Saturday 21 February 2015

Work life balance... Where to start?

Rather ironically, this post begins during the half term break and has been inspired by an email sent to our SLT by The Boss based on something read on twitter.  The title caught my attention, so I decided to park the report writing for ten minutes and have a read.  What followed was an article that captured my interest and struck a chord like few had managed before.


The link to the article by @shaun_allison is below and should probably be read first before reading on...

Before I start this post, I want to make one thing clear: I consider myself to be luckier than most to be in my current role.  From what I hear from colleagues at other local schools, many teachers have far more "pressure" and external stresses placed upon them than I do.  I enjoy my job and deeply value the professional relationships and friendships that I have developed with many of my colleagues.  I feel genuinely lucky to work in a school where there is such a positive feeling of comradery and unique set of relationships between staff and pupils.  Nevertheless, what I read above impacted on an emotional as well as a professional level and that doesn't happen too often.  Because of that reaction, I have decided to explore further the issue of work / life balance in schools in the 21st Century.




As much as I love my job, I often wonder (extremely naively I am sure) when the pressures and pace of work will start to slow down?  The problem is that, as a passionate professional, I am my own worst enemy in this regard.  In a vibrant, fluid school system like the one that I work in today, nothing is ever perfect - nor can it be.  If something is not working correctly, or an area of our practice needs developing then straight away my brain is working towards coming up with a solution as to what can be done to put the issue right.  More often than not, that will end up with me quite happily taking on an extra task / responsibility that may not fit exactly into my current job description. Ping - extra work!  Something else to do - and work that I have quite often created for myself.  I am my own worst enemy.....!



A good analogy currently for starting each new school term would go something like this:  Starting a new term feels very much like attempting to jump onto an already accelerating treadmill and being asked to learn to juggle at the same time, whilst simultaneously feeling that you are somehow being internally and externally judged on the quality of the juggling by those around you; who may also be judging the quality of your jogging as well!  (Then they might just notch the speed up a level or set the incline up by a few percent, or make you jog 20 miles when at first you were only expecting to complete 10!)  If as teachers we feel like this, then something has to give somewhere, surely?  Can we do our core jobs properly if it doesn't?  Can we be truly reflective practitioners who have time to analyse our lessons, learn from our mistakes, have the time and energy to undertake self-directed CDP?  We could of course withdraw into ourselves; become introverted and work to rule as suggested by many of the largest teaching Unions today.  I have seen the various union literature - for example:

However well-intentioned the unions might be, for me at least, I couldn't ever function in that way.  The principle is sound, however making the sort of blanket decrees that are stated here, would at times be counterproductive.  What would be far better would be for individual schools to conduct their own audits of current practices in line with the recommendations, consult with staff and then draw up and regularly review their own Work / Life Balance Policy Statement that could be used to guide thinking and practice.  If this was reviewed regularly and staff opinions were audited, there could well be an impact.


Teacher workload is obviously big news with the politicians at the moment with the 2015 General Election only a few months away.  Only this week, Ed Milliband has tried to repair relations with the teaching profession by proposing a full review into current working conditions and government attitudes towards teachers:   https://news.tes.co.uk/b/news/2015/02/19/miliband-promises-39-new-beginning-39-for-teachers.aspx 

The Tories have done the same.   In reality, nothing seems likely to change - only public perception of the issue.  Schools currently have it within their power to address this conundrum themselves - but of course that leaves a lot to chance and the willingness of governing bodies and head teachers to recognise the importance of work / life balance and the incredible difficulty of implementing what most in the profession genuinely want.


In trying to grasp this thorny topic, I wondered how best to start?  My various answers to my wife when she asks if I've got much work to this weekend / evening go something like this, "How much time have you got?!" or "How long is that piece of string?!"  or "The Usual...." It's then that the guilt starts...



In 2010 we were "monitored" as a school by the LEA (a Mocksted! I hate that term...) who bought in an external consultant - Nick Hind- as a lead inspector.  Many things did not go well during the inspection, however the one main point that we were left with as a school was to investigate ways of doing less.  This advice felt like a huge relief at the time, and is recalled readily by most teachers as the one piece of advice that sticks in their minds. At the time of that inspection, the whole staff team were working so hard, there felt like there was no capacity for doing anything else!  The inspection team observed that every member of staff was working incredibly hard at that time, but just not in a smart way.  They encouraged us to think outside of the box and to live and breathe the mantra "less is more".  We should look at what we were doing that had a measurable impact on pupil standards - and keep it, whilst at the same time identifying all that we did that did not have such a measurable impact - and ditch it.  

Simple advice you would think, but in practice, so hard to do! 


This was a real minefield! When examining workload intensive tasks currently in place, to a certain group of people, a particular task would have great value and a clear reason for being in place. Another group wouldn't see the point and feel resentment for carrying it out.  There is always a fear that if you stop doing something, you will at some point down the line be challenged by somebody for why you are not doing it.  Many current practices in school often stem from a lot of hard work from individuals and teams and have an emotional element of ownership attached to them.  The conversations were frustrating and non-productive.  A different approach is probably needed. Maybe going back to basics- or even back to the beginning...


In trying to come up with a solution, I have regularly wondered what it would be like to freeze time and start again.  If our school was setting up as a new school - a blank slate with no systems, procedures or policies, then what would we want to put in place that would have the greatest impact on children's learning and then staff well-being? I find it an exciting thing to consider, especially when I think about what I would want to get rid of and add in!  I wonder what style of curriculum I would want to include? What planning expectations? What assessment systems?  Timetables? What marking and feedback expectations?  What reporting formats and how often should these be completed?/  What SEN documentation?  Subject Action plans?  Monitoring programs? CPD Records....(I could go on!) Which of these would really make an impact in an "Outstanding" school.  The answer I'm sure is subjective and I would get a different set of answers from every teacher within my school - let alone from teachers from school to school across the country or even internationally.   What systems I come up with would be different from my Principal and Deputy Principal and in turn different to nearly every other member of the school community.  People place differing levels of value on different things depending on their own personalities, preferences and teaching styles.  

Interestingly, when setting up tasks in a classroom, we don't expect our children to always work in exactly the same way. We have high expectations and clearly stated outcomes and success criteria for them.   Should we not expect the same from our teachers?  This happens sometimes, but not with enough regularity. Is there room for a more personalized approach, where appropriate, for our staff to tasks such as planning, marking, reporting, CPD etc without compromising the integrity of the school and standards in the classroom?  It's certainly an age-old conundrum.  If that freedom is given, then how do we ensure that standards are maintained? How do we qualify performance so as to challenge underperformance by a teacher?  There's no easy answer.  Our school has made some headway with this and our personalised CPD program introduced 18 months ago has been highly effective, and praised by Ofsted. It is tied closely to our appraisal cycle and is genuinely working well. In other areas, we have battled hard to create a more uniform and consistent approach across the school where things were disjointed and ineffectual before. 

Anyway, now I come to the main point of this post; the one linked to the article linked to at the top of the screen "Life Without Lesson Observations".  Every term or so in the majority of schools across the land ,SLTs will decree the news that "Lesson Observations are about to take place".  Instantly, for the majority of teaching professionals the levels of stress go through the roof.  Cue hours of work preparing the "perfect lesson". As Shaun Allison alludes to so brilliantly in his blog, teachers suddenly change their practice with the belief that the observer will be expecting to see something new / different.  The personality of the teacher quite often changes in that 30 minute observation as they move out of their comfort zone and end up doing things that they would not usually do.


In our most recent Ofsted inspection during December 2014, for the first time, Ofsted did not provide gradings for lessons, but instead only provided formative feedback based on what they had seen.  For me, that instantly relieved the stress of knowing that the minute an inspector appeared in my room, my children and I had to learn and perform to the highest level - or else!  It made the experience almost, dare I say it, enjoyable, and professionally far more useful



When receiving formal feedback from a lesson observation, it is almost a cliched comment that teachers only focus on the grade that they are given.  It's human nature - we want to know how successful (or not) we have been.  That focus however, prevents us from truly listening to the key messages from the observer and more often than not, powerful professional dialogue does not take place.  With Ofsted now not giving grades as routine, should more schools not be following suit?  



By taking away the formal gradings, as Allison's school have done, the fog of fear has been lifted from each teacher and the professional discussions surrounding teaching and learning have been able to take place with the teacher feeling comfortable, in control and valued.  By providing this "time without fear" for professional discussions, schools would instantly start to remove one of the key elements of teacher stress, and one thing that in the minds of most teachers adds more to their work / life unbalance than anything else.  A school basing its entire way of working around this non-judgmental approach to professional discourse would surely find itself with happier, fresher staff who felt empowered to take control of their own learning and development with increased rigour.  A good starting point may be for leadership teams to consider their key values in relation to their monitoring and staff evaluation procedures and take it from there.


Many schools (including my own) have added a peer mentoring / lesson study approach on top of more formal monitoring - thus, with the best intentions further increasing teacher workload.  That seems to be the problem; good, valuable strategies are gleaned and brought in, but they add to the current working procedures, not replace, refine or necessarily improve outcomes- mostly because of the additional pressures that they add.  Teachers don't often have time to see the value and in most cases assimilate what had been learnt, or even engage with the process properly. To that end the bravery of Shaun Allison's school in moving away from the more formal monitoring is to be commended.


To conclude, the comment that stuck out from Shaun Allison was this: "Our teachers no longer talk about ‘what they need to do to be outstanding’, but instead they are talking about how students learn and how their teaching can support this.  This has been a very significant and welcome shift in the culture of the school........ Like many schools, we used to do marking walks.  Leaders would sample student books from each teacher and then make a 1-4 judgement about the teacher on a range of criteria e.g. books marked regularly; feedback is formative; students respond to feedback etc.  We have changed this now.  Teachers in each department now bring along their books, the whole department has a look at them and then the team identifies strengths and areas for development – with no grading.  It’s now far more of a developmental and collaborative process."


For Shaun's school, they seem to have taken the time to fully evaluate their procedures and why they do them.  As a result, the clarity of understanding and reasoning behind this fundamental change in practice is clear to see. This approach, coupled with ensuring a school-wide level of understanding and ownership of the changed procedures will I am sure have a far more profound effect on teachers' practice than the 'old' cycle of formal lesson monitoring.  I wonder how many other schools will be brave enough to follow suit and give "time without fear" to their teachers in order for them to develop their practice and ultimately succeed in improving standards in teaching and learning in their classrooms?  The benefits for all may be too great to ignore for too much longer.



Thanks for reading.

Saturday 14 February 2015

Getting Started With This Blogging Mission- an Introspective Point of View


For those of you that don't know me, let me introduce myself.  I am currently employed as a year six teacher, maths team leader and senior teacher at the "newly outstanding" (& ever so slightly irresistible) Warden House Primary School in the seaside town of Deal in Kent. I've had the privilege of working at Warden House for over 6 years now and each of those six years has been challenging and enjoyable and frustrating and rewarding all in equal measure.  The positives and happy times come from working with a genuinely fantastic and inspiring set of children and staff; they also spring from working for a boss who genuinely distributes leadership and encourages staff to take risks in the right way.  The negatives stem from the current state of the profession itself, from the spectre of the big "O"  (but, interestingly not from the big "O" itself) and the full set of perceived pressures that we as teachers and leaders inflict upon ourselves and others (guilty as charged on this one) and the lack of TIME in general for so many things...(more on that in another post).

As I start on this blogging mission, a few thoughts spring to mind.  I wonder how blogging will impact on me as a professional?  Many bloggers that I follow online regularly state that they blog for themselves first and their audience second.  I think this is likely to be true for me.  Hopefully this blog will provide a useful insight into my role at Warden House.  It may help you (or should that be me?) gain a deeper understanding of some of the pedagogy and ideals behind who I am as a professional. Maybe it will help me to get some things off my chest?  Maybe organise my thinking with greater clarity? Maybe create world peace?  Cure Ebola?  Unsink the Titanic?  Who knows...? (Well, it would be great if it did the last three!) As I start typing, I guess that this could be a cathartic, affirming and interesting journey.  I am quietly looking forward to it. 

I suppose one of the first things to do is to investigate why I have started on the quest of keeping a Blog... There are several reasons why I have come to this point, the first and foremost being the gentle pressure from "The Boss" who has led me towards an appraisal target this year of keeping a professional blog. It's taken a while to get started, and if I'm being honest, time and work-life balance (or should that be unbalance?!) has played a part in me putting this off. Let me explain...

Most of the Autumn term in 2014 took place against the backdrop of an impending Ofsted inspection.  As an RI school, there was certainly a lot hinging on said inspection for Warden House.  That being said, the waiting game was, for first time in my career, coupled with positive determination rather than a sense of uncertainty and impending doom.  The school was clutching on to its best ever set of SATs results and had a raft of fully embedded systems all geared towards showing itself in the best possible light. The game was definitely on, and we knew it.

From a personal point of view, recognising the additional focus year six usually has on it during inspections meant that every free second of evening time at home was spent ensuring marking was up to date; assessments were made, plans were tweaked and ready and my subject leader role and team leadership work was continuously updated and analysed to death.  I needed to make sure that I was ready and that there would be no chance that I would let the school and my colleagues down in any way....thankfully, we needn't have worried. Ofsted arrived, were rather impressed with what they saw and, in the blink of an eye, were gone again, this time leaving us in the possession of the holy grail of teachers- an overall 'Outstanding' judgement. That still hasn't sunk in yet you know- and as I said to the boss, I've still never worked in a "Good" school!

In the midst of all of this, home life has also been a real challenge over the past few months (to put it mildly!).  I have three beautiful daughters (all aged five and under) who have had the worst run of poor health over the past ten weeks. Exhaustion levels in our household are only just lifting now and my brain is now slowly defogging and rather belatedly feeling ready to begin the new year (yes, I know it's now February!)  The sense of guilt that I have had to endure working long and late when my poor wife has been stuck in for what has been literally weeks at a time dealing with illness after illness after illness (including a six day hospital stay with a poorly baby) has been difficult to endure.  But enough self pity! Back to the point, and back on track with professional thinking and reflection. So, why blog?

The answer to that question certainly isn't just down to the fact that blogging is an appraisal target and one that I begrudgingly have to meet.  If that was the only reason, then I genuinely think that I wouldn't have ever got started.  There is more to it to that, and I think the boss knew that when encouraging me to agree to start blogging as a target this year.  Let me explain.  I have been a Twitter user for some years now, (this sounds like I'm seeking therapy) and would class myself as a Twitter "consumer" rather than "producer".  I dip in and out several times a week, but have never really felt the urge to tweet regularly, unlike some of the colleagues out there both locally and nationally that I "follow" (I still think that term makes me sound like a stalker!) who tweet regularly. 

I would describe myself as a private person and, in the best British tradition, someone who instinctively doesn't like blowing their own trumpet and sharing successes and ideas publicly.  Tweeting, blogging and Face-booking (is that a verb?) is still something that feels quite alien and a little uncomfortable. Interestingly, and somewhat contradicting what I have just written, I have been responsible for setting up and jointly maintaining the school's Facebook feed, which I enjoy doing and post to regularly.  This form of micro-blogging feels just fine as it is hidden behind the banner of the school name and is not linked to me personally.  By setting up the MisterHackett Twitter handle more recently, and transferring that name to the blog, I have created an identifty that, for me, mentally separates my personal and professional identities and makes me feel much more comfortable and secure about expressing my thoughts online.  At least I'm clear about that now!

So, that's a little overview about me and where I am coming from in relation to starting a blog.  If I am being honest, I think that I have rather enjoyed this somewhat cathartic experience, however have waffled on for far too long- especially for what is supposed to have been an introductory post!  I have been inspired to continue!  Thanks to @primaryreflect @chizkent and @moorelynne1for their gentle encouragement (and inspiring and rather cracking blogs!) in pushing me to get started.

Straight away, my brain is ticking and thinking up ideas and possible themes for future posts.  I have arrived at the following ideas:

"Wrestling the school curriculum: From the Pragmatic to the Irresistible."
"Work / Life Balance in the 21st Century primary school"
"Assessing without.... what?" The blind leading the blind...
"Reflections on moving "From Good to Great". What does Jim Collins say from the business point of view that could be applied to education?

But maybe that's missing the point. I'm beginning to see that Blogging isn't about over planning, structure and preparing posts in advance.  It's about living in the moment and responding to ideas, interests and passions as they arise. Now that approach is exciting. Who knows what's coming next?

Thanks for reading.