Jan 10, 2024
Flight 2023 – very much a joint operation – is ready for take-off. Just like your staffroom on Monday, everyone is involved, with timetables, detailed year plan, updated organogram, job descriptions, class lists and textbook procedures all at hand. Very few schools have all this and key policies in place in time for day one, but then, few schools, like the airline calling Flight 2023, can boast full functionality. Actually, there should be no excuses. By the way, if you have everything in place, just know that you are doing your community and your country proud.
On holiday, there comes a time in a principal’s mind when the festivity and the recharging end. The light turns to green; it’s time to press reset; and the New Year becomes the new School year. That switch happened about ten days ago. When you walk in on your day one, you bring with you that principal spark which lights a school’s energy, the excitement knowing that the campus will soon burst into life and promise, and the confidence provided by quality teamwork and detailed preparation.
From the first moment, you focus on the relationships on which your school depends. Greet with sincerity, show genuine interest, connect enthusiastically with your team and your teachers in common purpose, in joint ownership and in the best interests of your school and its precious learners. Stress that you will face challenges and do the hard things that make good schools great, together.
As the school’s leadership team, your job is to set the tone for the year, essentially by setting the example. Your body language, punctuality, preparedness and even your attire should send a powerful message. Commit to choosing enthusiasm daily. A positive staff mindset will improve efficiency and productivity. How your staff sees you, as a team, matters. Take care of the people in your smaller teams and strive to provide the climate to all to be the best they can be in 2023.
Mark Heywood, the South African human rights and social justice campaigner, in a new year column entitled ‘In 2023, unleash your inner Imtiaz Sooliman’, wrote that transformation and activism are most impactful and enduring when they are addressing tangible issues and start in your own back yard and ripple outwards.
Douglas Abrams goes further by saying that our ability to be generous influences our lasting well-being. He claims that there is ‘strong and compelling research that shows that we come factory equipped for cooperation, compassion and generosity’. Imagine a school’s staff bringing such a commitment to 2023.
I can’t help thinking that, as a teacher, our own back yard is our classroom. Julian Hewitt, CEO of the Jakes Gerwel Fellowship, identifies the classroom as a vehicle of change. Make the classroom the focus of your team’s effort in 2023. There’s no more tangible issue than transforming teaching in every classroom in your school.
A UK teen newspaper, The Week Jnr, chose resilience as its word of 2022. Resilience is the ability to recover from difficulties and setbacks. At its heart is a Latin word ‘resiliens’ which means ‘leaping back’ because something which is resilient will spring back into shape and recover. Teach your school what resilience means and lead the leaping. Big steps. Small wins.
As always at this time, I remind you, that a new year is a great opportunity for teachers, irrespective of their experience, to up their game. A new intake, class or group means a teacher can start over and implement more effective classroom management and teaching techniques which can be entrenched within weeks. They should know exactly what they want to improve and how they will tackle and tweak that improvement. This applies to both better classroom discipline and improved methodology.
Your Gr7s or Gr12s of 2022 are history. You have a new school community. That newness screams opportunity. Harness it to the full. Forge better routines, improved school discipline and a strong school spirit. Do it together.
Fasten your seatbelts.
Til next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor
The Principals Academy Trust
No: 01/23
12 January 2023
Dec 7, 2023
This is letter number 19 for 2023 – that’s 114 letters since Keeping in Touch in Tough Times was born as the pandemic started. If you’ve missed a few this year because you were otherwise occupied, find them in your inbox and do some holiday reading. Here are the headings to help you find the one for you.
- RICA Values – Easily Memorable for Maximum Impact
- Lessons from the Springbok Team to the Staff Team
- Do You Remember that Advert?
- Classroom Management and the Institutional Three Rs
- Passion – The Driving Force in School and in Life
- Schools are becoming Harder to Run
- The Principal – the Key Driver of a Learning Climate
- Staff Absence – a Principal’s Perspective
- Is Flight 03/2023 Ready for Take-Off?
- Connection: the Heart of the Matter
- Professionalism and the Principal
- Is your school in ‘silent revolution’ or in ‘silent crisis’?
- William’s Dream Job – Deputy Principal
- You Missed Something Special
- A Teacher’s Journey to Leadership
- Leaving Leeuwenhof Humbled and Inspired
- Time to Renew and something New
- Flight 2023 is Ready for Take-Off
Recently, I attended the final five group presentations of our graduating principals at UCT’s GSB. The group topics were:
- ‘Induction Program for Novice Teachers’
- ‘How to encourage and increase teacher involvement in staff development programs that empower them’
- ‘Identifying, addressing and improving Staff Wellness’
- ‘Substance Abuse in a School of Skills’
- ‘Improving Classroom Management’
I liked the balance between topics stressing both what happens within each teacher’s classroom and the behaviour and culture beyond the classroom.
Always good to see principals working together to solve very relevant challenges. Some projects focus on one school like the Agulhas School of Skills, but in the process, provide insight and advice to all schools which, inevitably, will be affected in ways big and small. It was pleasing to see the effective use of easily obtainable data. A good example was the correlation between attendance, especially bunking, and substance abuse; and how bunking dropped dramatically on a Wednesday which included the weekly sports sessions.
Another project compared two primary schools by looking at classroom management and its big cousin, school discipline, at a large rural school, De Heide in Bredasdorp and a small, community-driven urban school, Blossom Street Primary in Silvertown.
Putting principals’ minds together to implement the systemic thinking skills they have learned takes the craft of principalship to an advanced level.
Use the same GSB skills to get your own school community to research and investigate issues identified in your 2023 reflection. That in-depth reflection is vital to school improvement. I’m sure these paragraphs bring back GSB and Dr Elanca Shelley memories!
The last days of the year should be a time of gratitude.
No matter how tough a year it has been, there are people who have shared our journey with all its twists and turns, milestones and wins, big and small.
Take the time to write a handwritten note (it says thank you many times over) and be specific about what you appreciate. ‘Thank you for being so willing to help at the busiest of times’ or ‘Thank you for the welcoming smile you so easily share’.
When you greet your staff finally next week tell them exactly what it is you are grateful for, what it is that makes your staffroom a precious place, and what it is you are looking forward to in 2024. Your carefully constructed words and list of things you appreciate will deepen their sense of connection, belonging and self-worth.
Gratitude takes time and sincerity to express.
Giving thanks – properly – is part of the privilege of being a principal.
That’s it for 2023. Rest, Reflect and Recharge and Return Ready for 2024.
Til next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor: The Principals Academy Trust
No: 19/23
06 December 2023
Nov 22, 2023
As a principal I tried, with stakeholders, to develop a list of values to reflect what we were about as a school. However, over the years, we added and refined the list in line with the policies, programmes and projects we developed. At last count, our values – beautifully represented on all stairwell steps up to the first floor – included: integrity, excellence, expectation, can-do-attitude, opportunity, innovation, individuality, joy, questioning, service, style, camaraderie, respect and diversity. I can do a whole workshop about these fourteen values, explaining each one and giving many examples.
However, this list is more about a proud principal looking back than a 2024 school community looking ahead. School values should be specific enough to guide staff and students to model and shape school behaviour and professionalism. They should be easily memorable for maximum impact.
The WCED has adopted six core values to bolster its vision. You see them everywhere. Even on my morning coffee cup! What values have you, as a school, literally made your own to the extent that your learners bring them to life in the way they behave within and beyond the classroom and into their dreams and ambitions?
What got me thinking about values was my colleague, Sue Redelinghuys, sharing her old school’s values at a planning workshop and she dubbed them RICA values. Now, that, even I can remember and bring to mind every day.
RICA stands for RESPECT, INTEGRITY, COMPASSION and ACCOUNTABILITY. It may not encompass my fourteen, but it provides the basis for decent living and that includes leading, teaching and learning.
Values matter. Even just spending some time thinking about what matters to you personally or what matters to you as a school is an important and valuable exercise. The schools I visit often have values painted in bright colours in prominent places. In some school foyers, the value of the month is clearly displayed, but, too often, it’s the February value and it’s November.
The thing about values is that they have to be lived and that means striving, trying and re-trying every day. For values to matter in school they have to be modelled by committed leaders and professional teachers. They don’t become school values unless they’re seen and felt and entrenched in every classroom and learning setting. You’ll find them in schools that work despite their disadvantage because they are made to matter by driven teams who teach with energy, enthusiasm and hope.
RICA helps to keep it simple.
By now you might know that RESPECT is one of my favourite words in education. Respect for self is your personal morality and work-ethic, your self-discipline, your decision-making; respect for others is the dignity, the courtesy and the sincerity which define your personal and professional relationships.
INTEGRITY means principal, teachers and learners acting in a way that is honest, that is ethical, that is true to oneself, under any circumstances, even when no one is watching.
COMPASSION, in a school sense means creating a culture in which kindness is valued and practised. As teachers we know that a smile, a kind word or a compliment can be very motivational. But, in our socio-economic South African reality, compassion requires us to be genuinely concerned about others and their needs.
ACCOUNTABILITY is the crucial one in our schools – willingly accepting the responsibility to teach, teach and teach with substance and skill in a way which, in turn, gives learners the best chance of rising above their circumstances.
The point is that a school has the chance to define its culture. Good principals actually set the tone for how teachers feel in a staffroom. They don’t just read the notices for the day, they create a climate by greeting with sincerity, by taking an interest in their teachers’ lives, their teaching and their activities, by giving their teachers a voice in the school and by doing so with insight and personality.
If I think of the leaders in my last school management team, I can put particular values to each of the faces around the table. They all knew my core values, too. Together we committed to and worked towards a shared vision and, importantly, to protecting and ensuring its consistency, week after week.
When you reflect on something as positive and as powerful as your school’s values, you are taking real ownership of what you have and what you want. And, together, you are shaping the future.
Til next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor: The Principals Academy Trust
No: 18/23
22 November 2023
Nov 8, 2023
I know and understand that rugby and the Springboks are not universally supported in a country with as complex a history as ours, but, as a principal, I love the lessons for teenagers, and especially for a team of teachers, that three victories by a single point over the world’s best to win the World Cup again provide.
Last week I visited six schools and every principal had used one or other lesson from the Springboks in a staff briefing or in starting the Gr12 exam. One colleague said to me, “Look, I support the All Blacks but, for my children and my grandchildren, who are so invested, I would be happy with a South African victory’. Yes, as teachers say, and as Siyamthanda Kolisi, who has become a global leader, always says, we do it for our communities who have been through so much and who need us to give of our best.
On Thursday one of ‘my’ principals, who had just mentioned that he used my Sunday WhatsApp message to principals in his staff briefing, was called out to see to a private matric candidate who needed urgent help. I took the opportunity of writing these fifteen very simple Springbok/Staffroom points which I share with you.
Digging Extra Deep. Every successful classroom teacher understands this concept as does Deon Fourie who, at 38, had to replace Bongi Mbonambi for basically the whole match. He emptied every joule of energy or watt of power on that Parisian patch.
Working for Each Other. We do it, in great schools, when teachers are absent, but do we do it sufficiently when we share the same subject within a grade, when we support each other’s initiatives or when we unquestioningly support school leadership? Siya makes this point at every opportunity.
Putting Egos Aside. Do Cheslin Kolbe, Manie Libbok or Handré Pollard strike you as egotistical? Teachers, generally, understand humility and the idea of putting others, especially learners, first.
Experience Matters. We saw it, using many of the same players who had done it all before in 2019. That institutional and CAPS intelligence, high performance practice and matric marking experience are invaluable to a staff as a collective unit, especially a young one.
Leadership Matters. Siya is the ultimate captain, but, during the final, I saw Pollard organizing the backs, Etsebedi leading the forwards and Fourie talking non-stop to the referee. A school needs active leadership at every level.
Expert Coaching Matters. The RasNaber combination is the world’s best. Not only are they innovative high-quality analysts, they use evidence and make excellent on-field decisions. Every school needs subject and grade and other portfolio committees with the same expertise.
Understanding What Drives Us. Siya says other teams have no way of understanding this key difference. His point resonates with teachers who connect to their purpose and who strive to give children hope despite obstacles unimaginable to an All Black or a Tricolour, let alone an Englishman or Irishman.
Knowing and Relying on your Strengths. Well, defence was our strength, Ox Retshegofaditswe Nche and the scrum were our strength. What are your strengths as a school? Know them with the same clarity and advantage. Use them.
Minimising Weaknesses. We got catching the high ball right. Pollard missed not a single kick in those three one-point games. What are yours? As a school? As an SMT? As individual teachers? Have you had that discussion? How else do we minimize them?
Importance of a Game Plan. Going into a World Cup Final without a clear plan fully understood by all, would be disastrous. The plan is based on extensive analysis of detailed scientific data ahead of each match. A ‘game plan’ is the basis of any subject committee’s work to improve identified skills. It is also the basis of any lesson or set of lessons.
Knowing Your Role. Certainly, my favourite. You can’t defend a try-line for 90 minutes without every single player understanding exactly who to mark, how to regroup, when and where to fall back or how to anticipate the next move. An SMT member or a grade or subject head should understand what is expected and should not wait to be told what to do. Rather, at meetings, report on what has been done at your own initiative.
Finding a Way to Win. Cheslin’s charge down against France, Ox’s scrum penalties and Handré’s monster kick against England and Pieter-Steph du Toit’s twenty-eight tackles against the All Blacks simply made that collective winning difference by just one point. Cheslin’s block, in particular, showed that Small Things Matter. If every teacher looks to make that small difference every day with so much passion and commitment, your school will triumph, too.
Absorbing Pressure. During the campaign the Springboks had to withstand five of the top six teams in the world. Something like surviving eleven busy weeks in a term in a school in a seriously deprived community. Yet, still we make progress, we win.
Decision-Making is a Huge Skill. I’m not going to get technical about selections, the Bomb Squad and substitutions, but Rassie and Jacques made their decisions before matches carefully and during matches decisively. We learn so much from decisions. Those that work and those that suggest other approaches. Every good teacher makes critical instructional decisions every lesson.
First 10- Last 10 minutes. Any good teacher understands this reality. Think of any lesson or of the first staff meeting of the year. A school that gets the first ten minutes of every period right is a fully functional school. The Springboks showed they were on point from Damian Willemse’s confident catch-and-clear from the kick-off and they kept our hearts beating hard during those last minutes.
Huge Desire to Succeed. Did you see Cheslin cover his head with his jersey for the last ten minutes and did you see Siya run straight to him at the final whistle? Their desire to do it for their troubled country was a clear signal to each one of us. We are worth the sacrifice.
Yes, the Springboks brought us together as a nation for a week, but how they went about doing it for their country was inspirational. I just love how clear the lessons are for those of us willing to grow our mindset, to interrogate the many parallels and to find a way to win. Not just to win, but to save a generation of children.
I urge you to read William Gumede’s speech at the Drakensberg Inclusive Growth Forum, held under the auspices of The Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation.
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-11-02-a-winning-template-the-government-would-do-well-to-take-a-leaf-from-the-springboks-playbook/?
Also Songezo Zibi’s https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2023-10-30-what-the-springboks-real-gift-to-south-africa-is/?. Zibi is the national leader of Rise Mzansi.
Til next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor: The Principals Academy Trust
No: 17/23
07 November 2023
Oct 23, 2023
It’s good to see how schools in the market for a principal or deputy are verbalising their needs. Here are a few phrases from adverts in one magazine.
Firstly, for a principal:
“…the ability to manage multiple competing operational and strategic demands and be able to win over the hearts and minds of children, staff, parents and the community.”
“…a visible, approachable and collaborative leader.”
“…the capacity to translate strategy into action.”
“…a firm fair and compassionate leader.”
Now for a deputy:
“The successful candidate will present the best possible example of professional standards to colleagues.”
“…an outstanding classroom practitioner able to model excellent teaching and learning.”
“…efficient management of academic departments.”
“… providing leadership, oversight and coordination of the day-to-day organization of key areas of the school.”
A current advert for a nursery school in the metro calls for someone who is “self-motivated, proactive and innovative”, who has a “robust understanding of the business aspects of running a school” and who plays a “pivotal role in ensuring a seamless daily operation”.
We put our names forward in response to adverts – not to fill promotion posts, but to take the lead, to build a team and to do the work of leading every single day.
Do you remember the day you submitted your credentials for your current position and the heavy sense of expectation you felt in your first year of principalship? I hope you feel they chose right.
What did I learn from researching this letter?
What struck me in one listing was the identification of decision-making as a critically important skill in instructional leadership. We normally think of decision-making related to spending, discipline, authorization and permissions. Obviously, when dealing with instructional leadership – influencing teacher impact and learner achievement in the classroom – decisions are critically important (and difficult) and need a high level of collaboration and buy-in from teachers and team leaders throughout a school. This requires a highly skilled principal who has a vision for classroom practice, for subject specializations and a flair for relationships. Making the right decisions with your team, your teachers and your governors makes you the right principal for your school.
But if you look at South African advertisements for principals, they are looking for CHANGE-MAKERS, leaders who make sense of their on-the-ground reality, who are motivated to make a difference through action, who are willing to tackle creative solutions with extreme tenacity and who, in the process, help teachers and learners to become change-makers, too. Anyone can be a change-maker. Are you one?
One of the first big challenges a new principal faces is the reality of staff mobility. When a highly valued colleague walks into the office and gives notice that a post has materialised closer to home or that a spouse has been transferred, you run the risk of taking it personally or seeing the move as a big loss or a huge disruption. I learned very quickly that staffing was not only a critical part of principalship, but that a vacancy was not a setback but an opportunity. You can’t sit back and wait to see who applies. You know what you are looking for and you and your stakeholder team get to work. Look far and wide. Don’t take the easy route.
If you are a high school principal, look to create your own nursery by appointing only teachers who are qualified and able to teach at Gr12 level. Sure, that’s often difficult in remote or less safe communities, but take time to make better appointments and use the flexibilities of the contract process to best serve your school and its learners.
I have huge respect for capable and thinking deputies who consider themselves more suited to that all-important role of the day-to-day leadership and management of the school rather than opting for the hot seat with all its diverse stakeholder expectations, unrelenting pressure and personal accountability.
I have tried to choose a few phrases related to school leadership which can be used for careful introspection and self-improvement. It is such a privilege to connect with today’s principals on a daily basis. I love sharing in each one’s personality, passion and perspective. That’s the leadership they bring to their schools, and ethical, competent and sincere leadership is what our country desperately needs at every level.
Til next time.
Paul
Coach/Mentor: The Principals Academy Trust
Keeping in Touch in Tough Times #16 of 2023, 23 October 2023
