It’s February half term, that most emblematic of school holidays.
It signals to teachers up and down our fair land that the crucial halfway point
has been breached. From here on out, days will lengthen, but exam pressure will
correlatively increase.
For me, this week marks midway between the start and end of my
SLT secondment: the perfect time to update the post I wrote just four weeks in.
As Director of English and Associate Senior Leader,
having a foot in both camps hasn’t always been a comfortable straddling. I’ve
royally cocked up by stepping on our wonderful HoD’s toes more than once (sorry,
Greg) and if I’m brutally honest I’ve also let my gaze drift from my specific
area of responsibility, Key Stage 3, more than I should’ve at times. However,
being removed even in part from Faculty leadership has allowed me to truly
appreciate some of the areas where, I feel, we have got it wholly right.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve watched English teachers
new to the profession grow into strong and brilliant professionals. We’ve
retained teachers who inspire our students to love our subject every single day
when it would’ve been easier in so many ways for them to go elsewhere (I’m
looking at you, Fry). We teach exciting - new and impressively old - books and
we have a library (@libraryatTHS) that is a shining beacon of good practice.
As an English team, we’ve pursued a curriculum and approach
to teaching built on principle and not gaming – arguably sometimes to the
detriment of headline figures. We’re a diverse and feisty bunch in so many ways
which can lead to the clanging of heads, but I’m ultimately proud when I walk into
our superbly messy work room. School improvement is a wiggly line, but all in
all our kids get a damn good deal: if you don’t believe me then the 25% rise in
core English expected progress at the end of Key Stage 4 tells me we must be
doing something right.
For the first time, I feel we’ve entered a point in our
development where we can now secure and anchor the changes we’ve put in place.
It’s not about wholescale rewriting, but refinement and confidence in our own
practices – holding firm on the tiller despite the choppy waters of an upcoming
Ofsted - which feels bloody wonderful.
More personally, I’ve also realised that six years in one
school can develop a powerful sense of security. I know my context: our
community, our students, and our staff. I don’t take for granted that I also
feel a sincere love for the peculiarities and unique brilliance of my pad. Come
to teach in our school and be warned that if you ask for volunteers to read
aloud you’ll get at least 50% of the class enthusiastically waving their hands
in the air. Our students have humour, honesty (OK, perhaps too much at times), modesty
(or a lack of understanding of their own capabilities), and they soak up
vocabulary and ideas like sponges. Our teachers are wry, warm, and defiant
despite the external forces that make their job so very challenging.
Side note: in my
school I have always felt cared for, valued and invested in. If you don’t feel
like that then know that there are places where you can teach and feel like
this. This isn’t the same as saying the job hasn’t been impossibly hard and
downright maddening. But my tears have always been met with genuine care and
empathy, as well as a willingness to find a speedy solution.
Even frustrations I once felt when some teachers work in a
different way to me, I’ve realised can be assets when approached in the right
way. It was something my Head said that has stuck with me. You don’t have to be
all types of leader. You just have to know someone who is what you need and
then to find ways to work with and deploy them.
But as this confidence has grown, so has a certain nagging
awareness of my own deficiencies. At SLT meetings there have been times I’ve
felt searingly aware of having the squealing ignorance of a new born. Attendance
protocols and the law surrounding parental fines. Safer Recruitment training
and the measures for checking the credentials of interview candidates. The
Science curriculum. I am sharply aware of how much there is I still need to
know.
I’m in so many ways the student again and the mountain that
needs to be climbed at times has felt overwhelming.
What I didn’t expect has been the way that this self-reflection
has even permeated back into my classroom practice. It doesn’t matter how many
time ‘pace’ has popped up as an area for improvement on my lesson observations,
the real lightbulb moment this year came from a Y10 lad called Ben: “Miss,
seriously, just SLOW DOWN. Take a breath.” I finally have confronted the fact
that in my eagerness to ‘crack on’ I speak far too quickly and in a way that
can leave students behind.
In my mind this new found self-awareness is not entirely
unrelated from my feelings of ignorance around the SLT table. I’ve learned to
be more prepared to accept that I just don’t know and that I need to learn how.
Scrap that: I’ve learned to accept I’ll never know
everything. I will always be learning as a teacher and a leader. I will often have
to seek out someone who knows more than me and rely on the knowledge and
understanding they have and I don’t. In the case of my lessons, this could well
be a 15 year old student.
I’m not religious, but I do like yoga and there is something
of the yogi in the realisation that I’m going to be both perpetually at the start
of the path and also well on my way.
So where does this path lead? What is the next step? As I
near the end of at least this part of my journey, I’ll be asking whether I’ve
done what I set out to: improve outcomes for the students in our care and maintain
the relentless focus required for school improvement, even when the headwinds have
been strong and the gales have blown from the north. It’s only by doing this I’ll
know what I’ve really achieved. For self-realisation and ‘stuff done’ is not
the same as impact.