What if...

I don't think this blog will anywhere near do justice to how inspired I am nor to how much I have learned today but I'm going to give it a go!  The train is delayed so there's time!  It's tempting to feel cross about being delayed but am I not always hankering for more time to be still?  Well, here I am.  Still.  Looking at the beautiful Yorkshire countryside from the train window.

I have been to three inspiring places today.  The first was Springwell Community School in Barnsley.  I deliberately arrived early as I wanted the chance to look around and learn.  I want to provide, within mainstream school, as close to that which a special provision gives as I possible can so that we can remove barriers for our children.  I suspected, having met Dave Whitaker the head at Headsroundtable, that I would find gold in terms of ideas at Springwell and I was not at all disappointed.  It is a calm, quiet learning environment.  Soft music is piped around the building.  It is also colourful and vibrant.  There are wonderful break out spaces.  The learning is enthralling and all based on the needs of the pupils.  It has KS1-4 all in a wonderful cube shaped building with some truly amazing areas for learning.

Of course, I can't emulate the learning spaces, my school was built in 1857, but the ethos is after my own heart.  The staff are bright eyed with passion.  They are astute, articulate and very knowledgeable about removing barriers and enabling success for these children, and for one another as a team.  They are clear about personal strength, resilience and moral purpose.  There is fun and banter.  The curriculum is engaging and vibrant.  Staff are keen to chat and answer questions about their school. I have pages of notes!  When I have digested them all I shall write another blog about the potential to remove barriers and do as much as we can in mainstream to give our children that type of opportunity.

The second inspiring place was within my own mind.  It was that state one is in when really exciting learning is taking place.  There were so many links, and they were almost seamless.  From what Springwell do, to laughter, banter and engagement, to being read to by one of the best storytellers I have heard in a while, to early years creating an exciting and messy world of learning to music waves and brainwaves.  There was movement, emotion, laughter, music.

Sadly I had to leave early as my husband had a rather important phone call announcing visitors at his school first thing tomorrow morning.  He was an absolute brick when I had my inspection in October and I need to be there for him. Plus the kids are a little young to fend for themselves!

As I changed train in Sheffield I stepped outside the station for some fresh air.  And there I found the third inspiring place.  Sheffield Hallam university was bathed in bright sunshine and the words of the Andrew Motion poem 'What if...' were literally emblazoned on the side of the building.  The sight of it in sunlight is even more inspiring than the words alone.  I shall add pictures to this blog post when I have had chance to download them from my camera.  Here is the poem, really sums up the day for me.

What If..? by Andrew Motion

O travellers from somewhere else to here
Rising from Sheffield Station and Sheaf Square
To wander through the labyrinths of air,

Pause now, and let the sight of this sheer cliff
Become a priming-place which lifts you off
To speculate
What if..?
What if..?
What if..?

Cloud shadows drag their hands across the white;
Rain prints the sudden darkness of its weight;
Sun falls and leaves the bleaching evidence of light.

Your thoughts are like this too: as fixed as words
Set down to decorate a blank facade
And yet, as words are too, all soon transferred

To greet and understand what lies ahead -
The city where your dreaming is re-paid,
The lives which wait unseen as yet, unread.

Beautiful story

I love you little Monster by Giles Andreae

One evening, long after my sleep time Big softly crept to my bed and stretched out warm fingers to ruffle my hair 'I love you my darling' Big said. Now, Big must have thought I was sleeping and I didn't open an eye. Instead I just let the words float through my mind like balloons floating up through the sky. 'I love you my small,' Big continued 'But there's so much to do in the day that it's hard to sit down and make enough time to say all of the things I should say, and it's funny but now that you're sleeping and everything's quiet and calm the words seem to be much more easy to speak.' And Big laid a hand on my arm.

'You're everything I always dreamed of, you've got so much beauty inside, the way that you smile, that you laugh, that you dance makes my heart want to sing out with pride. You live as though life's one huge present, unwrapping a bit every day that's just how we all should be living, my love and look at you showing the way! And sometimes I know when I scold you, you feel that I'm being unfair. But please understand that is just out of love' Big swept back a strand of my hair.

'There are things in this life that can hurt you. They come to us all, that I know. But they give us chances to learn, darling small, and they give us chances to grow. So when you get knocked down my sweetheart look up at the sky without fear, for sometimes we need to be flat on our backs before starlight begins to appear. And please, above all else remember keep love in your heart little one. Reach out to the world like a beautiful flower stretches out to the warmth of the sun. It's the only sure way to be happy, the only sure way to be free. Believe in yourself and believe in your dreams and you'll be all you dream you can be. '

With that Big lay down on my pillow and planted a kiss on my head. 'My beautiful, wonderful, glorious child, you light up my world' Big then said.

With that Big crept out of my bedroom, turning round for one last little peep, I hugged my small pillow and smiled a big smile and then slowly I drifted to sleep.

Christmas miracles

I had some of the most wonderful moments of my career so far this afternoon.  Thought I'd share.  As we are such a very little school I am always conscious of not writing in a way that might identify a pupil.  Therefore I will refer to 'the child' rather than gender specific terms.  This might make things read a little oddly at first but is important.

It was our Christmas carol service this afternoon.  One of my favourite occasions of the school year as our whole school family and the community come together to sing and celebrate.  I always open it with a very short poem, usually one I have found about half an hour before and this year was no exception!  I then hand over to the children as it's all about them.

The first brilliant moment came early on, during Silent Night.  Two new children, who were too nervous to even stand up in last week's nativity, not only stood up with their class but sang too.  One child had hands over face but I could see the little jaw moving so there was definitely singing going on.  That was a massive step forward in a week. 

I then saw one of the best bits of positive behaviour management I have ever seen in my life from one of my staff.  We have a child who sometimes becomes very angry, the child isn't able to express feelings in words very well and tends to express with violent actions and curses.  Fortunately it happened during a carol so no one could hear the swearing!  The member of staff got right down to the child's level and quietly and calmly reminded the child to use words to explain the feelings of anger.  The member of staff then supported the child to do so and the whole situation was positively resolved before we even finished Calypso Carol.  No one other than the staff even noticed the blip.

The next brilliant moment came when another new child, who has come from some tough circumstance and changed school in a crucial year, stood up and sang too.  There was an obvious pride in the singing and I glowed with that pride too.  The same child had also been chosen to do a reading.  This is where I glow with pride for my staff too as the brilliant class teacher had taken calculated risk taking to it's limit here!  This was the first time, ever in the child's school life, that this child had ever been chosen to stand up and read.  At anything.  Thinking that one through a little further there have probably been many occasions where that child has seen others chosen and not been trusted to read.  I can understand why.  At an occasion so public the idea that nerves, pressure and a number of other factors might make a child suddenly shout or swear or both is a pressure on staff.  But my staff know that the sense of achievement and pride for that child when they manage it is worth every bit of that pressure.  The child did stand up and manage it, and very well indeed.  The sense of accomplishment and pride from the child, and the family, were obvious. 

When we are taking on a difficult to place child there is always a pressure because of the impact on results.  We have very small cohorts and floor targets are the same for us as they are for everyone.  I can understand the fact that some headteachers worry about taking these children on but that will never be a consideration for me, nor my staff when we are thinking about taking on a child.  Safety and the impact on learning for other children sometimes are, but never results.  Headteachers that avoid that impact on results though, will also miss out on that feeling I had this afternoon.  Knowing that your ethos and staff have created an opportunity and feeling of pride for a child where it hasn't been there before.  Knowing that child may well remember that feeling for years, maybe for ever. 

Happy Christmas.

Brave leadership

It seems I have volunteered myself to speak on this topic at the upcoming teach meet London event on 11th December at Greig City Academy. So I suppose I had better give some thought to it. I have lots of thoughts but stringing them into something coherent that only takes 7 minutes to say is going to take some preparation! The idea of me speaking for 7 minutes and being succinct produced what can only be described as a guffaw from husband! He has a point. I am not naturally succinct.

This is a point I need to get in somehow, read your audience. The lead inspector in our very recent Ofsted was a neat, methodical, succinct person. This was obvious in the first ten minutes. My anecdotal, passionate, heart on sleeve default style would have been disastrous! I had to stick to point and stay on message. It was essential to be sharp and clear.

Apologies at this point, this is not going to be a succinct, sharp blog post! I am gathering my thoughts in a foggy/bloggy cloud so that I can sift through them. Constructive feedback would be much appreciated!

I suppose that sharpness was brave, I know I'm not very good at it and it would have been more my comfort zone to be anecdotal. But it's essential to sell your school and there is a narrow window sometimes.

To speak at all at a large event would have been literally inconceivable to any of my friends and family when I was very young. I was elective mute until around the age of 5 although I could speak very well from the age of 2. I wold only speak to my mum and then only behind closed doors. At one point my dad used to go down the road to the phone box and ring me to say goodnight. I would speak to him on the phone!

I continued to be painfully shy throughout my school life. I had great friends, many of whom are still a part of my life and was never bullied. My school days, particularly my time at Dover Girls Grammar were a really wonderful time in my life. But I hardly ever spoke! Maybe that's why I got on ok with my peers, they could talk and they thought I was listening. I wasn't by the way, I was in my own world most of the time!

I chose to study at my local university and stay at home. Mainly because my dad was very ill by then. I didn't go out but made some good friends with other students who stayed at home. Mainly mature students, which I like to think gave me more perspective than I had before on careers other than education.

Things changed bravery wise when my dad lost his battle with cancer in my final year of university. I decided over the course of the three most hellish weeks of my life that the only thing to do was get on and do what I had always wanted to. Teach, make a difference, change the world in whatever small way I could. It wasn't the time for losing the plot, for falling apart. It was time to be brave. So I decided I would also speak at his funeral. I had just turned 21 and there were several concerns from my close family about whether it would be awful to allow me to put myself in that position. I was the girl who never spoke. It was unimaginable to them that I could ever do it. Mum knew I could though.

I read this:

http://www.deltaweb.co.uk/spitfire/hiflight.htm

Dad had his private pilot's licence and loved to fly. Reading it was a blur but apparently I read it clearly. Any time I have to stand up now and speak I know I can do it.

The appearance of confidence, not arrogance but confidence, is one of the essential skills of leadership. The rest of the organisation need to know that you are their figurehead. That nothing phases you. They also need to know you are human though, it's how we deal with mistakes that most often shows our true colours.

I have heard it said a lot recently that selling yourself and your school with your confidence in the first ten minutes is vital. Whether it be parent, community member, adviser or inspector. People said after our Ofsted 'You were so confident.' I know I appeared to be and also, lets not forget the confidence an amazing team of staff gives. Their work and dedication meant I knew what I said would be seen in practice. However, under the surface I felt like an athlete that had prepared for years for a performance and only the performance counted. Bravery was needed to override the fear of failure. To know and communicate through every pore how amazing our school is.

I don't want to make any of this about Ofsted really as it isn't. It's about me having a vision for making a difference 16 years ago. Then working, learning always, reading, meeting and knowing people, thinking...to build that vision into more. Into a school ethos, that is sustainable.

I had a great conversation last week with an artist and coffee shop owner about art as a state of being. Great school ethos is a piece of beautiful art. It's inspiring, it changes everyone for the better and it evolves. You have to be brave to create that and keep going when it feels like you're slogging away and getting nowhere. I read this at prize giving in summer 2 years ago when I was feeling like that.

http://brownbagchats.com/archives/14

What Ofsted has given is validation for that bravery. I am going along the right lines. Humility is also very important and brave leadership certainly isn't hero leadership. Anyway, here's the link to the report which I am very proud of everyone for.

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspection-report/provider/ELS/118404

If you stuck with this blog to the end thank you! Be brave. Never be arrogant. Deal with mistakes proactively and honestly. Be yourself. Enjoy making a difference. It's the best job in the world.

Different strokes

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to hear the swimmer Chris Cook speak recently. This was part of the build up to the Olympics for the children of our area as they had been part of a successful project called 'pass the passion' to get the Olympic torch to arrive in Dover.  He also met with the district school council.  His motivational work is based on something very close to my heart, keeping it simple. 

He tells a story about being referred to a sport psychologist in the lead up to the commonwealth games in 2006.  He was feeling overwhelmed at the time by the many different elements to training and nutrition and felt rather aggrieved when the psychologist told him he had an easy task.  When he argued about how difficult it actually was the reply he got was 'No, it's simple.  All you have to do is swim two lengths of the baths faster than everyone else.' 

This really struck a chord with me in relation to keeping school improvement simple.  It also took me back to my own amateur sporting days.  When rowing for our local senior four we had two basic adages.  'Don't pay any attention to what any other crew can alledgedly do, we can only do something about what we do' and 'start as fast as you can and then hang on by the skin of your teeth until we cross the line!'  In other words, in the famous words of my mother when we lost our first race of the season 'well, just row faster than everyone else!'  We did, and won the next 12 races becoming coastal amateur rowing association south coast champions. 

Chris Cook also told a fabulous story about winning gold in Melbourne in 2006.  His foot slipped off the start and it would have been the perfect excuse not to do well.  However he came back from far behind to win.  It doesn't matter where you start and what hampers your progress, it's determination and hard work that's the key.  Thinking about swimming then led me to compare the various swimming strokes to types of leadership.

In my first four years as a headteacher I have spent a fair bit of time trying out lots of different 'swimming strokes' of leadership.  Front crawl - where you can get up quite a bit of speed but your head is down apart from the occasional breath.  By the time you properly look up you find everyone else is floundering behind a bit in your wake.  Breast stroke - ok for the very experienced but I found my arms and legs got all out of time with one another causing clumsiness and confusion.  This stroke badly done as a leadership style commonly leads to muttered comments among staff about the right and left hands not knowing what one another are doing.  Butterfly - fine for the natural born swimmer but when most normal mortals try it we just look totally ridiculous.  Back stroke - relaxing but absolutely no idea what is going on ahead until you bump your head on something. Doggy paddle - hard work...and looks it!  As a child my favourite stroke was a sort of mixture of two.  Breastroke arms with front crawl legs.  Then as I became an experienced swimmer and practised more I found breastroke was fine and not so clumsy, and that sometimes I could do a length or so of front crawl if more speed and purpose were required.  Of course the stroke must be adapted to times where the waters are rough, or when the government switches on the wave machine.

It's well worth remembering though, of course, that swimming is fun and makes us feel good.  So does leadership.  Achievement in sporting terms is the best feeling ever, and so well worth the hours of training , the commitment and the sacrifices made.  Achieving the best we can as an organisation and pushing ourselves to the limit feels tough and too much sometimes.  However, it is also full of a sense of purpose and pride in the children we are doing it for.

Many thanks to Chris Cook for the inspiration and I will look forward to seeing him again at the Kent Headteacher conference in July.

Jumping up and down in muddy puddles

I chaired the first meeting yesterday of a working party to rewrite the behaviour policy. I randomly selected parents, staff and governors and will be meeting with children as well. Three years ago the staff and I decided on the policy, based on the model one. The governors ratified it and that was it. This is going to sound daft, but I'm not entirely sure the children and parents were all that clear on what was in it!!
This often happens with policy making. Leadership is needed, of course, otherwise nothing would actually happen. However, sometimes that ends up bypassing the very people that are within the system. The people the system is for. Whom we, as leaders of public service organisations, are there for.
When I started the meeting I spoke about wanting them involved and gaining clarity about everyone's views. However I also said that our policy is based upon the assumption of good parenting. We may be in loco parentis but we are not their parents. To come back to one of the strap lines within the every child matters policy several years ago 'schools do not raise children, parents do'. We accept fully our responsibility to educate, and in a far wider remit than purely the academic. However, the effective teaching of basic manners and social skill begins a long time before they rock up at the school gates aged 4. The bottom shaped indent at the foot of our stairs from my 2 year old son is testament to this! He tests all of mine and his father's considerable behaviour management skill by the way, but that's for another blog!
In every school in existence the issue of bullying raises its head. I think this emotive issue has so much linked to it within our own consciousness that it is almost impossible to remain objective and calm about it sometimes. Especially for parents. I can be calm and objective until the cows come home...until my child is scared or upset. It is natural as a parent to fight tooth and nail for your child. This is instinct, it taps into the rhombencephalon part of our brain. The fight or flight bit, which is based on reaction and incapable of reasoned thought.
What was encouraging about yesterday's meeting was that parents feel children are well taught within the curriculum about what bullying is. They know the difference now between unpleasant incidents and systematic bullying. They know we will listen as adults, and that we don't ignore bullying. We know it can happen in any school.
Sometimes though, we find that children fixate on blaming another child for things. They constantly tell parents about that child's behaviour and how upset they are by it. And when we really look at it, they are enjoying the attention that gives them from that parent. This is a tough one to accept folks, but sometimes as parents we feed the problem.
I say we as this happened to me a few years ago when my daughter was in reception class. She constantly talked about being afraid of a certain boy. She talked a lot about his behaviour, chair throwing for example. It was hard to deal with. I found myself feeling concerned for her, I have worked in a few different schools and I know what schools have to deal with when there is a difficult child in the class. But now my inclusive views were being tested. At the expense of my child? It's not quite so easy then is it! On top of that my mum was in my ear about it as she does a lot of the dropping off and picking up.
Then I realised that this talking about the behaviours of this certain child was becoming a little habitual for my daughter and for my mum, and for me!
We decided to stop allowing her to talk about it. Of course we didn't put it to her in that way. You need to tell your teacher about that we said if she started, then we changed the subject swiftly. Slowly but surely she chatted more happily about school.
A couple of weeks later we saw the boy and his mum in the supermarket. My daughter rushed over to him, they said hello to one another quite happily and laughed and messed about while the shopping was packed. I'm guessing perhaps she wasn't as terrified of him as we had at first assumed.
As parents we don't always acknowledge our own feelings, pressures, guilt, worry when we are dealing with our children.
Bullying is a real and worrying issue in many schools and, particularly with the steep rise in social networking, an increasingly difficult issue to tackle. My view is that awareness, calm and pro activity are key.
In order for us to effectively tackle bullying issues in school we need to be allowed to. We need the child to be there, not absent. We need parents to communicate faith in the school and the system to children. We need the two way communication to be good.
Schools though need to remember how it feels to be afraid that you might be letting down the most precious person in your life. Because that's how parents feel in these situations. Schools also need to remember that sometimes that fear becomes instinctive and the strong urge to protect your child can override anything. We would wrestle bears for our children so, in the face of that, what the teacher says isn't always regarded highly if the child still seems afraid.
To return to the assumption of good parenting I will finish with this. Yesterday evening my 2 year old son and I had to go and pick my daughter up from gym club as my husband was late home. My son was dressed in his pyjamas, coat and wellington boots. It was pouring with rain. It had been a lengthy, busy day and I was shattered. As we left the sports centre he ran into the middle of a huge puddle and began to jump up and down for all he was worth laughing his head off. He refused to come out and my weak attempts to persuade him failed. In the end I bribed him with a 'yummy frog' (aka Freddo)that I happened to have in my pocket. I had to wonder what would have been thought of my parenting at that moment as this pyjama clad, wet, chocolately 2 year old was persuaded out of a puddle into the car after his bed time!
Parenting is hard, most of us are doing our best. With support from wellington boots and bribery! It isn't always perfect and we are always learning. Teaching, and leading in a school is just the same.

Brave New World

'A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.  Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.'

The opening to one of my favourite ever books, Brave new world by Aldous Huxley.  Part of the list of essential reads given to me by my father when I was little more than a kid and he knew he probably wouldn't see me into adulthood.  To be fair, I'm not sure I'm there yet. 

The motto is not disimilar to many of the mission statements and straplines I have seen in education in my 14 year journey so far.  Similarly to Huxley's context though, I'm not sure that 'identity' is defined in the same way as I would define it.  To me identity is my central core.  The lines I won't cross, the values that get me up every day and keep me going when things are tough.  Also my daft sense of humour, penchant for chatting to strangers, and tendency to wear my heart on my sleeve. 

I sometimes wonder if, with social networking as it is now and my love of it, I will get myself into trouble at some point.  However, before twitter I chatted to people on trains, buses, in toilet queues and at festivals. I also feel that this is the me-ness of me.  It tops up my love of people and reaffirms my belief that people are good.  The vast majority of us all want the same things, the rest is pressure and media camera angles.

Individuals, eccentrics and those with their own identity didn't really fit into the 'Brave New World' as Huxley depicted it.  The impression sometimes is that they don't into education either.  However, surely sense would suggest that the opposite should be true.  I'm not even sure that the opposite ISN'T true!  If you look at outstanding schools one of the common similarities is brave and different leadership.  The government want innovative leaders, Ofsted like that and much more importantly, they get great results. 

A formula for success in education has been the suggestion since I have been in it.  However, what actually works in my opinion, is the opposite to that.  Breaking the mould, daring to be different, trying new ideas.  Whenever I go to a local authority briefing there is a new grid with steps to tick to get to success.  The last one raised a wry smile with me as ours have inserted a new level above outstanding which they have entitled 'world class.' Ironically I was world class a couple of years ago, but at the time it meant I was rubbish and in need of support!

When my son wants to perfect something he has a go, messes up, then has another go.  He adjusts his approach tries new methods and perseveres until he achieves success.  When he first rode in one of these cars he caused a furore at the toddler group his grandma takes him to as he disappeared into the bit under the front and got himself stuck!  He is pretty good now though, he can steer and pick up speed.

In this brave new world we need to be brave enough to have a go, believe in what we are doing and speak up for ourselves.  We need to refine our skills and knowledge so that we have our impact evidence at our fingertips.  This is what leaders have done in the business world for years.  This is already rewarded by inspection teams and it gets results.  Obviously we are not in the business of hatchery, but we are conditioning the future population.