The document outlines strategies for building an adaptive school. It discusses having adaptive and resilient schools that are optimistic, decisive, have integrity and open communication. Adaptive school leaders build empowered teacher teams, support learners, enable student voice, collaborate globally, and focus on equity outcomes for all students. This requires building commitment to common goals through evidence and success sharing, valuing differences, listening to build understanding, and achieving authentic outcomes for students and teachers. Specific actions outlined include valuing teachers, visiting classrooms, pursuing individual students, partnering teachers with at-risk students, alternative learning days, end-of-year reflection, leveraging crises positively, and finding challenges to address.

1. Leading and Building the
AdaptiveSchool
Stephen Murgatroyd, PhD FBPsS FRSA
Masterclass A - Queensland Association of State School Principals
14th September, 2017

6. Time
Usual
Conditions
Ending
Reconciling
Navigating
Thriving
Adaptability

8.  What they say:
 Authenticity
 Engagement
 Respect
 Richness of Experience
 What they want
 Authentic learning
 Compassion and respect for them as
persons - e.g. as part of the design of
learning
 Challenge
 Feedback which enables not disables
 Structure

10. KeepThisin
Mind…

11. Adaptiveand
Resilient
Schools
 Key Characteristics:
 Optimism
 Decisiveness
 Integrity
 Open Communication and a high degree of self-
organization / internal trust
 Performance
 Personal, Compassionate, Fun

12. Thiswhat
Adaptive Schools
Leaders Do..
 Build and empower teacher teams..
 Build and empower supports for learners and learning
 Enable the student voice to be heard
 Connect to others around the world: collaborate,
engage, adopt/adapt
 Focus, focus, focus on equity as an ambition in terms of
outcomes for all learners
 Never let a good crisis go to waste..

13. WhichRequires
 Building a commitment to a common purpose
and agreed outcomes. Using evidence, dialogue
and sharing of successes to show that the
agreed outcomes are not only possible, but
have been achieved by colleagues within the
school.
 Valuing similarities and differences. Rather
than seeking an enmeshed and rigid sense of
how to work on the schools, the schools seeks
to build it adaptive capacity by celebrating and
valuing differences and diversity.

14.  Listening and talking to build understanding. Some
talk. Some listen. Sometimes they do both. However,
the key to the resilient school is the search for
understanding and meaning.
 Striving to achieve authentic, valued and meaningful
outcomes for each student of the school and each staff
member. This is more than a commitment to try to
work towards common outcomes; this is about finding
the authentic voice for each teacher and student so
that their work and investment of energy is truly
valued. The key word here is “authentic” – the genuine
pursuit of the inner professional voice of the teacher to
deliver support for the students learning and personal /
social development intentions

15. ButCanwe
MakethisEven
Simpler?

16. Specifically

17. Concrete
Actionsfor
SchoolLeaders
 Valuing Teachers
 Visiting Classrooms and Walking the Halls
 Pupil Pursuit
 “At Risk” Partnerships – Students: Teachers
 Alternative Learning Days
 Year End Reflaction
 Leverage a crisis
 Find a challenge

18. 7 Valuing
Teacher
Questions
 Is the teaching you do visible to others? Do you invite
peers and colleagues into your classroom to give you
feedback and suggestions for improvement?
 What is your theory of change? When a student is
stuck, fails to grasp a key idea of skill, what do you do
and what have you learned here about what works and
doesn't work?
 What is the evidence base for your teaching? Do you
review the research related to the teaching of tour
subject and use this evidence to rethink what you do,
how you do it and how you assess the outcomes of your
teaching?

19. ..and..
 How are you assessing learning – both assessment for learning
and assessment of learning? Are there other ways of assessing
learning? Have you explored alternative forms of assessment,
review and feedback?
 What do you do in a systematic way to review and reflect on your
teaching? Do you keep a diary or notes about your teaching? Do
you ask others if you can look at their teaching so you can
compare and contrast? Do you compare what you actually did
against what you planned to do?
 Do you own the needs and challenges faced by students who are
failing in your class? If you do, what have you done to improve
their performance and increase their chances of success? Have you
asked other teachers for ideas and suggestions? Have you shared
your own success stories with respect to a weak or failing student
who has turned around and started to be successful with other
teachers?
 What do teachers in completely different disciplines do that you
could try so as to improve engagement and outcomes in your
class?

20. Visiting
Classrooms
and Walking
the Halls
Classroom Visits:
 All classrooms are available for a visit at anytime. There
are no “off limit” of “no-go” classrooms.
 Drop in – no appointment necessary.
 There should be no paper records of the visit, no notes
taken, no recording.
 Visits are not evaluations, judgments or assessments – its
about evidence gathering and sharing.
 The focus should be on the extent and depth of student
engagement – just how engaged are students in their own
learning?
The Hallways:
 Listen, Listen, Share, Listen

21. PupilPursuit
 Follow one student for a few days – live their
experience
 Observe, record, reflect
 Look at the experience of the student ”as if it were your
own” (empathy) without losing the “as if” quality
 Notice the small things - duplication, boredom-time,
fun time, peer to peer time, making things..

22. AtRisk
Partnerships –
Students and
Teachers
 Part 1: Each teacher chose an “at Risk” student to
“adopt” for the first semester. Each teacher would then
share pertinent information about the “at risk” student
with a teacher who would “adopt” the student in the
second semester.
 Part 2: Teachers chose a student and began the process
of identifying and facilitating supports for the student.
Teachers documented why they had chosen their
particular student on the Student Success Plan
 Part 3: Each teacher would find a colleague to “adopt”
his or her “at Promise” student for the second semester.
The teacher would then share information about their
“at Promise” student with the colleague who was
adopting

23. ALODays
 An ALO Day is a full days of flexible, choice-based
alternative curriculum options offered throughout the
year.
 On these days, all 2,400+ students would chose from a
variety of alternative course offerings that fell into
three categories: Recovery, Enrichment, and
Inspiration/Innovation.
 Students were encouraged to find their own balance
between the things they needed to learn and the things
they wanted to learn, as well as to pursue their own
unique passions through inspirational and innovative
sessions hosted by teachers, community members, and
guest speakers.

24. YearEnd
Reflaction
(Reflaction=
Reflection+
ActionPlan)
 Teachers used a tool developed by the ATA for a collaborative
inquiry that allows teachers to reflect on their sense of efficacy as
professionals while examining the critical influences that shape
their day-to-day work
 Teachers were grouped in teams that were familiar to them and
where there already existed an atmosphere of safety and
familiarity. Teachers were invited to look back over the school year
and draw a line chart depicting the high and low points of year as
it related to their sense of effectiveness and impact on student
learning. Teachers were then asked to draw a second line chart
depicting the highs and lows of their overall sense of well-being
throughout the same year. The reflection instrument invited
participants to identify the factors that contributed most
significantly to their highs and lows throughout the year.
Throughout the activity teachers were given the opportunity to
discuss their charts with a table partner or the group as a whole.
Teachers seemed willing to share the charts with colleagues and
the conversations were animated. The activity also called for
teachers to write explanations and reflections alongside the highs
and lows they had identified in the charts.

25. ..andthen..
Teacher responses were grouped so as to facilitate a deep
conversation:
 1. Personal: related to their lives outside school, such as
family support, personal relationships and health-related
issues.
 2. Pupil: related to factors associated with pupils, such as
pupil-intake characteristics, pupil attitudes and
motivations, pupil behaviour, and teacher–pupil
relationships.
 3. Practice: related to factors embedded in teachers’
workplaces, support from management and staff,
teachers’ additional roles and responsibilities, promotion,
workload and the quality of professional development
opportunities.
 4. Policy: related to external policy agendas, such as
educational policies, and government initiatives and
changes.

26. Making Sense

27. 5THOUGHTS
1. “No one else is coming…” (Margaret Wheatley) –
the school is “it” in terms of impact on the lives of
learners
2. Trying to manage and control professionals is like
trying to build an aeroplan in flight – professionals
need to be engaged and own their work, we can
help them focus and align
3. Student voice matters – if we dont engage them in
this work it is not surprising that they disengage.

28. 4. The future is now – many parents and students
worry about “getting ready for the future” (work,
etc.). The future is now.
5. The real work of the school is to create a climate of
trust, engagement and enjoyment – it’s supposed
to be fun!