Jul 25, 2024
I have always been fascinated by an effective teacher’s presence; not just being present, but successfully holding learners’ attention and creating a classroom atmosphere which makes engagement, focus and inspiration possible.
Nothing pleases a principal more than walking the corridors of a school and witnessing, hearing and feeling teaching and learning in action in every classroom. We all recognise that atmosphere of positive engagement as the deliberately chosen and consistent daily tone of a great school. Any principal or deputy on walkabout can immediately gauge whether there’s that unsightly distance between the teacher who sits at the desk and the class left to its own resources. Yes, engagement, a teacher and a class in action, is music to the school leader’s ears.
Think of your own children and their teachers. A good teacher creates the calm and the ethos which makes continuous learning possible. The learners buy in to the teacher’s distinctive way of doing things.
Think of how fully a child embraces the unique relationship and individual attention of a foundation phase class teacher. Forged over the course of four terms, it’s a climate which makes a child feel a sense of belonging, recognition and calm which provide the consistency, the routine and the motivation to bring out the very best in terms of early learning milestones.
Sure, professional presence has lots to do with being fully prepared, organised and familiar with both the subject matter and the methodology, but how sad is it if a teacher fails to create this climate or to take personal responsibility for those all-important milestones? The opportunity, the benefit in terms of further school performance and eventual career and earning potential are severely limited or lost altogether.
Our schools have more novice teachers than ever. Can schools provide professional learning in building classroom presence, interpersonal skills and that critical connection with toddlers and teenagers?
The university has given them the training, but often the toolbox is only professionalised in the engine room, which a first full-time class most certainly is – as any experienced teacher knows. It’s coaching, collaboration, peer learning and personal commitment which turn teachers into professionals with the presence to perform in the modern classroom.
Education students do practical teaching weeks which are monitored and evaluated, but when that one teacher is chosen to join the staff of a first school, that school has the chance to support the novice to use both personality and body to command attention, to create a more harmonious, effective classroom and to strengthen relationships with learners.
It can be frightening to walk into a classroom of forty 15-year-olds as an inexperienced teacher, but it’s important to mask any anxiety with that necessary presence that comes with the right posture, good eye contact and a clear and audible voice.
I’m one of the shortest high school teachers in history, but I know how to stand tall in a classroom and to speak with authority. I work hard to remain calm and grounded; to move into the right spaces and to throw in those powerful pauses for emphasis.
I’ve learned to excel as a storyteller because much of the teaching of History and English is about enticing interest and excitement by slowly revealing a secret or creating anticipation or intrigue as I try to hold attention and to build an emotional response which promotes engagement and learning.
As a principal, deputy or departmental head, you have mastered very similar strengths. I hope that as I detail the skills you all know well it helps you to isolate and share them with those tasked with mentoring novice teachers. So many of them are articulate, lively and willing, but they need to build experience quickly. Nothing will help them more than a very supportive, collaborative climate and a school with a growth mindset which a management team makes clearly visible from day one.
But, remember, a school leader has a presence too – one that gives the school, its staffroom and its spirit a unique character. When a new principal takes over, that dynamic takes on a new dimension. The school may have systems and structures in place, but a new leader brings his or her own personality to leadership.
Yes, as principal, you have the capacity to bring vision, direction, motivation and style to the way teachers and learners feel, interact and perform. Do you bring out the best in those you serve? It’s a question which should make us all think about the way we face every day.
Till next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor
The Principals Academy Trust
Kerra Maddern, ‘Use your body to create presence’, Times Education Supplement, 4th January, 2013
No: 11/24
25 July 2024
Jul 9, 2024
We naturally associate holidays with summer. A three-week winter break is a much-needed blessing for teachers and learners.
Now the challenge is to reboot a positive teaching and learning mindset.
It doesn’t happen automatically; like your surgeon you have to have a detailed and internal knowledge of your patient: your teachers must be just as ready; you carefully envision the procedure; you focus totally; zone in and PERFORM. You know my mantra – at your best.
The surgeon may have three very different operations today – a knee replacement, a shoulder arthroscopy and a crushed foot which requires careful reconstruction. That’s how different a teacher’s approach to methodology and necessary interventions may be from Gr 1 to Gr 4, Gr 7 and, obviously, to Gr 12.
Just as the surgeon’s reputation is earned, consolidated and recommended, so teachers should enjoy the total trust of their colleagues, learners and their parents. Just imagine being the patient of a surgeon whose standards are not world class.
The test results are in, the learners’ individual and collective scores over two terms or a few years are available in various forms – EGRA, systemics, progress over more than one quarter and the general marking profile of all subjects in the May/June assessments.
Gr 1 is the teacher’s equivalent of neonatal intensive care with live data, permanent individual attention and regular collaborative monitoring. After two terms, Gr 1s should be on track to be reading simple stories by November when they are due to be discharged. Who are the most seriously vulnerable learners; how many of them: what needs to be done to give them an early second chance to become healthy learners who will survive and thrive and; how will they be monitored? As a principal, team and teachers – we cannot lose these ‘patients’. They are too precious.
Gr 4 is often when learners’ ’health’ is under threat with the risk factors being a possible change in LoLT, concept-based subject teaching, increased homework, more structure, tests and written exams, individual study and research, etc.
The Gr 7s will, in most schools, score a 100% pass rate in December. How much of that is because the best teachers teach Gr 7? How much effort has gone into making the first year of the Senior Phase a springboard for success in high school? There is national concern about both the general unreadiness of primary school learners and the inflated and inconsistent (from school to school) percentages reflected on reports which accompany applications to high school.
Grade 12, with fewer than 40 teaching days left, are in and out of the casualty ward. They all need to be triaged by someone with expert technical knowledge of matric vital signs. Make sure the whole Gr 12 team knows those who are in the following categories: those who require on-going support to better their best; those close enough to a bachelor pass to be shown exactly what they need; those who need weekly observation and possible re-assessment in a few weeks.
Error analysis is an important part of systemic testing, but it should be every teacher’s duty to study the errors in learners’ quarterly assessment with a view to finding both explanations for the errors and trying to eliminate as many as possible. Ask teachers to document this succinctly and make a point to discuss when popping in to grade meetings.\
Interventions are a critical element in a teaching year as teachers discover disparities and as they learn from on-going assessment. Be sure, however, to implement interventions where the learners are, rather than just revising a topic. Surgeons are intervention experts and teachers should be, too. Consider insightful keyhole surgery that fixes the glaring error identified in the exam. Careful interventions in the Foundation Phase, especially at this time of the Gr 1 year, are in effect, highly effective preventative care. They save lives.
As educators, we are all salaried and, mostly, covered by GEMS for timely surgery. The majority of our learners are not so lucky. When those vital signs are dangerous, they rely wholeheartedly on expert, caring and committed teachers. Their future educational health is reliant on a principal who takes responsibility for teaching and learning, and for teachers who are accountable to the learners they serve.
As we start a new term (preferably on day one or before) the principal and team should bring a number of key priorities into focus. Approaching the issues on a grade basis necessitates meaningful discussion and decision-making in grade meetings, thus including every single teacher.
I hope that my health analogy helps you to feel a little better about starting school next week.
Till next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor
The Principals Academy Trust
No: 10/24
05 July 2024
Jun 6, 2024
Every glossy magazine is full of self-help articles aimed at getting you healthier, thinner and fitter. We’ve all tried each of these degrees of comparison and what stands out is just how hard it is to get better at whatever. Getting better as a principal or teacher is just that – hard. It doesn’t just happen automatically with experience. It happens with a plan, a growth mindset and a willingness to do the work.
The first wise move is to take ownership of our own professional development as principal or teacher. Your school, your district, the WCED, the CTLI all provide opportunities for development, but the decision to get better today and tomorrow is ours. Think about it. Surely, we want our child’s teacher and principal to be smart, talented, creative, collegial and wise. Having an unfortunately unmotivated or tired teacher for even just one year will set our children back considerably.
The second move is to find a partner or two. Teachers get better together. Commit together and share your journey, your small wins, your next steps. Peer teachers are, without doubt, the strongest drivers of better teaching in a winning school.
It is generally accepted that to get better, South African teachers need to focus on three key areas. The first is building high quality knowledge of the content. Imagine having a high school Gr9 Mathematics teacher who knows less than the Gr12 Mathematics learners. The challenge is to become an expert in your subject, even if only at school level. There are so many resources to do this. The same applies to the methods and drills to drive successful literacy teaching in Gr1. A careful look at a marker’s report or systemic result will put you on the right track.
Secondly, we need to make better use of the 40 or 45 minutes allocated to you as the teacher. We get better by developing strategies and practices which maximise quality teaching and active and engaged learning time. Less functional schools lose valuable minutes every lesson which add up to hundreds of never to be regained teaching hours. This is the single biggest difference between schools on a functionality index.
Thirdly, most schools need to dramatically increase the number of daily opportunities learners get to express themselves meaningfully in writing and to interact daily with texts which build their capacity in reading and writing proficiency. Just working towards a daily increase in these practices will drive real improvement. Three simple words which schools can use to ensure that we are getting better where it counts: Teachers (strengthening content knowledge and skills), Time and Text.
It makes sense that to get better one has to see what better looks like. Ask to visit a principal you admire or observe in the classroom of a teacher with a reputation for excellent practice. Young sports personalities spend hours online watching the pros in action. They watch frame by frame and isolate a drill which they tackle hundreds of times in a day. In the same way we can watch teachers on YouTube, focus on the resources they use, the methods they apply, and, slowly and intentionally, make their skills our own.
What did I learn from other principals? I remember being motivated by the simple procedures the best principals used in preparing to see parents who had made an appointment with the principal – having all the right data in one place and having practical feedback in advance from teachers.
I learned from the best how important it was to understand that a governing body needed a steward – usually the principal – to have all the information ready, to know the processes necessary, to anticipate actions required to make the right decisions in terms of policies, budgets, appointments and developments. I went to find examples of how principals compiled quarterly reporting and analysis to governors in advance of a meeting and how principals put together an excellent annual report to parents. I copied no one. I learned from many and devised solutions which suited the school and the community I served.
We all searched for the very best initiatives to improve teaching in the STEM subjects, to take our teachers to world class levels of professional practice, to promote entrepreneurship and to lead the way in 21st century skills development. We looked at the best models, adapted them for our individual contexts and tried them out – first with one year group, and, learning from that experience, with the next.
PAT principals have a clear advantage. They lead by example. They commit to a coaching relationship and to modern management and leadership training at UCT’s GSB. They contribute to a positive school culture which stresses lifelong learning and peer to peer collaboration.
Till next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor
The Principals Academy Trust
No: 09/24
06 June 2024
May 6, 2024
Do you know what makes me a happy pensioner? I’m teachable. I’m not done learning.
Being a principal meant that learning was my daily currency, but, when that ended, I wanted to use nearly three decades of experience as a head to delve deeper into school leadership and to share insights with leaders past and present in the best interests of South Africa’s super-challenging education landscape. And I’ve learned more since ‘retiring’ than I learned throughout my career. I am one of, hopefully, thousands of retired professionals, in one non-governmental non-profit or another, investing in the future of our young people. Your turn will come.
If you are a PAT principal, you’re teachable, too. You will have been visited by one of our coaches to gauge your willingness to embark on a partnership in learning through mentorship, collaboration and the valuable prospect of a highly rated business school initiative. There’s no doubt that the modern principal is the school’s Leading Learner, and, if that’s not the case, learning at the school will suffer. They say the greatest enemy of learning is knowing. Not just that, but, as a principal reminded me, we learn very little while we are doing all the talking.
One may think that in being teachable one is demonstrating humility, but that’s the whole point; leadership requires us to put ourselves out there, to lead and to learn as much as possible on the way. Teachability is not about competence or capacity; it’s about attitude and a willingness to learn, unlearn, relearn.
As principals we are always on the lookout for professional friends or mentors who stretch us. In a coaching partnership, we strive to grow, we ask for feedback, and we try to respond well to it. We like to visit other principals who inspire us. We like to attend events that prompt us to pursue change and we are always in search of a book that challenges us to think in a new way.
Every principal knows just how valuable is the exceptional teacher. And, usually, that expertise and effectiveness was honed through embracing change, seeking out opportunities, an openness to learning, a deep desire to keep improving and a commitment to keeping abreast of teaching technology.
It was Albert Einstein who said, ‘I have no talent. I am only passionately curious.’
Teachability is one of the main criteria we look for in the novice teacher. A seasoned grade or subject head has such a big role to play in developing required standards of professionalism, subject specific competence and classroom dynamics. Highly functional schools foster many such communities of practice which take teaching to the same level internship takes the novice medical doctor. From day one a young teacher or doctor serves a child or a patient in need of high quality ‘treatment’.
The same is true in the sporting world. A footballer may be very talented but may never make it because of not being coachable – an aptitude which makes one a key component in a complex and technically proficient game plan.
One of the interventions the Principals Academy uses is the deployment of Teacher Support Professionals (TSP) in either Foundation Phase or in English or Mathematics in particular primary schools. Catherine Meier, the TSP, in one of the schools I serve, received a message at the end of last term from a Gr R practitioner at Zerilda Park Primary which gratefully recognised the support received with phrases like ‘absolute pleasure’, ‘bringing us back to basics’, ‘taking us beyond our own imaginations’, ‘helping our learners to understand a concept’, ‘you were meant to help us’, ‘you bring us hope’ and ‘thank you for coming into our school’. How nice is that?
Teachability really is an important life skill. One blog I read, Fresh Horizons by South African performance coach, Mandy Russell, was entitled ‘Teachability – To Keep Leading, keep Learning’. She quoted Basketball coach, John Wooden, ‘It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.’
Till next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor
The Principals Academy Trust
No: 07/24
02 May 2024
Apr 17, 2024
After a holiday break it’s time to get myself into writing mode which, I can assure you, is far from easy. The big question is to find a topic worthy of a letter to principals which suits my motivational purpose.
My letter-writing emerged from the forced lockdown of March 2020 in a simple attempt to keep in touch with isolated principals in those unprecedented times. Then my notes morphed into an experienced former principal’s weekly and then, after 60 letters, fortnightly mentor’s musings.
My purpose is to support principals either with solid advice on an issue or with useful content for introductory use at a briefing, team meeting or parents evening. The 30 principals I have coached receive a Sunday evening topical message for weekly inspiration. It is often adapted and contextualised and distributed to teachers, later that evening, who definitely need all the positive support they can get. So, let me share a few things I’ve read and pondered recently.
‘Cost Containment’ is a nightmare for schools and districts. National Treasury is forced to shrink budgets by billions and particular portfolios by hundreds of millions. Decisions on freezing vacancies and ending temporary contracts are taken by number-crunchers who simply delete whole columns and leave bureaucrats to implement the cuts. That a class will have no teacher or no school that day doesn’t hit the headlines till months later.
My advice to principals is to, firstly, have a group of colleague principals at hand to share actual daily developments, to discuss tactics in designing motivations, to identify the right contacts within districts, to consider copying to district directors and, all failing, to get governing body to approach the MEC directly. You can’t take a cut of six or eight substantive posts lying down. You have to ‘hustle’ like a community leader fighting for running water. Just use all the right channels in writing and within the law. I’m sure sanity will prevail.
Secondly, do your best to shield your staff from all the negativity. Communicate daily and gain the confidence of your teachers. They must see you fighting for them and for their school as if your own children were losing their class teachers. You can’t allow the loss of that indispensable Mathematics or Foundation Phase specialist. Make a plan. Yes, you are the principal. Make a plan.
In times of negativity divorce your school from the chaos and noise of an issue and adopt an island mentality – an island of excellence focused on getting on with the daily business of education.
I respected Prof Jonathan Jansen’s direct and insightful analysis in his latest Life Lessons weekly column entitled ‘Instructional time unnecessarily lost in schools’. He used phrases like ‘inbuilt tardiness’, exploiting ‘the slightest calamity or opportunity to waste more time’, ‘routinised absence from school and classroom’. “This is not about one school,” he says, “I have found this in most of the schools I work with.”
He makes the point that 80% of public resources for education goes into teacher salaries. That’s the single most important instrument available to improve results: how teachers use their time in the classroom.
Objectively examine your own school for ‘inbuilt tardiness’ and ‘routinised absence from school and classroom’. There are numerous national studies on this very real phenomenon. Is your school different? Apply your systems thinking tools.
I’ve been glued to DSTv’s age-restricted Chasing the Sun 2 which allows us to re-live all the tension of last October’s Rugby World Cup triumph with behind-the-scenes footage in the changing-room, inside the homes of players’ parents and in clubs and pubs throughout diverse South Africa.
At a press conference last week, Jacques Nienaber, who now coaches Leinster, explains what it takes:
“You have to have INTENT, you’ve got to have ENERGY and you need to be PHYSICAL, and you need to be ALIGNED and ACCURATE in your PLAN.”
Surely that applies in both the staffroom and the classroom. It just boggles the mind to see the level of data and detail invested in coaching a rugby team. We have the human resources to invest the same alignment and accuracy in planning our teaching. Perhaps, in an education setting, we should change PHYSICAL to STAMINA, which has become such a key ingredient in our post-Covid teaching and learning reality. We can dwell on each of the emphasised words with a little contextual input or explanation. Try it with your team or with a subject or grade committee.
That’s my musing for now. Till next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor
The Principals Academy Trust
No: 06/24
16 April 2024
Mar 19, 2024
When we get together as PAT mentors (currently of 102 schools) we often highlight the number of principals who find the pressure of leading an underserved school detrimental to their health. And, we all know, that principals not at their best cannot expect to positively influence their school community. We discuss issues such as proactive daily and weekly organisation, effective delegation, better teamwork and accountability of the staff as a whole and improved relationships between key personnel, but, as we all know, there’s nothing easy about being a principal.
There are so many qualities expected of the school principal and I have highlighted them regularly week after week. But, if we look beyond the academic literature and focus on the actual experience of currently serving principals, there must be a few guidelines we can share to make the hot seat just that bit more temperature controlled.
. One needs to accept what becoming a principal requires as a new and different way of life. All of a sudden everything one says at the front of the staffroom, on an assembly platform or even in the office is repeated, even beyond the school. One learns to be more measured, to think carefully before choosing one’s words and to own what one says.
That means there’s only one way; the right way, and only one version; the truth. That consistency underpins one’s effectiveness as a principal. Not everybody appreciates the decisions that have to be made. Today everybody loves the principal, but tomorrow’s decision is vilified. A popular principal should be liked most of the time!
There’s also an assertiveness that’s required when dealing with so many stakeholders. Not just confidence, but the ability to say what needs to be said. There and then. With clarity and respect. I may be wrong, but I don’t think a passive principal can lead teachers and teenagers in the right direction. Everything about the job is motivation, collaboration and action. An assertive principal is always positive but knows when to say ‘No’.
Yes, there is policy and process and transparency; and the school has distributed leadership, but there is only one Leader, and that leader should be taking the lead. The same goes for the deputy-principal; the school day needs to be led.
One often deals with parents on issues like admission, performance, attendance and behaviour. The principal’s office should be a safe space with a tone that invites instant welcome, straight-talking and complete confidentiality. Every school leader knows how his or her sensitivity, interpersonal experience, interview technique and listening style can facilitate all-important understanding in difficult school and family issues. The school community has a right to expect that little office to be a place of wisdom.
Much of the pain and despair of the fatigued principal is the result of the constraints of the community leader whose mantra is energy, enthusiasm and hope. There is only so much one can do to change underlying poverty and unemployment. A principal deals daily with organs of the state like the WCED, Safe Schools, Social Development, SAPS, municipalities, etc. Every single one of these entities is under serious budgetary pressure. All schools should have a team of support specialists, but that’s not our current South African reality. Principals, teachers and volunteers do the best they can, and their interventions alter many lives. The nutrition programme I witness every day is the greatest success story in our system.
But I have so much respect for the principals who forge impressive relationships with SAPS, who nurture their contact in the district office, who rely on the circuit manager who is just a call away, who use their parent at Home Affairs to speed up that permit.
I will never forget District Director, Wendy Horn’s advice to principals at our conference last year, to ‘hustle’. She gave so much meaning and impact to a word which every principal who wears the title ‘community leader’, should take to heart. I know it’s a tall order, but the modern, assertive principal is a ‘hustler’, doing the very best possible for one’s school and its precious learners.
Principals often bemoan the fear and chaos caused by gang violence in many communities. The victims and the perpetrators are invariably the close family of children at local schools. Principals are at the heart of much of this trauma. How does one deal with such senselessness? It’s not for me to say, but the principals I serve see themselves as guardians of their school and its people. They bring a calmness and an authority to the school community. They see their school as a haven, they support their staff, and they demand decent and respectful behaviour.
The outgoing deputy-chairperson of the Provincial Principals Forum, Mark Mosdell (Principal of Knysna High School) says it so well. ‘School is the core that holds communities together. I personally consider our work, what we are doing and producing in our schools, to be one of the most important roles in the country.’ He goes on to say that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and isolated by how daunting it is. ‘Please remember that you are part of a much broader community’, he said, and you do not have to do it on your own’.
Til next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor
The Principals Academy Trust
No: 05/24
18 March 2024
