One of my favourite songs- always makes me smile and no, I can never hold that note! (Can’t hold any note!). Released in 1977! I also like the Maroon 5 version but Bill Withers always makes me relax a wee bit more and I need that this morning! I am not smiling about Glow which is trying my patience about as much as the Scottish national rugby side who are in action this afternoon. They can do it! They just don’t do it consistently! But I’ll be watching, singing Flower of Scotland at the top of my voice with tears streaming down my face! (Any time, any place if I hear Flower of Scotland I cry). As for Glow…..Over this weekend, as always, I have been commenting on teacher’s evaluation blogs and my comments have disappeared into cyberspace right, left and centre! Thankfully I do formal comments on word first then cut and paste so I have a copy- just can’t post many of them! Leaving that now before I get cross! I don’t know if I’ll be able to post this but I will have the word copy – technology!
Anyway, technology aside I am full of the joys of having been on a course that I really enjoyed. I cannot remember the last time I felt like that about a course. I don’t go on many for a variety of reasons ranging from cost to content. However, it came to light that I had put myself down for a three day course way back in September for last week. It had totally been locked away in some dark corner of my mind and if a colleague hadn’t emailed to say see you there I would have been a no-show participant! Even up to the last minute I had doubts about spending 3 days out of school on another leadership thing! And it was on the back of a school break and on and on went the excuses. However, Last Monday off I went, picked up said colleague and found a couple of others and teamed up with a group of colleagues, many of whom I hadn’t met before. The Designs for Leadership course was so good I didn’t doodle once! I can count on one hand the number of courses I can say that about. Andrew and Lynne were clearly passionate and very well informed about the whole idea of engaging and developing learners – no matter the age, stage, post etc. The good humour, mixed with a variety of activities that challenged and supported us as leaders, really had me hooked. The coffee and cookies also helped! All the guilt that I felt melted away as I enjoyed the discussions and debates, enjoyed meeting new colleagues and sharing anecdotes relating to school and our own lives – hysterical laughter at one account of an attempt to learn to drive by one colleague and empathy with stories of relatives and their foibles!!!Talk of food, wine, France and dogs were also in the mix and it was very enjoyable.
Mostly though, a huge point for me was when someone said” this reaffirms how important it is to invest in ourselves as leaders.” I had time to reflect and discuss issues that are important to the wellbeing and continuing progress of our learning community at every level. It also reminded me that we are not in it alone and that many of the things that make my brows crease were doing exactly the same to other colleagues in other schools. Everything we discussed and explored affected everything about our school community. There were no lightning bolt moments when the secrets of successful and effective leadership were revealed – there aren’t any secrets and no one size fits all exists. What there was, were three days to think, to explore and to talk shop without having to be on duty to everyone about everything. I love my job and I manage usually to roll with the punches but some days are just frantic! I wasn’t “watching my custard” as I was asked to do a few weeks ago when one of our youngest people left his pudding to go to the toilet during lunch. I wasn’t answering and deleting emails (though, yes I do get them on my phone and yes, I checked them) and I wasn’t juggling all the plates at once (I’d left the awfully clever DHT to do that, and, as ever, he did). I was thinking and considering and learning and it was great. There were two of us there from our cluster of schools and we both would like to take this pedagogy and practices forward within our own schools – and share it even further, so we are going armed with a plan to our next cluster meeting to talk to our colleagues about it, and financial schemes to get more people on the courses. As my focus turns to the School Improvement Plan for next session I really felt a wee smile twitching. I was up for the challenges again. Oh, and as a reality check – no one missed me at all! (That is surely the sign of effective leadership? Aye, right!)