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Writer's pictureNadia Ballantine & Carol Lynch

Clearing The Way



A noticing from us……..everyone is VERY busy. This is not new but we are hypothesising that ‘busy’ contributes negatively to teacher wellbeing and performance.

We can’t keep getting busier. (You might be thinking no sh..!)

We’d like to provoke some thought about what we can do.

 

We’re proposing that the next leaderful behaviour is actually investigating and understanding what makes your school busy. Then taking practical steps to do less better.

This may be the next innovation to support the direction of education and therefore improve outcomes for learners.

As a school leader you have considerable autonomy. Take the lead to declutter.

How could you get started to find out what contributes to ‘busy’?

Questions

  1. How do we spend our time?

  2. What interrupts continuous learning time?

  3. How many PLD initiatives do we currently have?

  4. What school systems are contributing to busyness? For example; meeting schedules, meeting effectiveness, meeting facilitation, reporting, planning expectations.

  5. How clear is your leadership pipeline? Is everyone doing their own work or are some people doing other people’s work? 

  6. How brave are we?  

  7. How does what we say ‘yes’ to align to our strategic direction and priorities?

  8. When we decision make are we accurately considering the impact on the classroom teacher?

Tools

  1. Time audit; here’s an example from The Leaders Suitcase. For a week, every 30 minutes, stop and record what you’re doing. Analyse. What is the evidence telling you?

  2. Brainstorm all the things that take learners out of the classroom during the week. Categorise and then consider the impact. What positive difference is this having on learners? What is the impact on teachers?

  3. Gather staff voice. Identify your biggest time sucks. Identify one change you could make to your work that would make you less busy / more effective.

  4. Establish a focus group of teachers, get their feedback on what is contributing to busyness and their possible solutions.

  5. Job descriptions, school wide expectations, leadership development plan, coaching programme  - have you got these documented? Is it time for review?

  6. Saying no. A reminder that as a leader that you have considerable autonomy to say it.

  7. What we talk about shows people what’s important and what’s important is what improves.    

  8. A proactive leader anticipates challenges and has a plan for handling them.




P.S. We can help you with all or some of this!

 

Mānawatia a Matariki - Looking forward to the promise of a new year.

Carol & Nadia

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