How can teaching and school leadership be promoted and supported as a career of choice
The Importance of Strong, Skilled and Deadly Leaders
Dave Hartley - Deputy Principal, Coomera Springs State School
ICT role in 21st century education and it's challenges.
A school leadership journey
1. How can teaching and school
leadership be promoted and
supported as a career of choice?
The Importance of Strong, Skilled and Deadly Leaders
Dave Hartley - Deputy Principal, Coomera Springs State School
#OurMobTeach
5. How can teaching and school
leadership be promoted and
supported as a career of choice?
1.More First Nation’s people will choose teaching
as a profession and become aspirational when
they see their own people experience success.
2. What does this success look like?
3. What does it mean to be an Indigenous School Lead
7. 3. What does it mean to be an
Indigenous School Leader?
8. 2. What does this success look like?
The success I create looks like:
Connectedness between community and school,
continually building a culture based on respect
and learning.
Creating a culture where it’s not only the students
who are hungry to learn, but the teachers are just as
hungry to teach them.
Me being just as hungry to develop my staff’s
capability.
9. 2. What does this success look like?
The success I create looks like:
My rhetoric becoming my reality
My relational agenda leading to performance outcomes
10. How can teaching and school leadership
be promoted and supported as a career of
choice?
1. More First Nation’s people will choose teaching as a
professional and become aspirational when they see
their own people experience success.
Editor's Notes
Childhood visiting Chinchilla
2 sets of grandparents
the only set I knew of German decent
no friends, kick the footy at the cemetery
Great great great grandmother was buried at the same spot...
I always knew something was calling me there
I always felt connected to that land, even as a kid.
Leadership journey so far has been a hard slog! Nothing came easy and I had to work very hard to be where I am
- Lab - taught 4,5,1 and 6 (met my wife there!)
Numeracy coach at MSS and CSS - was the ‘maths guy’, missing out on school culture shared between 2 schools
Acting DP at WWSS in Logan. Di Carter gave me a shot. Strong Indig programs and people!
Perm DP at WNSS. Another challenging and complex school.
Moved closer to home at CSSS. Less complexities, but newer challenges. Start of my Stronger Smarter journey as well!
Established first every Indig parent community group
Yarning circle
Cultural activities for the students
Finally giving these students and families a voice
Strong focus on High Expectations relationships (I intend to go deeper into)
Answer with one statement and two questions:
More Indigenous people will choose teaching and become aspirational when they see their own people experience success. Success breeds success. We need to break down that Tall Poppy syndrome where own people can sometimes collude to low expectations and we must celebrate professional success! We’re not good at this and we need to do it better. If we can’t talk about how good we are, who else will? (without getting a big head!)
What does this success look like? I will talk about what my success looks like.
What does it mean to be an Indigenous School Leader?
Going to answer through my new way of seeing, my Stronger Smarter lens!
People ask, what is Stronger Smarter?
Stronger Smarter Leadership Program equips school leaders to have challenging conversations and engage the entire school community to have high expectations relationships and promote positive identities through a range of different processes.
It’s about us lifting our game and being proud and respectful in how we go about it.
Stronger Smarter is much an individual journey as it is collectively for our people. It forces us to look inward and be completely self-reflective. My personal and professional life has changed from the self-realisation skills that I’ve added to my dilly bag.
There’s no secret handshake, it’s not a cult. It’s the most valuable professional and personal development you will ever do!
In my school’s context, it means I can give my students and families a voice that they haven’t had before (SS complex workplace challenge) *explain SS complete workplace challenge
I connect daily, I listen. I talk about culture with everyone (assembly - stories after Acknowledgement)
I raise the bar - not just for student achievement and things such as attendance and behaviour, but also standards of teaching
I create opportunity to share culture (parent group) and empower these people
I need to be deadly, every minute of everyday, because I want to be successful at what I do and let others see that as well.
I am a role model to our children. I espouse the importance of not just getting a good education, but to also strive for greatness.
connectedness can only occur if the relationships have been built. This takes time and a lot of communication. Acknowledge that my strengths are relational - operational skills need to improve!
hungry to learn “These kids just don’t want to learn!” Well, find a way! You’re the teacher and you’re being paid good money. These are the conversations that we know we need to have, but sometimes don’t know how to approach it! *Sue Eckford?
Capability vs Capacity! I know they have the capability, otherwise they wouldn’t be working in the school. But at what level are they capable of delivering outstanding outcomes for our students? | S2S Data conversations | improvement and strategies to cater for individual students |
Rhetoric - When I say that we can’t collude to low-expectations education it means that I won’t accept deficit talk and I’ll pull people up when I hear it (Sue “If they aren’t at the reading level they need to be, I’m not going to beat myself up about it - I’ve done my best.”
Relational Agenda | PERFORMANCE - student performance and teacher performance | achieved by giving and receiving critical feedback (year four teachers and ‘guided reading’ observation) | facilitate robust discussions about teaching and learning | acknowledge strengths and use strategically | celebrate successes| *most importantly, (Chris Sarra), I work with people, I don’t do stuff to them and try to fix them. Assumptions are always a dangerous thing.
I’d like to revisit that initial statement I made earlier and summarise how this can happen
We need to ensure that local Indigenous networks or cluster groups are established within our public and private sectors (this is about connecting people) - excellence and high expectations!
Within these networks, we must ensure that our agendas lean strongly toward promoting the amazing work that our people do. (Aunty Pam telling us about her careers expo this morning).
Facilitative Leadership! (diagram):
We have two options regarding our own behaviour and responses: 1. we get caught up in deficit talk and begin to collude to low expectations OR 2. As deadly leaders, we facilitate these conversations that promote high expectations relationships and change our patterns of thinking that will in time, change our culture.
When our people are recognised as high-performing leaders that not only create change for Indigenous students, but for ALL students, we will inspire many of own people to follow our footsteps. While we acknowledge the past, we must equally be excited about the future.