At the primary school where I’m chair of governors we are planning to recruit a new headteacher.  As you might expect, governors started by clarifying where we want to take the school in the future.  With thanks to my friend and ex-colleague Jim Laing  who prompted this question, I asked: what is the greatest threat to society today?  There were many, so I asked ‘which of those can we address in school?’ I suspect, given long enough, we would have been able to tick them off one by one.  We talked about self-worth, relationships and respect, breakdown of faith, amongst other things.  We might have added critical faculty, confidence,  love of learning, commitment to values and values-based education.  As governors, we have the privilege and the responsibility of setting the strategic direction of the school. If we fulfil our role effectively, what matters to the school will matter to the children.  We talk about primary schools having a role in putting in place the foundations.  Do we know what happens when our children arrive in and leave secondary school?  Not enough, is my answer.  Governors could and should be asking that question.  As the national education agenda demands that we work more closely with other schools, we have the potential to grow that influence: we could work with other primary and secondary schools, so that children have a consistent message from the age of two to 18.

As is often pointed out, we have the children for a very short time, so we need also to work with parents and families.  More importantly, though ‘No-one spends longer with children than they spend with themselves’ was a chance remark by a friend, which has stayed with me.  The new national standards of excellence for headteachers   describe governors as ‘guardians of the nation’s schools’.  By implication then, we are guardians of the nation’s education.  As a board of governors, have you a corporate view of what education is for?

In every school there will be a different balance between the focus on academic results and the pressure to achieve them.  It’s relatively easy for me: it’s not my job on the line if our academic results are not where we expect them to be.  In holding our headteacher to account, perhaps we should also be holding ourselves to account for the impact we are having, not just on this generation of staff and students, but on their children, and their children’s children.

Last month I visited York Minster.  It took 250 years to build. Perhaps those who laid the foundation-stones feared that their work would be in vain. They could not know what their legacy would be.   All we can know today is that over five or six generations the vision was strong enough to overcome all the barriers they faced so that – despite the more recent challenges  – the building still stands.   If we as governors embrace the opportunity to shape a society based on acceptance of difference, perhaps not in my lifetime, nor in my children’s, nor possibly in their children’s, but before the end of time, love will overcome fear.

The post Terror in Paris: what can schools do? first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.

Dear Vicki Davis (aka The CoolCatTeacher)

I’ve only just found your blog If I’m such a great teacher, why do I want to quit?   I’m sorry to be slow.  It took a long time to cross the pond.  I will now join the 100,000 followers.  I heard your cry and I want to tell you – like lots of your followers:  I’ve listened.   You and they know you’re not alone.  In fact, feeling as you were last April might even be normal.

Just because it’s normal, doesn’t mean it’s how it should be.

I don’t teach in a school.  I work with teachers – and more often school leaders. Sometimes standing on the touch-line allows me to see more of the game.  What I see is that schools are full of people who invest not just time and energy in teaching, they invest themselves, too.  They may not be perfectionists (and if they are, they will certainly be heading for burnout) but they live in a world where nothing is ever enough.  Scarcity breeds fear.   Fear gets in the way of becoming our best selves.  Helping someone else to realise their potential at the expense of your own is a poor choice, and when society demands that of us we need to say ‘no’.

I’ve just read your 12 Choices to help you step back from burnout.  It’s great.   Keep choosing to do the things that help you to stay healthy. But I want to say when we are exhausted, we lose the power to choose.  When we’re exhausted, we have no energy.  We need as much energy to stop doing something as we do to start.  So if we have no energy, and no power to choose – no ability to be our own advocate – we’re likely to get stuck on automatic pilot when actually, maybe what we need to do is to land the plane and take a short vacation.  Maybe you don’t need to quit.  What would happen if you pulled into a layby and thought about yourself?  What would happen if, instead of focusing so hard on helping others, you focused on helping yourself when you need it?

Then we get on to core beliefs …  How does this sit with your core beliefs and values?  How far do you value your own intrinsic worth – not your worth because you can be helpful to others, but the wonder that is you, body mind and spirit?  How often do you say to yourself ‘Today, I am enough’?

The term has just started.  You’re feeling resilient.  You know things will look different  by the time everyone gets to Christmas. Like runners in a marathon, you have to get through to the finish.  Why not make a pact with someone now?  When they see you hitting that wall which runners hit, get them to promise to ask you ‘are you sure you want to push through this?  Maybe your body is trying to tell you something’.  If your calling is to look after others, then put the oxygen mask on yourself before the plane spirals out of control.

Yours with great respect

Julia

PS Thanks for inspiring me to write this blog.

The post To CoolCatTeacher – and anyone else trying to balance doing their best with being their best first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.

 The sun is streaming in the window at the back of the hall.  The school staff are smiling,  suntanned and relaxed,  bearing witness to the long days of summer sun.  What a different energy from the one I felt in this room 3 short months ago.  We are here to look forward to the coming year, determined to hang on to all that is special about this school, in the face of the challenges and opportunities of a new school year which includes the start of a 2-year re-build and whatever new initiatives Mr Gove identifies next.  For me, this is the culmination of 9 months’ work supporting this school to re-define its values.  I had offered the headteacher the use of the Barrett Values Centre’s School Values Assessment (SVA) as a means of helping to address some of the anxieties in the system which she defined as

• conscientious teachers worried about being observed, in case they were found wanting;
• staff feeling intimidated by some parents, so that parents’ evenings were becoming a source of anxiety;
• some negativity and rumblings among the staff behind the scenes, which the head was finding it difficult to flush out.

The Values Centre’s School Values Assessment survey is a disarmingly simple and potentially extremely powerful instrument.  We all know that work is more rewarding when our work allows us to live our values.  It asks 3 simple questions

1.  What are your top 10 personal values?
2. What are the top 10 values you experience in school?
3. What top 10 values should the school now focus on to move forward?

The results provide leaders with a systematic means of evaluating the climate of the school and providing the gateway to a powerful dialogue about things that really matter, which underpin excellence in learning and teaching – and frequently remain hidden.

The first feedback on the results of the diagnostic to the SMT was puzzling. While the leadership team congratulated themselves on the good match across the three categories closer scrutiny revealed some hard messages.  One group of staff was having a different experience of the culture from another, and it wasn’t so positive.  Later I fed back to the whole school.  There was no point in hiding the hard messages: those who experienced the culture most positively were upset to think that their experience wasn’t universal.

We kept focused, knowing that acknowledging that people had different experiences was the first step to understanding and addressing what was happening.  The unspoken negativity had risen to the surface for the first time   The ‘elephants in the room’ had been acknowledged.

In the third session I posed the question ‘what are we NOT talking about?’.  People were encouraged – anonymously – to express the inexpressible and together to talk about how – as a school – they could address such difficulties.  It was as emotionally draining as it was necessary.  While they had had to face difficult issues, they had talked about them. As an outsider,  I could see what wasn’t evident to those who were viewing the picture in close-up: that there were subliminal messages in the culture which could account for the different experience of different groups of staff.  In the SMT we talked about system changes which could help.

The ‘desired culture’ helpfully included a call for ‘shared values’.  Starting with the 10 values which had originally been identified by the whole staff as representing the desired culture (several of which they were already experiencing), we spent the day honing them down to 5 which they felt essential for the coming year.  Most importantly, they spent time agreeing definitions, identifying what that value would look like in practice, and what they individually and collectively, needed to do to grow the value.  I overheard discussions about the difference between teamwork and co-operation; there was a lively debate about what ‘open communication’ means, and evident agreement about ‘passion for learning’.

The dialogue which resulted from the headteacher’s courage in starting this journey has led to a new level of trust and confidence amongst colleagues. They have articulated shared values.  which are beginning to be understood by all.  Next time, I hope they ask children, parents, and governors, too.

The post Values, not rules first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.

Rather than speeding past him, the 24-year-old quickly caught up with him, stayed behind him and gestured towards the finishing line, allowing the Kenyan to cross the line first.
Anaya is reported to have said ‘today, with the way things are in all circles, in soccer, in society, in politics, where it seems anything goes, a gesture of honesty goes down well’

Friday 24th January 2013 sees the launch of the UK Values Alliance. The stated vision of the Alliance is to build a values-driven UK society where all people are consciously aware of and live their values

Their starting point is the Barrett Values Centre’s  2012 survey of the national and community values of the people of the UK, whose results will be revealed at the launch.  The detailed statistics are embargoed until then, but they reveal an interesting capacity to discount our own experience in favour of what we believe about society as conveyed through the media.  If everyone consciously lived their values, and was able to interact with others doing the same, would that change our perceptions of society?

Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister from 1979-1990 famously said ‘there is no such thing as society’.  Whether or not we agree with the comment in the context in which it was made,  I wonder whether a resolution to talk about and take responsibility for our own experience, rather than ‘what happens in society’ would result in a different picture.   It’s human nature to seek evidence which confirms our beliefs.  It’s not difficult to find examples of people behaving dishonestly, showing disrespect, putting themselves first or behaving in other ways which might challenge our principles.  It’s a short step from there to believing that ‘everybody does it’ and giving ourselves permission to do the same.  When we behave contrary to our values, we lack authenticity and it’s harder for people to trust us – or indeed for us to trust ourselves.

Values-led education is a growing movement. Every school leader knows the importance of articulating educational values, yet schools rarely assess systematically the extent to which their own values are experienced by – and resonate with – all members of their community.  When our work allows us to live our values, the work becomes easier.  Our efforts go with the grain of the corporate wood, rather than across or against it.  We are able to take our whole selves to work, knowing that what is important to us is valued by our organisation.  Being conscious of and using this knowledge allows organisations to tap in to what Richard Barrett, founder of the Values Centre, calls ‘the new social capital’.

Imagine what might be achieved if everyone in the UK contributed to realising ‘the new social capital’; if you and those closest to you openly talkes about any mismatch between behaviour and values; if you knew that you and your boss had agreed on what’s most important to you and your organisation and always behaved accordingly.

You can help by being values-conscious and values-driven.  If you’d like to know more about yourself and explore what’s important to you, and you can carry out the free personal values assessment on the Values Centre website.

To learn more about the UK Values Alliance, visit http://www.facebook.com/UkValuesAlliance

The post Living your values first appeared on Chrysalis Leadership Development.