Musings of a Deputy Principal

We know that there have been substantial changes to schooling over the past decade.  We are moving from an industrial one size fits all approach to education to a neurolinguistic sociocultural individualised approach.  In New Zealand in particular there is a constant call to address the underachievement of our most vulnerable learners.   We cannot keep doing what we have done and expect different results.  We must change.   Osborne (2014) backs this up when he said that education “require schools to make significant changes to behaviours and norms that have endured for decades if not centuries” (p.3).  But not everyone manages change well.   With the increase in need for change, how can we lead and manage change effectively without teachers crumbling around us?   As leaders there are many ways in which we can ensure that change is led and managed well.  Osborne (2014) talks about adaptive and technical challenges.   Technical cha...

Learning is not solely about reading, writing and maths.  We know this, yet our education system seems to continue to go back to testing and reporting against those subject areas.  So what should we be teaching our students? What should we be focusing on? Dweck’s notion of a growth mindset is something which has gained a huge amount of traction in education of late.  Dweck talks about a fixed mindset, being that intelligence is something you are born with and either have or dont and a growth mindset that intelligence is a quality that you can change and adapt.   The notion of a growth mindset is infact backed up by a range of neuroscientists. Uncapher (2018) talks about how teaching and encouraging the notion that your brain is a muscle and stretching and growing your brain is possible is the key to making growth mindset interventions sustainable.   I wonder how shifting our focus as teachers from academic achievement to a growth mindset will impact on ...

Recently I watched a clip on youtube by Dr Anne Milne.  Milne discusses how mainstream schooling is in fact whitestream schooling.  That when Europeans came to New Zealand, we took on their education system and essentially made Māori fit into the European mold.  New Zealand is renowned for having a world class education system. But do we really? When soo many of our Māori and Pasifika students are underachieving.  Is the focus on Literacy and Numeracy really working for our students? One of the key parts of Milne’s (2017) clip that has stuck with me is when she touches on three aspects of Critical Pedagogy.  These being, empowered cultural identity, academic achievement and action for social change. The majority of schools focus mainly on academic achievement with little to no emphasis on cultural identity and social change.  Milne (2017) examined how by empowering students through knowledge of their identity and providing them with opportunities t...

As a deputy principal considering principalship as my next step I have been clarifying my thoughts around what is important to me as a leader.  One of the first things I think about is the importance of relationships with various stakeholders. Barth (2006) stated that “The nature of relationships among the adults within a school has a greater influence on the character and quality of that school and on student accomplishment than anything else” (P.8).  But why is this important? How can I increase the effectiveness of relationships? At the core of the Educational Leadership Model (MOE, 2012) are relationships.  This means that relationships are central to everything that happens within a school environment.  There are a range of stakeholders that leaders have relationships with including, staff, students, parents, whanau and the wider community.  Trust is an important aspect of developing and maintaining relationships and there are many ways in which trus...