Thursday, 17 November 2011

Nearing the end of the program

I made my final presentation to the Prin Team of my leadership challenge today and it seemed to go well. We had some fantastic discussion and I have a spot on the agenda of the Leadership planning 2012 meeting this Monday.
The online tutes are over now, and I really grew to enjoy them. They seemed to evolve out of the purely theoretical world based on research to a much more robust and practical exploration of leadership in education. I enjoyed that.
I have now got to focus on my presentation, and embedding the work I have been doing here in the future directions of the school. I have endeavored to focus on working through other staff to increase my capacity to nourish professional conversations and empower staff to drive change. This will assist me if I am lucky enough to get a Prin role in a larger school.

Sunday, 13 November 2011

Leadership Credo and end of online Tute

This week we received feedback on our leadership credo and tutelage participation. It was very useful to be given such specific feedback. The thinking that went into both elements of the program forced my to refine what is important to me as a leader. There was a lot of reflection and analysis that went into these exercises and I have learnt a lot from them. In fact I feel they have been one of the most significant learning experiences.
I have refined and paired back what is key to me as a leader. This puts me in touch with what I really stand for and has set me up well to begin as a Principal, when I get the chance. I am so much more ready for that now, as a result of this work.

Wednesday, 2 November 2011

Intern Workshop Notes October

Intern Workshop Oct 26

TED talks multiple perspectives

Tony Hilton is a technical coach available to come to school and give you a strategic workforce plan.

Story telling for educators
The best way to persuade people is to listen to them.
Leaders need to be able to trigger stories. People are always looking at you and looking for the story. If you don't tell it, they will make their own version of it.
A a story gives you data/facts, but it is wrapped up in context and emotion.
Words and actions add to the emotion and imagery the story conjures up. Then we fill in the story with our own vision of what is being said.
If you try to hard with the story, it loses authenticity.
Disconnected dot points don't work. Dot points need a context.
When people hear stories, they get pulled into it. When they get a lot of facts they have a response of "prove it to me"

Spotting a story
Time/ place marker- giving a time or place when an event occurred
Events- a recall of what happened
Characters- people in the event with names
You can see it happening 
Something unanticipated is a good feature of a story.
Stories are about people and events. By telling stories, your body language comes out.
3 sources of stories
Yours, other peoples, other sources. (psychological studies are great sources of stories)

How do you tell the story of your school

Diagnosis- what is our challenge -can have a story attached
General policy and approach-can have a story attached
Coherent action- can have a story attached

The strategic story is to be told, not delivered by power point etc. This creates the hook and buy in

Begins with a vision
A reflection of the past, and then something happened .......
As a result,  we are going to do this, the theory of action.
So we get a particular outcome

Fill the story with your own personal moments
Steve jobs strategic story of the i cloud Is a good example of a strategic story.
Become a story spotter
Become a story collector- anecdote www
build your repertoire of stories
Practice your story telling
Always check the reaction to your stories

Performances of understanding
Leadership challenge template and assessment rubric

Starting Term 4

The term just seems to fly. My leadership challenge is progressing well and the relationships I am building with staff seem to be opening the way fro the work I am doing here to continue beyond the end of this year.
I had a visit from Elida, which was great. She is very inspiring and her positive energy so infectious.
I am a bit frustrated that some secondary Principal jobs are not opening up, I guess it is a waiting game. Just have to be patient.
I have made significant in roads into my use of the effective schools model. This is a planning tool I will use a lot from now on.
The online tutes have been great learning. Reading the material we were given has been good in itself. Contributing to discussions, reading other material the group have provided on top of our book has been good, and reading the opinions and experiences of the other interns, invaluable.I breached our groups posting protocols on the first tutelage this term. I made an error on when the 1st tutelage commenced. My fault. I will rectify this with putting in extra in the remaining
Yesterday I altered my problem of practice slightly as Sharon is concerned I have 3 problems in one.
I am presenting my preliminary findings from my Leadership Challenge today to the Prin team.