Alongside their mission and vision statements, schools often have a set of core values. Personally, I prefer schools to have 2 or 3 values that they can really focus in on when they work with students to help them understand the importance of those values not only in their school community but to also apply…
Last week I wrote about the need to support students with academic honesty in their studies and explained some of the reasons why students may engage in academic malpractice. Solely having a rulebook, punitive approach to dealing with academic malpractice is not supportive of students in developing the important habits associated with academic honesty. School…
As students move upwards through the secondary school one could argue that the academic achievement stakes become higher with students and parents eagerly seeking placement at a good college / university. Subsequently, there is significant interest in students achieving the highest marks possible. The media has given much exposure to security breaches surrounding the SAT,…
When observing classes in high schools, it is possible to see two extremes of teacher support. Firstly, there is complete hand-holding or, as some teachers would like to say, spoon feeding, with the teacher doing most of the work. Secondly, at the opposite end of the spectrum we have some teachers who provide little…
With a wide variety of professional learning opportunities and a certain limit to the funds that schools can spend on teacher learning and professional growth, it is important that school leaders ensure that the available funds are spent wisely on teachers to improve student learning. There are a number of things that leaders need to…
When I reflect on the positives of working in my current school and share my thoughts with colleagues from other schools, they are often amazed when I tell them that we do not set specific targets for student results. Our school does not have a specific average score that it needs to achieve from IB…
Teacher and school leader workload issues very much stem from the fact that there is not enough time to do the job properly. Some time back I commented on two ways that leaders can support teachers with workload issues, as to a large extent school leaders must take the initiative and lead in providing teachers…
Trust and trust-building qualities frequently top polls and surveys that attempt to show the most important qualities of a leader. A 2016 McQuaig Global Talent Recruitment Survey places trust as the second most important quality of an effective leader while a PewResearch Center survey shows honesty to be most important. More recently in the run…
Professional sports teams have coaches and they have leaders. Leaders in sports teams do not have to be the coach. All sports teams, however, have a person that must be the coach and a leader. Professional teachers and teaching teams require the same. Schools have a responsibility to provide leaders who are not just instructional coaches but they coach collaboration.
We often face questions from parents and colleagues about how we select teachers to work in our schools. With no single right answer to what makes a good teacher, I thought I would take this opportunity to share what I originally wrote here: It is a difficult job selecting the most important qualities for a…
