Does your ‘To Do’ list seem never-ending and continues to grow by the day? Well you are not alone, this is the case for most, if not all, school leaders. The problem can affect us to varying degrees, the most common of which we see is burn-out, frustration and despair, as we struggle to keep…
Bob Davids stated in his talk on leadership without ego that as a leader “You need to be in touch with the people you lead, and you need to be in their shoes.” Essentially what Davids was getting at in his talk is that good leaders will climb down down off their perch and get…
This talk from Alan November got me thinking further to a post that I wrote called: Avoiding “Just Google it!” with your students. One of the points in Alan’s talk refers to the need to explicitly teach web literacy skills to students in schools. Upon reflection, I too am short of some techniques in…
A variety of teacher evaluation models and methods are used in schools around the world and teacher and school leader attitudes towards them differ considerably. From the teacher perspective, perhaps the greatest concern regarding teacher evaluation systems is their fairness. In some schools teacher evaluation comprises an extensive list of things that the teacher will,…
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,…
