Change Leadership and Management

Some useful Videos I have collected to support my emerging understanding of change management and the difference between managing change and leading change.

Day Three - 21 Day Challenge

Here’s today’s action step: Go visit a classroom—just one, any one you like—and leave a note.

Make it handwritten, make it positive, and make it specific enough that the teacher has no doubt that you were paying attention to the lesson and what he or she was trying to accomplish with students. Nothing about data, nothing about best practices—just focus on understanding and encouraging.

I visited a classroom in the middle block of a busy first week back this term. What an exciting place it was! I loved getting "permission" to go into a class and sit and watch, listen and talk to children about their learning. I was impressed with the levels of engagement of the students in their writing tasks. The teacher was fully immersed in a small group lesson on adding detail to their sentence, and the rest of the class were completing various follow up and publishing their written pieces from over the week. I spoke with one little girl about her learning goals - I asked her "what are you learning to do as a writer at the moment" to which Miss 8 replied, well I can't quite remember, but it's written in the back here [ she showed me] and I have to...[she reads] " use adjectives to add detail to my nouns to make my sentences more interesting".  

As writing is our overall school Annual Goals, I was really impressed to see goals being used and articulated with and by students. 

I really enjoyed the chance to write a short note to the teacher about what I noticed in her classroom. I used a special little card to write in and popped my note in an envelope too. I told her I'd only dropped in to see their amazing writing to which she said " Oh thanks". I don't know what she thought about my card, or my comments but actually, what the card did for me was my own little "reward"! It felt great. It lifted my spirits and gave me a sense of confidence that we are doing incredible things here! I loved this challenge.

Day Two -21 Day Challenge

think back to your response to yesterday’s Challenge step, where I asked you to reflect on how you exercise instructional leadership. As you thought about how specifically you’re an instructional leader, you probably thought about what it is that you do to make a difference.

Today, I’d like to ask you an equally simple question, and I’d like you to leave a comment below with your answer:

When do you exercise instructional leadership?

So today’s action step is, think about when you actually do the instructional leadership activities you described yesterday. Do they happen in recurring meetings? Informally in the hallway? When do you exercise instructional leadership?

I exercise instructional leadership as a Deliberate Act of Leadership by planning the meetings that we hold with teachers. We set aside two days (usually not back to back) to meet with all our classroom teachers. They are scheduled to occur a couple of weeks before the mid-year reports are due out to parents. So these are held specifically in our term 2, week 2. (End of April, early May) every year.  This same process is then repeated again in late term 3, week 8 or 9. (Late Sept, early Oct). They are strategically placed at these times because we know that this is the best time because; they support teachers in writing their reports, they help leadership make decisions about extra learning support some learners may have, ensuring resourcing is adequate, as well as potentially planning professional learning for teacher. This timing also ensures leaders are able to report back to our Board of Trustees on student achievement and how our Target students are tracking towards achieving our Annual Goals. 

Day one- 21 Day Challenge

I joined the Instructional Leadership Challenge which has been set up and is run by Justin Baeder

Director, The Principal Center  in America. I wanted something simple to get me started on a daily journal. I have followed Justin on Twitter from a couple of years and have always been inspired by his leadership knowledge and the work he does to promote and inspire leadership and leaders around America and the world. 

This is my challenge for today. 


Think for a minute about your current role. How do you exercise leadership on things that are relevant to instruction? How do you lead FOR learning? Take a moment to reflect on how you lead—on how you’re an instructional leader - how do you make a difference, every day, for your students?

I lead for learning by:

• prioritising attention on student achievement

• naming the data, - (we have data boards) making sure that I know where children are at so I know who our most needy learners are (this means I can talk with parents, teachers or outside agencies about any leaner in my school at any stage during the year!)

• involving myself in dialogue with teachers about priority learners

• scheduling meetings twice a year to release teachers to speak with myself (principal), the Deputy Principal and the Team Leader

• maintaining a team approach - "what are we doing?, what should we do? what could we try or what do we need to do differently? what resourcing can we provide?

• placing a high level of value on priority learner needs 

• identify the priority learners who are set within the School's Annual Target Goals

• Ensure that teachers are aware of which children are part of the Annual targets

• keeping the "Urgency for raising achievement" at the forefront of everyone's minds

• Ensuring that each team discusses the "data boards" every three weeks

• Building teachers moderation practices and skills to grow consistency across the school

• And we're back to reviewing the data!