An old colleague of mine used to say, “Happy teachers means happy students.” There is some truth to this statement but upon closer examination, it quite often does not hold true. Leaders, indeed, do need to work hard at supporting teachers. Most importantly, leaders need to strive to create the conditions in schools where teachers…
As many schools in the northern hemisphere are busy preparing for the forthcoming new academic year, goals will be set in terms of where school leaders and teachers wish to take the school forward in terms of improvement. These goals may be set well before the previous school year finished, or they may be established…
Where should schools start when determining how they are going to spend their available funds on professional learning for their teachers and who makes such a decision? This question needs to be addressed each and every year as part of a school’s planning cycle, so that it gets the best out of the resources that…
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…
