We’re leading in unprecedented times and the Learn Forward™way is to create a vibrant team to lead and serve through the changing landscape of the world, society, and education.
Here’s the basic formula to create a vibrant team, a team no one wants to leave.
Cultivate Relationships with Prospective Teachers
You’re a powerhouse when it comes to building relationships. Now, you have to be proactive to build relationships with future teachers.
Connect with your local teacher education programs. Offer to take practicum students, facilitate workshops, or share your action research.
Relating with future teachers with the express purpose of recruiting great team members will be essential for dynamic schools.
Delegate for Focus
Delegate more urgent tasks, so you can get to these important activities.
Your Administrative Assistance can build the assembly schedule, your custodian can set up the gym, and your teacher-leader can emcee the event. You just need to thank the presenter.
One of your criteria for every activity is, “Does it take a Master’s degree and 20 years of experience to do this task?” If not, you need to delegate. Ensure the right person on your team feels empowered and valued and get out of the way.
Now, you can focus on what matters most.
Focus on a Dynamic Shared Vision
McKinsey’s research on teacher retention identifies ‘meaningful work’ as a top reason to remain in education.
Nothing is more significant for teacher retention than a powerful ‘Why.’ Nothing is more important than a articulating the meaning of education.
Team members stay because they feel like they are making a consequential contribution to something special.
A unique way your school can capture and articulate a soul story is a manifesto.
A manifesto paints a powerful picture of your school. In your language and design, readers are invited into the school’s ‘soul story’.
A school manifesto is a public declaration of your intentions.
This dynamic vision should incorporate your Just Cause, be an aspirational touchstone for your school, and part of your broader communication planning.
“When your purpose is clear, your potential is limitless.”
If you need a step-by-step guide for how to do this, don’t wait. I walk you through all four phases in my manifesto playbook and e-course. I’m happy to support you personally in a 1:1 coaching relationship through the process as well!
Coach, Mentor, and Give Feedback
Hopefully, you have teachers who range from novice to masterful. You’ve created a shared vision. Now, the focus should be on growth.
Gone are the days of ‘gotcha’ evaluations for teachers.
Once we have the right teachers on our team, our job is to help them grow and develop, both as individual professionals and as part of our dynamic system.
Instructional excellence to improve student outcomes is the big idea. Embedding liberatory pedagogies, decolonizing and indigenizing the curriculum, and ensuring we are focused on graduating powerful learners are key aims in our neck of the woods. What matters most in your context?
How will you strategically design for professional learning?
In my case, I defined professional learning objectives in an annual calendar. During team meetings, each month, we digested, discussed, and applied a key topic related to our annual study. Annual studies included themes like:
- Instructional Design of Units of Study
- Thinking Routines for Deeper Learning
- Reggio’s Documentation of Rich Evidence of Learning
- Assessment for Learning and Competency-based Education
I still think thematically. If you want a collaborator, I’d love to work with you to define a year’s professional development for a team on the topic of liberatory and indigenous pedagogies for equity-deserving populations. Contact me at karine@learnforward.ca.
Own Your Professional Sustainability
School Leaders, I encourage you to define and advocate for your own sustainability.
Prioritize the main three: rest, nutrition, and movement.
Ensure you are in a growing and dynamic peer collaboration. If you need something safe, fresh, and challenging, check out the Better Leaders, Better Schools Mastermind.
Finally, I urge you to define clear boundaries for your work. This may take some professional advocacy, but you are in the driver’s seat. Sustaining your work is in everyone’s best interests.
Here are some key questions to support you along your journey:
1️⃣ When do I sign off and when do I log on each day?
2️⃣ How do I define and protect ‘deep work’ time during the school day?
3️⃣ What is my leadership communication plan with teachers, parents, and students?
4️⃣ What constitutes an emergency when these principles may be broken?
Lead with Compassion
Consider the disruption and significant changes we face as an invitation to lean into the better angels of our nature. When you see the suffering all around you, let it stir up compassion in your being.
“We have a chance now, from this place of disruption, to create a new kind of environment; one that is compassionate and nurturing as an essential foundation for learning; one that focuses on our shared humanity and provides continuous collaboration and learning for both students and educators; one that is grounded in an understanding of the complexity of the education system and acknowledges this in all of the decisions that need to be made.”
EdCan Network, Compassionate Systems Leadership
Right now, “we are the system.” Our actions, initiatives, and forward movement requires re-writing the norms and the priorities in education. Let’s lead with compassion.
For the sake of the children,
Karine 🌱
PS If you’d like to know more about any part of this formula, I’d love to serve as your thought partner. Schedule a discovery call today.