“Tapestry”-
Spent the day in Motherwell Civic Centre at a Tapestry Conference., led by Michael O’Neill and Keir Bloomer. I had not been to a a Tapestry event before, so I was glad of the opportunity, although, Novemebr always seems a particularly hard time to be out of school.
The day got off to an excellent start with two musical items by the North Lanarkshire chorus. Michael gave a thoughful keynote on the characteristics of a leader; in many ways he confirmed what I have always held, namely the importance of relationships. Qualities like enthusiasm, a desire to question established norms, (”Why don’t we? What if..?)carrying out “little random acts of kindness, turning up to support the debating team and, in Tom Peters phrase, catching people doing things well” really chimed with me. In our group, made up of 3 secondary and 1 primary heads, 2 deputes and a teacher of ICT we were able to share our experiences, going “off message” at times in terms of the workshop activity, but looking at why we had come into teaching. the consensus that emerged was a desire to make a difference, to encourage young people to see the potential in their lives, to effect change.
Keir looked at some broad themes, citing research and synthesinsingb recent thinking on effective schools and in particular attempts to raise attainment, improve perforamce. He quoted Prof Hattie of Auckland University, who in his paper “influences on Student Learning” analysised a vast amount of data on school performance and concluded that the key factor that affected performance above all else was
Setting challenging goals and giving effective feedback.
This, of course, is linked to the work by Professors Black and William at King’s London , on formative assessment. Indeed, school improvement is absolutely dependent on effective classroom improvement-we heard the oft repeated point, that if it is not happening in the classoom, it is not happening.
We were tasked, in our groups, with comimg up with a set of priorities for the next 5 years in our school, and how these could actually be implemented. Pooling our thoughts we came up with:
Increased collaboration, particularly at S1 to S3
Instill sense of community and idea of service
send out pupils able to learn on their own, self reliant and not spoonfed
embded international education within curriculum
I came away reassured by much of what I had heard. I though both speakers had much to offer in terms of wisdom and experience at the higherst levels of Scottish education. I appreciated, too, the chance to work alongside some intersting and verfy friendly colleagues whom I had never met before. The main things I’ll take away are;
Importance of recognising, charting and celebrating achievement
Catch people doing something good
Challenge assumptions, Question, envision-ask the hypothetical question
Set goals and give feedback-always-if you want to raise the game
Enthuse and support, be seen around the school
Have a life!
Have courage and independence of mind.
