect:

• change-readiness doesn't come naturally to everyone
• some colleagues may fear change, or be uncomfortable about it because they truly value the status quo, they care about where they are at now and may be untrusting about the motives for why we are advocating a particular change
• our peers may want change, but just not know how to achieve it
• there may be a prevailing ambivalence towards change manifested by up and down, push and pull responses that can be unpredictable and frustrating for those of us already fully invested in the change journey.

When leading change in schools, we can sometimes become frustrated by the 'teeter totters' who one minute are agreeing with us and then the next day blocking the ideas they appeared to like the day before. It can feel like 2 steps forward, 1 step back.

Yes there are the natural resistors - those who don't like any new idea that's not their own. But I would hazard a guess and say they're probably in the minority.

The others who teeter on the brink of joining in your change journey need your love and support. They need you to stretch a warm and comforting arm around their shoulders and gently but firmly help them to shift.

They need you to help them build momentum and get off the teeter totter and you can do this by seeking to understand them and empathise with their struggles so you can build the direction of your journey together.

Image source: http://www.sodahead.com/fun/swings-are-the-coolest-things-on-the-playground/question-403685/ 

Don't be an armchair traveller

I liken this Bastow LSDA experience to a journey of the heart and mind.

It's not like the type of "journey" you hear politicians and political apparatchiks talking about - the platitude for "do as I say but not as I do"...

Instead, I see #BastowLSDA as a personal quest for meaning and relevance, contextualised and interpreted differently by everyone who joins the course.

This journey can be taken in a myriad of ways:

• through armchair travel where one watches from the sidelines and feels like they are learning vicariously via osmosis simply by being enrolled in the course (and thus having the 'ticket' to show for their involvement);
• as part of a guided tour group where all the decisions are made by the leaders, but the tour highlights are experienced at some level (opting in and out of those optional extras depending on needs, wants and enthusiasm);
• as an independent traveller eager to grasp meaning and memories from every second of the experience; 
• as a reluctant traveller, sitting with arms folded, closed, unreceptive saying "I've seen this all before"; or
• as an extreme traveller, seeking extreme experiences, stretching thinking and adrenalin to their limits and taking the virtual bungy jumps into the unknown.

I'm going to stretch the metaphor a bit further here, so bear with me... 

How we travel is completely up to us.

What we take from this experience is dependent on what we want out of it, and what we are able or keen to put into it.

And, finally, the destination we reach relies heavily on the hard yards we've put in to get there.

(Image source with thx: http://www.blogher.com/armchair-travel-living-vicariously-through-others )

Change takes time

Positive, constructive and sustainable change takes time, persistence, clarity of purpose and energy. 

It isn't like deciding overnight that you want to shift to a new way of doing or being!

(thx to @AlliPolin)

It's not an end in itself. 

It takes reflection, consideration, strategic planning.

It takes self-awareness, capacity building, understanding.

It takes strength of mind and willingness to share.

It takes vision, holistic and cohesive thinking.

It doesn't happen by itself. 

It's not like switching on or turning off a light - it's more like turning around a supertanker.

It needs to be purposeful, authentic, meaningful and relevant.

It needs to resonate, inspire, build interest, ignite passions and embrace ownership.

It can only happen through knowledge, collaboration and reflection.

Change is a process, not an event. It doesn't happen overnight. 

But when it does happen....it can be amazing.

It always seems impossible...'til it's done (reprise)

I recently took a trip to Central Australia with my boys. We had a fantastic family trip visiting Uluru, Kata Tjuta (the photo here is actually of my sons in Walpa Gorge, Kata Tjuta), Kings Canyon and then Alice Springs.

There was so much learning that happened during our tour - about our land, its people, culture, identity...and even football (we were in Alice for the wonderful Lightning Carnival and my boys were lucky enough to play a scratch match with the mob from Ngaanyatjarra to help in their prep for the carnival). 

I couldn't help but think each day as we walked and walked and immersed ourselves in the deep ochre of this ancient landscape what a huge country this is....the expanse, the distance, the space...and how this helps to put things into perspective.

Like this image of the boys at the base of the cliff at Walpa Gorge, our travails might seem big to us, and almost insurmountable...especially at the beginning of our journey....but in the scheme of things may be a little less overwhelming.

Now halfway through the second #BastowLSDA course of 2015 with our Mildura crew, I am sure some participants are feeling this a bit. And that's normal! I know I've been asked "does the workload get much more than this?" and I've read e-journal entries expressing frustration and discomfort with the load of coursework. I sense others might be struggling to get up to date with their PoUs and feeling panic...or the guilt of inertia. Meantime, I am starting to see emerging 'aha!' moments...planning C21 walks around their schools, creating a PLN of their whole town, seeing the reach of social media when you ask your extended PLN for advice and assistance, witnessing the "I've never smiled so much in a year of teaching" presentations from our colleagues at Canterbury PS.

With 2 months to go, it's important to see things in perspective. Step back a bit, like I did in this photo, and see the bigger picture. Use your term break time to do this....And ask yourself why you signed up for the course in the first place. Revisit what is driving you to spend your time in an already pretty jam packed busy schedule to build your capacity as a leader further, to stretch and challenge your thinking. Consider your moral purpose. Think about your school team, your school, your students.

And then draw a deep breath, like we did as we approached these looming cliffs, and take that first step forward because every journey begins with a first step and every journey needs to maintain enough momentum to keep moving forward.

Mandela said "It always seems impossible, until it's done."

Keep doing and make the seemingly impossible, possible. You'll be as impressed as we are about how much you've learned and how far you've come, once you're done.

Why blogging helps

Our lives today are so busy. We move from task to task so quickly that sometimes we don't get a chance to reflect until late at night...and that's when we get those midnight to dawn epiphanies that are like a double edged sword - insights that keep us awake.

And for those of us who are educators, we struggle with leadership roles, competing demands, different priorities, a crowded curriculum etc...and rarely build into our routine time to record, reflect and share what we are learning ourselves.

That's why I love blogging...and why we have instituted the requirement in #BastowLSDA that course participants spend some time each week reflecting on and recording their learning journey. It's a great discipline, but it's also a chance to articulate those thoughts that have been urging in the recesses of our minds, but also to connect with others who can provide feedback and support.

These blogs enable us to develop narratives around our own thoughts and learning....thoughts that can invariably be lost in the hustle and bustle of our busy lives.

And then when we connect with others, or we create something that resonates, that's when the blog magic happens!

I hope those of you on the #BastowLSDA journey are finding this benefit in your blogging and are starting to think about other ways of implementing this form of reflection, documentation and connection in your now personal or school contexts.

These ways we can forge and sustain invisible threads of connection that can yield inspiration for us all.

As Nietzsche said "Invisible threads are the strongest ties" - let's connect, create and strengthen those ties in the weeks and months ahead.

After the first workshop

It was wonderful to meet everyone yesterday and to begin cementing our PLN, both as a whole BastowLSDA group but particularly in your mentor groups which appeared so vibrant and dynamic.

It's a privilege to be working with everyone!

As promised, here is the Nouns and Verbs diagram that was in the PPT.

Week 4 BastowLSDA: And so we meet

This coming week the participants in the #BastowLSDA course will come together at the Bastow Institute of Educational Leadership in North Melbourne for our first face to face get together.

This is always a great opportunity to put faces to names, get the mentor groups really happening and ensure that everyone is on the same page in terms of course PoUs (performances of understanding); the course program; deliverables and expectations.

But, more importantly, this is when everyone who has begun establishing a relationship online, forges those connections even further in face to face real time.

It's always a highlight and an opportunity to build the strength of the PLN that has been growing over the past 3 weeks.

I am really looking forward to meeting everyone and to hearing Professor Stephen Heppell deliver his keynote. Stephen delivered the first keynote for the first of the LSDA courses 12 months ago and we are very excited to have Stephen with us again.

Let's approach tuesday with a growth mindset!

Let's create, collaborate, struggle, invent and reflect together! Let's make this make a difference in our practice, in our teams and in our schools.

Week 3: Telling your school story #BastowLSDA

We are surrounded by theories of action, ideas that inform change and exemplars of how to do it...but the reality is that, like the students we teach, we've got to be critical and think carefully, strategically and authentically about what will work in our given context and what won't...and not afraid to personalise or customise the approach to meet our needs.

Sometimes this can feel overwhelming, but with a clear idea of our needs based on data and informed by knowledge of our situation, armed with a sound moral purpose and vision...we can move forward.

But how do we communicate this for buy-in?

Humans tell stories. 

We have a history of storytelling dating back millenia. 

We are hard wired to do this. And we remember stories long after the facts and stats are lost.

Stories resonate because:

1.You are more likely to remember a story than a set of facts

2.Stories are the currency of our thoughts – they store value and enable exchange

3.Stories are the flight simulators of the brain – they enable us to rehearse before we do….

Stories enable us to:

1.Share a credible idea – which makes others believe

2.Share an emotional idea – so others care (our moral purpose)

3.Encourage us to take action 

Why Do We Tell Stories?
Whether in caves or in cities, storytelling remains the most innate and important form of communication. All of us tell stories. The story of your day, the story of your life, workplace gossip, the horrors on the news. Our brains are hard-wired to think and express in terms of a beginning, middle and end. It's how we understand the world. Storytelling is the oldest form of teaching. It bonded the early human communities, giving children the answers to the biggest questions of creation, life, and the afterlife. Stories define us, shape us, control us, and make us. Not every human culture in the world is literate, but every single culture tells stories.

Can You Be a Storyteller and a Teacher and a Leader?
You already are. Teachers are storytellers, and storytellers have been teachers for millennia.

Although narrative inquiry has a long intellectual history both in and out of education, it is increasingly used in studies of educational experience. 

One theory in educational research holds that humans are storytelling organisms who, individually and socially, lead storied lives. Thus, the study of narrative is the study of the ways humans experience the world. 

This general concept is refined into the view that education and educational research is the construction and reconstruction of personal and social stories; learners, teachers, and researchers are storytellers and characters in their own and other's stories. 

How to start
A good story always begins with a moral purpose – a clear idea of the beliefs and vision. This is what engages others in your story.

The ability of purposefully doing rather than simply doing - every aspect of your experience has strategic intent based on learning. If you can explain how and why you the teaching and learning in your school is effective- you are in a good place.

One key strategy is to maintain a record – you’re used to the old ‘running records’ in primary school, and those who have done the #BastowLSDA course know all about the Action Research Projects  – but, more importantly the e-journals which are a place on Blogger where each course participant maintains a weekly reflective blog on their learning.

Purpose? To record the tacit – implicit and explicit feelings, learnings, ‘aha!’ moments of the course experience.

So, think about this – how are you going to record and then tell your school’s story?

The narrative will develop over time and help you gain that clarity – but it needs a structure, or it can be a rambling, amorphous mess.

Make it a record that you can use and can be a resource for other schools in the future.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What will our school’s story and message be?
• Will we let others tell it for us?
• What available tools can we use to easily share the great learning experiences that take place in our school?
• Do our stakeholders fully understand what is going on in our school?
• How will others benefit from our story? How will  we share it?

Use social media to capture and tell your story:

• Google+ and Blogger– personal spaces, school networks
• Twitter – for tracking key events, thinking, ideas #BastowLSDA
• Facebook – how could this be used to capture your thinking and learning?
• Pinterest – discover and save your own or the group’s aha! moments
• Diigo – for interesting readings
• Youtube – set up a YouTube channel for your school / Vimeo
• GoogleDrive
• Instagram - This very popular social media site, Instagram, communicates with images, instead of status updates or 140 character updates. Make “instagrammer” one of the classroom jobs. Assign one specific device to the instagram account and let one or two students post a few pictures each day to the stream. An ongoing feed like that will keep parents clued in and is so easy to integrate into the workflow of the classroom.
• Take a Photography Safari https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6xs8WLadso
• Perhaps a blog – updated weekly, fortnightly or monthly – from school teams is an idea – you can do this via one person’s account, or create your own on the school network or on Blogger.

Tell your story as it happens, take pictures of kids doing great work when observing, blog about successes / teachers making new pedagogical changes/innovations, those ‘aha!’ moments.

The challenge is to maintain this regularly – to even reply to and feed back to the blogs of others – so this can trace your learning journey over time.

Think outside the box – film, photos, artefacts, reflections.
These are valuable and rich artefacts of your learning journey through this change. But, don’t stop there – this is  ongoing and requires an iterative review – constantly revisit this ‘elevator pitch’ – what can you communicate about your school’s journey in 60 seconds?

Constantly try and identify the themes that are emerging…what’s trending for you?

INVOLVE YOUR STUDENTS in identifying what matters to them (Think about #putyourbatout and #iwillridewithyou or #dancingguy - what can you learn from these?), in data capture and curation – where is their place in all of this?

Let them help lead the way. 

What problems will they find in the process?

How is this ACTIVATING learning for our students?

How is their enthusiasm being grabbed and sustained? 

What channels are you using to do this?

Take time to reflect on, digest, analyse and synthesise your story – each time taking it back to your moral purpose – and to that ‘elevator pitch’ and think about:

• Where are we now compared to where we were before?
• What are we doing?
• What do we know about change and digital leadership?
• Why is this making a difference?
• How is this ACTIVATING learning for our students?
• How are our TEACHERS learning – how is their capacity building? What does this look like?
• How might another school, in another context, use these reflections of ours to begin their own change journey?

Be consistent, persistent, imaginative and agile.

This is YOUR change journey – but you are part of something much bigger and it is your responsibility to capture and disseminate the learnings.

Understand that each of you come from a different context – and while themes and trends will emerge, it cannot be one-size-fits-all.

One-stop-shop, locked in, one-size solutions don’t and can’t exist any more in such the rich, changing, diverse and dynamic modern world.

But themes and trends can….

So, what's your story going to be?

Verbs versus Nouns

Too often we get bogged down in a love affair with tools, devices and apps. Sure, it's easy to get inspired by tools that make us utter "that's funky", "this does this" and "Wow! Look at that"...Such thinking can be very seductive. 

Techno tools are wonderful! So much is at our fingertips and so many little bits of software and gadgets help us to do things that 5 or even 2 years ago we would have thought impossible. But concentrate on this at the peril of real learning because a love affair with the technology, without the scaffolding of learning and pedagogy, is ad hoc and, at best just more colourful or shiny but in no way deeper or more powerful or sustainable.

So, let's reframe the discussion and thinking about technology use in teaching and learning and make it about the Verbs and not the Nouns as Prensky says (http://marcprensky.com/verbs-and-nouns/ )

When we refocus our thinking this way, we concentrate on the LEARNING - the collaboration, the creation, the communication instead and we can also be more effective in generating interest and creating that all-too-elusive hook for those colleagues of ours more reluctant to use digital technologies.

That way we avoid the empty bells and whistles of techno bling NOUNS in our classrooms and maintain authentic, relevant and rigorous learning environments with an emphasis on the VERBS.

Chances of Success - where are you on the scale?

I just saw this great graphic on Twitter (thx to @JasonElsom and NinjaInfographic) and thought it was very pertinent to our #BastowLSDA work.

Where care you on the scale?

Week 2: BastowLSDA - moving from storming to norming

The newest intake of the BastowLSDA course have now experienced 1 week of LSDA learning and as can be expected, everyone is at a different comfort level and learning stage: some people are feeling a little overwhelmed, slightly disorganised and possibly swamped by the course's demands while others are eager to make more connections and get things happening.

STORMING -> NORMING
This is a totally natural response and one that easily fits into Tuckman's stages of group dynamics: many course participants are currently in the STORMING stage. Storming because everything is that little bit unclear, some are feeling unsure and uncomfortable and the emotions about and attitudes towards the learning experience for others are somewhat turbulent. However, with persistence and resilience, these feelings soon morph into a NORMING - as course participants become more acquainted and comfortable with the rigours of the course,  manage to set aside enough time to do the readings, viewings and reflections and make connections across their PLN.

These feelings are natural and, in fact, expected. But the only way to overcome them is to do the best you can - seek help when you need it, share your concerns with others and persist. Of course, this relies on participants giving themselves the time and space to do this learning. The course doesn't work if it's a little thought about add-on. 

As the picture says - keep your collective chins up and try your best. Your course mentors and the course facilitators are here to help smooth the way and support you. 

After all, we expect our students to walk into our classrooms every day ready to learn and try something new...let's take a lesson from them and just do they best we can!

Week 1, Bastow LSDA 2015

Well it's come around again - quickly: the fourth of our Bastow Leading Schools in the Digital Age  courses and it starts tomorrow.

As I do at the beginning of each course - I feel excited anticipation, looking forward to meeting all course participants, finding out where their thinking is at, why they've elected to take this course, what they hope to get out of it.

I've just spent this weekend celebrating my youngest son's 13th birthday. We had 11 Year 8 students staying over last night and (while recovering from the inevitable sleep deprivation that such an event entails) I was reminded at the potential, the enthusiasm, the sheer joy kids at this age have in each other and I ask how often such energy is harnessed at school for them.

Do they power down or power up when they enter the classroom?

And then of course, there's the juxtaposition of my 17 year old who is doing Year 12...."doing Year 12"....it is so true. He's doing it, experiencing it, enduring it - but how creative is he being as he memorises facts, figures and formulae? Is he actually enjoying it? He's coping, he's up to date, he's immersed in the slog that characterises this final year at school - but what sort of quality educational experience is it offering him?

And so, back to BastowLSDA...I hope each participant approaches the course with a flexible, receptive growth mindset and through this is able to glean from the course a meaningful learning experience that enables them to change something in or about their own leadership, and strategise with their team to create a vision for their school which will make a positive difference to the students with whom they learn and the teachers who are their colleagues.

Week 1. Day 1 tomorrow. The first step of a wonderful journey. Together.

Change is such a simple word but such a complex process to implement successfully!

There are no end of change experts around who will give you their '7 Steps' or '8 drivers' of '10 blockers and ways of addressing them' - but for each of us, the context of change is different and the strategies we employ to effect positive change must be customised to the needs, concerns and goals of our specific situation. 

Progress is impossible without change. 

And change is a complex, multi faceted and gnarly beast.

It is important to decide whether the change we plan is of the first order (gentle, substitutive, unthreatening) or incorporates a fundamental alteration of how we do things - 2nd order change. Either way, we know it's going to get messy...and perhaps we need to be aware and reflective enough to understand that blending of both - 1st and 2nd order - might be the way to go. If everything we plan is of the 2nd order, then we will all feel confused, fearful, uncomfortable and the push-back could be phenomenal.

I'm a student of change - someone whose life has been full of it (I'm told that often) and so it makes me who I am: as an army brat, I've lived in 5 different Australian cities, in 3 countries, went to 9 schools and attended 5 universities to complete 4 different courses pre and post grad. My Mum proudly tells people she moved 22 times during my father's celebrated army career. When some people hear this, they look at me pityingly....or with an understanding that exudes "well, that explains a lot":).

These changes not only taught me how to mimic an accent pretty damn quick and to assimilate to a new group's social mores promptly in order to survive...they also instilled in me a comfort with (and perhaps solace in) the beauty of shifting sands. I became an intellectual nomad - too easily bored, always keen to find out more, see what resonated, test it out. Teaching in the classroom, I would epxlore new ideas with my students not just because this engaged and empowered them, but because it was the elixir of my own professional life. Now as a consultant, similar motivations exist. However, what I also know (after all, change without reflection and self-awareness is doomed to failure) is that I need to be a better finisher, I need to see the program, the idea, the recommendation through to its conclusion - it's no longer just enough to have a good idea and put it out there. I need to understand and develop and implement the most effective strategy for seeing it through. I wonder what this tells me about myself now....

Ah well, it's all part of the learning!

Mandela said that “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” 

I look forward to keeping on learning and honing that weapon.