School-Merbein+P-10+College

= =

Chris John
I am in the unusual situation of undertaking this training as a Campus Principal in a newly merged school. Understandably there are a number of challenges around working across four separate campuses as we have a new school built for us. One of those challenges is in developing the learning culture of the school. This will be a large part of my focus and what better place is there to start than with Literacy as it permeates all curriculum components.

How will this unfold? Will I go crazy in the process? Watch this space...
From Maureen: Hi Chris - developing the learning culture is certainly a big challenge. It is also one of the most enabling things that a school leader can to to support learning. I've uploaded an extract from our soon to be finalised research that includes a section on the role of the school leaders in establishing learning culture and ethos. We'd be very interested in your feedback - whether this rings true and whether it gives you any ideas? Also what might we be missing in light of your practical experience?

Thank you Maureen for this resource.

=DAY 2=

I felt as if we made great inroads into more clarity around our role today. I could certainly see some tools and protocols which would be useful not only for Literacy but in the bigger picture when talking about teaching and learning and developing the professional learning culture of our school. What resonated very strongly was the need to develop guiding principles. I had completed this process once before when working with Joan Dalton and David Anderson and found it extremely valuable. It is an area I would be very interested in pursuing in the coming year with our wider school staff.

=DAY 3=

We had some very powerful conversations on Day 3 which enabled us to 1. practice coaching conversations and 2. put some clarity into the thinking around our roles. It was amazing what thinking poured our of us when we were asked probing questions. I know where my starting point is and that will happen at our staff meeting where I outline the role as I see it for this year. I have to acknowledge that I cannot coach in the same manner as our coach from last year as I don't have her time allocation. I have to make the role fit me, not me fit the role. I have purchased some of the resources from Day 1 and now need to make myself familiar with the contents of these books. The next issue will be to look at the timetable and see where the coaching cycle fits and decide who I focus on. I MUST separate the role of campus principal with performance implications from the role of coaching. Katrina, Sherrin and I are keen to maintain links to support each other in our roles of coaching and to enable us to continue to engage in professional dialogue and practise coaching conversations. To this end Katrina has set up a Ning to allow us to communicate with each other. We also have some plans we would like to include Joan in when she makes her trip to Mildura.

=Between sessions=

Joan visited my school this week and we were able to turn on some glorious Mildura weather for her visit. It showed the chool of i a very positive light as thechildren took to the outdoor stage at lunchtime to practice their dancing. I love those calm Autumn days where everything seems to go according to plan. Our conversation centered around what was a realistic implementation of coaching given my principal role and the complexities around the merger. I have sought feedback from my staff on what they wish to achieve and with that in mind hav decided to focus on planning for differentiation. This builds on the work of our 2009 Literacy Coach and meets our needs in terms of our AIP. For the next three weeks we will collect some data around what the students are doing in preparation for some whole school dialogue. From this we will look at how our planning reflects a) What we are doing and b) What we need to do to meet the literacy needs of our students. I have also ordered some more texts to furthr support my knowledge base in this area.

=﻿Coaching is a work in progress on a rapidly changing landscape=

To say that I am working under trying conditions would be an understatement. I have looked at the data available to me and discussed with teachers what this means in terms of our literacy teaching. We now have ILPs in place for a larger number of students. Student goal setting is a feature of our program this year and there is a very real partnership between teacher and student in the development of these. This partnership extends to the parents as well in gaining their commottment to supporting the child to achieve their goals. As a staff each teacher observed 3 students (5 mins per day for a week each) in their class initially and we shared the observations and discussed what they meant in terms of children's learning and our teaching. It would be fair to say that some of the observations surprised the teachers even though I felt they had chosen students they had good knowledge of. I had also spent some time in the classrooms observing the students during a literacy session to get a handle on the level of engagement. As a result of this I gave them a further round of observation with a child I selected. The feedback was much more detailed and teachers were able to identify some opportunities for more personalisation of their learning. Enter the complications: 1. I was experiencing some frustrations around the work of our merger and how we were not aligning the practice at the three primary campuses. In reporting our Literacy and Numeracy data to our RNL I discussed the impact this was having in two regards; a) as one of the literacy co-ordinators I was trying to roll out the Literacy Modules across the 4 campuses with no idea of the level of uptake, b) another site had a network literacy coach and they were accessing some quality learning with the staff of the other schools being kept in the dark. This just didn't work for me. It didn't make sense. 2. Some heavy issues around the merger were emerging which required considerable time and energy on my part, pulling me out of the school quite frequently. This meant I was not paying attention to the coaching to the level I was satisfied with. These issues required some rethinking. I am a strong believer in the power of team work and the path forward has come about as a result of this approach as follows: A meeting was held with our RNL, NLIO, Coaching co-ordinator, Literacy Coach from neighbouring site, Lieracy co-ordinators and school leadership team. The goal was to find a way that all sites could implement coaching cycles and the literacy co-ordinators (myself included) could form a team to facilitate the learning and coaching. Together we looked at the needs of our sites and determined some timelines, a focus and the modus operandi. To implement this we required additional CRT support and some timetable changes. We decided on some big learning around the focus of Think Alouds, including pre-readings and an after school PD for the first cycle. This was followed by 2 rounds of peer coaching (I was one of each pair observing and did the first lesson myself to show I was willing to be observed too) and finished with supplementary readings and a reflection. Protocols were developed for observation and feedback. There was some awkwardness around the first round of observations and feedback but we discussed this with the staff and through our debriefs and reflection meetings. There is a willingness to continue to work through this. In the second observations I noticed that teachers were a little more relaxed and obviously more prepared. I have continued to notice this in their classrooms since. I guess this means that like moving sands our focus has shifted again. I believe this had to happen as I am committed to making our merger work. This won't happen unless we align our practices and we have taken the first step in doing this in literacy at least.

From Maureen: Chris, I think the way you are documenting your learning journey is really helpful to others. I can see you are definitely working at a meta-strategic level and attending to alignments and coherence of your approach. We know from leadership research that this is crucial. You are also very engaged in the professional learning yourself - another very strong factor known to impact student achievement. Think Alouds are a strategy to develop the Accountable Talk and meta-language of learning dimension of literacy - this is vital for acceleration of learners. I'm interested in what you are noticing about the quality of talk that is the result of the Think Alouds - I can see that the tool describes the fine detail of the teaching practices - the question this raised for me was how are teachers monitoring their impact of using Think Alouds in terms of the effect on students? How will they determine if Think Alouds work as a strategy? My questions are guided by considering the following principles of effective professional learning: a) enabling teachers to make links between their practice and student learning and b) developing skills of evidence informed inquiry for sustainable learning.

10/10/10 =Critical Reflection= =﻿= I found this tool to be very useful in reflecting on my journey, identifying the dilemmas faced and identifying the path forward.



14/10/10

Sometimes you don't realise how far you have travelled until you sit down and reflect on the journey. [[image:womantraveler.jpg width="113" height="89"]]
20/10/10

I'm so excited!!!
Our first cross-campus peer-observations are going very well and everyone is embracing the opportunity to work with their peers from a different campus. What a change in culture - from competition to co-operation. Even more exciting is the common language & focus and the dialogue that is occuring between the participants. We are finding the relationships across the whole staff is strengthening and the interaction in our PD sessions is far more natural.

25/10/10

Evidence tools

Below is a powerpoint which documents my journey over the last few months in implementing coaching in my school environment. I must apologise as I can't seem to upload with working videos.