MISSION STATEMENT KEEPS ONE FOCUSSED

My mission statement grew from a leadership program conducted by Dr Colin Moyle of Deakin University (Geelong, Victoria, Australia) in the early 1980’s. Dr Moyle in emphasising the importance of direction and surety of track through life challenged us each to develop a mission statement of 25 words or less. I gave this a lot of thought and developed the following:

To fulfil and be fulfilled in organisational mode – family, work, recreation;

To acquit my responsibilities with integrity;

To work with a smile in my heart.

This statement was and is at the base of all my emails and on the reverse of my business card. it has for me been a reminder, guidance and a focus.

Do others have statements of mission or purpose? I would strongly suggest that all educators consider developing a succinct but strong statement of mission or purpose,

TWO KEY CONSIDERATIONS

As a principal over time, it seemed to me two things (among others) were important.

1. It was of critical importance to separate the personal from the professional in terms of relationships. I feel it impossible to be a good boss or empathic leader if those one os leading are one’s personal ‘buddy’ friends and mates. Separation can enhance respect and make leadership easier.

My advice to all teachers is to consider the need for this professional/personal separation.

2. I felt it important to be a person who led by doing and not by saying. Directing others without being prepared to go there oneself does little to enhance leadership. It is far more important to be respected than liked.

It is ‘doing’ not merely ‘saying’ that is so important and too often overlooked .

ARE CHILDREN LIKE GAS BOTTLES?

Some years ago, a group of Assistant Principals visited a gas works in Darwin. Their guide said that there was similarity between his job and theirs. His job was to oversee the return of empty gas bottles, their filling and redistribution for use within the community.

He said teachers and school leaders had a similar task. They oversaw the arrival of new children starting school. Children as ‘new starters’ were like empty gas cylinders who had to be filled with knowledge and understanding as they progressed up the grades and through the years. They would leave school ‘full’ of knowledge and go forth to serve the community was his proposition.

That analogy gave me much food for thought.

What do you think of such an analogy?

TECHNOLOGY NOT A TEACHING SUBSTITUTE

It is important that technology in classrooms and schools should be appreciated. It is important that teachers and students share teaching and learning opportunities, where these are enhanced by the use of technology and equipment available. However, technological tools should never be allowed to stand in the place of the teacher.

It can be all too easy for teachers to recycle from direct interface with students, preferring instead to establish communications with learners through software packages available to support learning. Using attachments like blackboard, Skype, Scootle, and a myriad of other learning aids can help when it comes to refining and extending student learning. These devices must be under the control of teachers and structured in the way they are used to support student learning. It can be all too easy for teachers to hand pass their role in student learning development to the point of becoming detached.

FRENETIC WORRY FOR NOTHING

It seems to me that educators are on the go and so immersed within the busy-work of our profession, there is no time to draw breath, relax and consider our accomplishments. There is little time for self-appreciation or appreciating fellow educators or students with whom we might be working.

So much of what we do is about administrivia that does little to support real educational effort. Justification is too often the order of the day and often to little avail. No sooner is one set of paperwork accountabilities and compliances completed than we have to move to the next. We stress out, and for what real purpose. There is a need re-position and re-set priorities so they focus on our children and students, not simply on justifying our position as occupational members

THE NEWEST STAFF KNOW THE MOST

One of my discoveries as an educator and member of various organisations, is that of realising that the many recently arrived members of any group, purport to be the most knowledgeable about that organisation. They often reflect a ‘know it all’ attitude to institutions they join. That may be a manifestation of insecurity or uncertainty on their part; they want to prove they are up to the mark! Nevertheless the ‘don’t tell me’ brush-off that can be given is irksome.

Some come believing they are saviours appointed to lead ‘their’ schools and workplaces forward, discounting and peremptorily dismissing what has gone before. As leaders, they tend to consign the history and traditions of their new organisation to the archives or waste bin. Many have the belief that those who were there before them are a threat and need to be shed as quickly as possible. ‘My way or the highway’ along with ‘you are on MY bus and if not, you are off it’ are approaches they quickly move to embed into the thinking of staff.

My hope would be that none of us ever experience such situations. Sadly, that hope is faint. We can however, ensure these sad, selfish characteristics are never a part of our professional make-up.

NEED FOR TEACHING METHODS WITHIN TRAINING

Should teaching methodology be part of teacher training or is it more important for preservice teachers to graduate with Bachelor and Masters level degrees with practical needs catching up later? That has become what should never have been a question.

We seem to have entered an era wherein the training institute hands preservice teachers a degree. On graduation they enter schools where, with careful coaching and mentoring, they are taught to teach – often by people with far less paper qualifications. That is just not good enough. Training institutions should do the job that for too many years has been totally neglected. Teaching graduates should be able to teach. While support is important, no school should have to carry staff to the extent of these persons becoming hindrances and burdens within their schools.

THE BUCK STOPS HERE – WITH ME

Be we teachers in training, teachers new or experienced, school leaders or those with system responsibilities, we should always be accountable for our actions. There is a tendency in life to say ‘who, me’ when it comes to accountability for actions. Shirking responsibilities for the outcome of our actions is a devious and unprofessional habit. To look for support and understanding is natural, but to try and blame others for our actions is wrong.

Professional character and strength is built when we accept responsibility for our wrong decisions, apologise, try and put things to rights, then move on. We should never dump our decisions and actions on others; the blame game is wrong.

The best example to set to children, students and those we lead, occurs when we own the outcomes of our actions. This builds self-respect and respect vested in us by others.

HOMEWORK: BLESSING OR BANE?

Homework is an issue that has been doing the rounds of education for decades. There are educators who believe in homework’s importance, others who would like to discount it altogether. Similarly, some parents appreciate homework while others would like to see it given the big flick. Those in favour of homework believe it reinforces and consolidates learning through extra practice that happens away from school.

Opposition to homework comes from those who think ‘enough is enough’; that beyond the school day, children should be freed from learning tasks. Some parents and commentators suggest that homework is the teacher’ s way of handing their teaching responsibilities to parents.

What do you think? Should homework policies be supported or discounted?

WORK SHOULD BE MARKED

It can be easy to set assignments for primary children and secondary students, then overlook the marking of what they produce. The freneticism of the school day (and week, month etc) makes for marking oversight. Without assessment, the work to students is not completed and finished, They are left hanging in the air.

Should this omission become too frequent, the efforts put in by students will fall away sharply. To overlook marking is demotivating for children and older students alike.

Students appreciate comments and you can’t go past stickers and small tangibles for primary school students. Self marking happens but personalising marking is so important.

SPELLING HAS BEEN ZAPPED

I weep for the way in which spelling has been discounted in this modern day and age. Too often the elements of word study are neglected and ‘anything goes’. Teacher too often do not know how to teach spelling and do not know how to spell themselves. Spelling, grammatical constructs, word usage and application including meaning are discounted.

When I trained as a teacher in 1968 – 69, one of our ‘method’ units was the teaching of spelling. Furthermore, we were required to sit a test of 100 spelling words and were allowed one error. An error included writing the word, realising it was wrong and correcting that word. Failure required the test to be sat again and again and again. The test HAD to be passed before trainees graduated. Failure meant one did not graduate until such time as the test was mastered.

A far cry from then until now, when it often seems anything goes. Dear teachers of today and tomorrow, how I hope you will help reverse that trend by teaching spelling

THE CLASSROOM CAPTAIN AND CREW

Technology with all its advances is better understood by children and young people than teachers. Students in terms of their intimate technological knowledge are often streets ahead of their instructors. teachers worry they can’t keep up.

In 1996, Heather Gabriel wrote in ‘The Australian’, that teachers should not stress out about this factor. She suggested that the classroom be like unto a ship, the teachers the captain and students like unto the crew. A good ship’s captain does not try and try to do everything. He or she delegates to the crew and oversees the totality of function to ensure the ship safely negotiates from the start to the end of its journey.

Similarly, teachers can engage students to oversee aspects of the classroom’s technological challenge while ensuring that technology enhances learning outcomes. That to my way of thinking is an apt analogy

TEACHING – THE PROFESSION CAN BE LONELY

Unless we care for each other as colleagues, as lecturers toward students and teachers toward children, our profession can be very lonely. There is nothing worse than a sense of isolation that can imbue those within schools, universities or other educational environments. Teaching and learning at their best is about caring and sharing.

To balkanise ourselves, isolate in boxes or to become captured within the silo of singular, unshared environment is anathema. The ‘personality’ of education is about how we relate to each other. May synergy (collective energy) underline our shared contributions to this the most significant of all professions.

ASK FOR HELP

No matter who we are or where we sit in the educational structure, we should always, but ALWAYS ask if help is needed. Too often we sit, cogitate and stew over issues that seem to be insurmountable. We may think our status or efficiency will diminish in the eyes of superordinates, peers or subordinates if assistance is sought; In a sharing, caring and collaborative profession that should be far from the truth. As teachers and educators we need to be there for each other

PREPARE FOR THIS TRUTH

As a long term educational practitioner in schools, it seems to me that those who look ‘at’ schools rather than being ‘in’ them, labour under a false belief. They perceive school as some sort of utopian environment in which all students thirst for knowledge and have a keen desire to learn. All that teachers have to do therefore, is teach.

Little do they realise that the issue of discipline is a major stumbling block to this being an actuality.

For many teachers in many schools in many parts of the world, MANAGING BEHAVIOUR is the key issue. Maybe a little teaching slips in on the side, but control of deliberately disinclined students who really don’t want to be there is a key stumbling block. Teachers have ways of adapting to meet this challenge, or at least minimising it’s thrust. But for administrators to believe there are no issues, or to know and not care is just so wrong. They need first hand exposure to classroom reality.

NEVER PUSH FAMILY AWAY

A clear and distinct danger of the teaching and educational profession is that work priorities can push family responsibilities into the background. The amount of time spent at work, or working on work tasks at home can relegate family members. They may come to feel they are being taken for granted.

Family members will wear the tag of second class citizenship for only so long; many families have broken up because work commitments have devalued them, diluting and eroding what may well have been strong family values. Beyond their years at work, those who have surrendered families may well finish up as sad, lonely and unwanted people. “No one on their death bed ever regretted not having spent more time at work”. (anon)

‘Family first’ should be the norm.

TRAIN TO USE TIME WISELY

‘Time’ is an element we should treat with respect and more so than on the educational front. Too often it seems, meetings and other professional gatherings that add to the length of the school day, are held simply because they are timetabled.

If meetings are not necessary, why not cancel them. Teachers and school staff will appreciate the extra time generated and most will use it for other professional activities.

Neither should meetings drag on and on interminably. I believe that any presentation should not exceed twenty to twenty-five minutes. Presenters who go on and on lose their audience who are physically present but often mentally miles and miles away.

We all need to consider the importance and wise use of time. Train as teachers who are time conscious and time wise.

GRADUATE TEACHERS NEED TO FEEL APPRECIATED

There is always an apprehension felt by graduate teachers who wonder how they will be welcomed as ‘neophytes’ by experienced staff and leaders of schools to which they are appointed. While many are pleasantly surprised by the welcome they receive and the support they are given, there are others whose worst fears are founded. It is important that teachers and leaders welcome new staff and avoid offering icy reception.

School leaders for the most part must also recognise their graduate teachers have been immersed in the latest of theoretical propositions, but not greatly in the practical aspects of classroom management and teaching. Allowing them to share their university gained expertise and offering mentoring to support practical needs is surely a wise way forward.

DUMPING IS RUINING

One of the things educators must avoid is the ‘rush’ put upon them by systems to cram more and more into the teaching space of each day and week. It seems that whenever anything, ANYTHING becomes urgent or imperative, it is on schools and teachers to fix the issue. Schools prima facie, become the repository of all social accountabilities. Teachers have to fix issues that go well and truly beyond the educational pale.

I believe we have to resist the issue of becoming the dumping ground for what governments and society feel needs fixing. Authorities identify problems, toss them at schools to fix and like Ponticus Pilot wash their hands of further responsibility. their hands. “Another problem downloaded” one can hear them think.

That is not the way it should work. Educators are accountable people but we are reduced if we accept the dumps that can smother teachers and schools. We need to know our boundaries.

TALKING WITH STUDENTS

One of the most important things about offering security to children is the way in which teachers speak “with” them. Often it’s a case of teachers talking “at” or “to” those they are teaching.

When dealing with each other in staff rooms or collaborative sessions or during professional development sessions, teachers speak conversationally. They each feel comfortable with the other and conversations manifest themselves in that manner.

When dealing with children however, teachers often lose the conversational element replacing it with what might be termed “command language”. The niceness of speech often dissipates and delivery takes on a quite harsh quality.

Metaphorically speaking when dealing with each other, teachers are somewhat like motorcars which hum quietly from point a to point b. However, when relating to Ji I in children those same teachers trade the cars for four wheel drive vehicles, lock them into 4×4 and then grate their way through conversation with children in a manner that can be far from pleasant.

Language can be embracing or off putting. In order to draw children close in terms of comfort, qualities of conversation and vocalisation are important. There is no way the teachers will draw children in and toward them if their language in terms of its invitation pushes them away

E-MAILS CAN SPELL TROUBLE

There are constant cases and incidents happening to remind of the fact that we need to be careful with email traffic. It is all too easy for an e-mail written with haste and without prior thought, to create problems for the writer.

Never ever comment on people or personality issues within emails; discuss issues but not people, messages but not the character or reputation of the messengers.

Be careful in responding to parental emails, because responses can be held against teachers and leaders who commit on issues relating to students. My suggestion (based on many years of experience) is to respond by telephone or by invited the parent in for a conversation.

Emails are intended to save time in responding to queries. Sometimes they can be terribly counter-productive.

WHAT’S ‘NEW’ IS ‘OLD’

New ideas and approaches tend to be pre-tried (or old) ideas that have been planned, implemented, tried and dropped for new ideas in the past. In reality, they never fade completely away but sit and wait until ‘new leaders’ in time come along and revisit the old, trotting them out as new initiatives and possibly the way to the future.

If only education was about ‘steady state’ instead of bouncing from one idea to the next to the next! With all these changes, many of them coming from people in high places and systems level, school leaders and staff are constantly persuaded (or required) to move with the times. At the end of this process are students, poor students.

What must THEY think? Of course, they are never asked. Always question the need for change.

PLAGIARISM

One of the sins of our profession and many others is claiming ‘ownership’ of ideas without sufficiently acknowledging the genesis of the initiative. So often something claimed as belonging to a person by that person, has its origins elsewhere. That applies to information gleaned from the web but also results from the claimant not sufficiently researching to determine whether her or his idea has been tried in another place and at an earlier time.

As a long term educator, I can attest to that happening for me on quite a few occasions. Never did I protests loudly because if our children benefit, does it really matter where the idea was sourced. Nevertheless, one puts these things away in the back of one’s mind and it does impact upon the respect held for purloiners.

ALWAYS acknowledge your sources.

There are poor people everywhere Kaplan. Some are poor and deserve support because of circumstances by which they are confronted. Others are poor because for their preferences to smoke cigarettes ($1.80 each), drink alcohol, gamble and do drugs. Their poorness is less circumstantial and more self inflicted.

The most important part of reading is the establishment of foundational skills leading to word recognition.

What is that?

PHONICS

In most places in Australia this is the end of the first week of school for 2023. I hope for everybody it’s been a great start, a week during which foundations for a terrific year have been put in place. It will take a while for the foundations to be completed. Every year needs to build a solid base. All the all for the 39 weeks ahead.

Handwriting.

Spelling

Grammar

Reading for accuracy and comprehension.

Tables learning.

Listening for understanding.

Singing in class.

General knowledge quizzes.

Proper and sensible reports that are meaningful and not full of jargon.

Good manners

Core rather than peripheral learning.

BEWARE … ‘MY AGED CARE’

I had recourse to examine the Australian Government’s ‘myagedcare’ (My Aged Care) program and discovered it to be a support offered for the aged … but NOT for everyone.

Before accessing an approved package of support, those to be receiving benefit are subject to means testing with a level of investigative scrutiny that is mind boggling. Every vestige of one’s assets have to be declared and absolutely nothing remains private and confidential. If I read the documentation correctly, the costs of determining package entitlement based on assets, have to be bourne by the person being means tested.

My assumption is that people with means and savings will be advised the scheme that may have been approved (subject to means testing) is not available after all.

I have now come to an understanding that those who have savings and been prudent money managers are ineligible for any support. Those who have spent every dollar, are fully supported.

The scheme is long on process and short on outcome. It is almost discriminatory in excluding seniors who have been careful mangers, thrifty and industrious like ants, while being there for those who have frittered away their largesse and, like grasshoppers, have not taken any account for the future.