Lessons learned from ASL in a Kāhui Ako

On Friday the 13th of October, four of our Across School Leaders presented our journey as ASL in our ACCoS Kāhui Ako at uLearn. They were Catherine, Erin, Sue and Sonya

Here is a link to our abstract.

Here is our presentation.

We had 23 attendees from all sectors and 13 completed the google form to help us identify who we were were sharing with.

We had mostly across school leaders attend our session

We also put up a Padlet life for questions that they were seeking answers to and we answered them from our current situation. If you are new to a Kāhui Ako you might find these useful.

From many questions and comment on our Padlet, we were able to ascertain that several were new to Kāhui Ako

Evaluation Feedback

We had 4 attendees take time to give us feedback after the session so thanks to those of you who gave us feedback as this helps us refine what we do for next time. Here are some of the comments.

• Excellent collaborative sharing your experiences with others on what has not and has been successful within your CoL.
• Really useful to hear about your progress. Liked the panel approach as this provided opportunity to hear perspectives.
• Really enjoyed the use of online tools you modelled. Thank you for sharing your models and approach.
• Very valuable session. Great to see people's burning question and your honest response.

Here we have answered the questions.

What are the functions of the AST.

You might like to read the role description of an ASL

Change/Support

Interested to hear if you have instigated the Change Support/Management process?

We are aware of the various Change leadership frameworks

Here is a link to a professional development session for Kāhui Ako where you can find out more that was run by the Connected Learning Advisory.

Here is a link to our blog sharing about the session. We are still taking small steps and consolidating and reflecting on the process.

http://accosnz.blogspot.co.nz/2017/08/leading-change-with-help-of-digital.html

Knowing that your boys have no high school pathway within your CoL....how are you catering to their needs as they transition from Year 8 into Year 9?

• Make informal connections with the high school - conversations with Yr 9 deans and teachers
• Empower our boys to be independent and confident learners so that they can handle the step
• Prepare them with the skills they will need for their first few weeks in particular (e.g. in our case they will have exams right away so talk to them about that)
• Invite ex students to come back and talk to the intermediate students about their journey (this is awesome - we usually have 4 Y13 students to visit - boys and girls).

We are also looking at introducing PACT with our Kāhui Ako.....what I am wondering is - are you introducing all three curriculum areas at the same time, one each year over the next three years or are you rolling it out in another way?

Do what Erin, Kim and Catherine did? Many schools can be still negative about PaCT. So first and foremost you will need buy in at principal level.

• Suggest you roll out either one a year, or combine Reading and Writing as they are so complementary
• We are looking at a pilot project within teams in 3 schools for 2018 to see how it goes.
• One key message that has come through is the amount of time that needs to be allocated for teachers to get into it.  Once it is up and running properly, it should not take as much time as other assessments if used smartly.

Where do your Across School Leaders sit in the school organisational structure?

• Depends on the school and depends on how you are valued, some are part of the senior management team and some are not. Some are seen on the same level as AP/DP and some are not.
• At EGGS we report to the DP in charge of PD.

What are some tips about the running of effective CoL meetings/events?

• Transparency of communication and standardise non negotiables.
• Transparency with minutes
• Have a clear purpose
• Agendas available before the meeting
• Across ASL
• ISL
• School Folders
• 
  
• Transparency using a community EG: Google+
• One established CoL no longer uses email and therefore ISL and ASL are expected to visit their online community to find out what is going on and contribute to it. If it concerns the whole CoL all information comes via the community.
• Transparency with sharing
• Sites EG: ACCoS Google site
• Blogger Eg: ACCoS Blog
• Videos :Eg: ACCoS Channel
• Presentations/ sharing
• Within Schools; Eg: Staff meetings
• Across Schools; Eg: -currently ASL driven once a term
• Nationally Eg: Ulearn
• Virtually Eg: TeachMeetNZ
• Transparency of Community Events
• Advertising flyers
• Documentation in a shared folder
• Documents & minutes
• Photos
• Slides

So how to manage accountability and work with senior school management and how to get and sustain their support

• Transparency with documentation and communication
• Nothing is locked down. Our principals and senior management teams have full access to everything we do.
• Keep them informed eg: an email with a link works wonders, invite them to comment or like something in the Google+ community.
• Accountability.
• For example at EGGS the ASLs meet with their DP once a week. The ISLs meet with their ASL regularly. End of year reporting requirements needs to be developed at the beginning of the year. At EGGS the ISLs write three slides with the findings of their PLGs and present these to the staff in workshop sessions at the end of the year.

If you had your time again what would you change?

• Keep in mind…. What you don’t know you don’t know
• Bring in someone with evidence of digital collaboration and building a community digitally early in the selection process.
• Bring in the ASL before the ISL
• ASL to be part of establishing the achievement challenge process
• Importance of consistency and transparency of the selection process across your CoL
• Do DP/APs get to be an ASL?
• Do Senior Team Leaders get to be an ASL?
• If you have responsibility units - which ones get kept and what units do you lose?
• Every school is different but do consider the implication of these decisions.
• PPTA guidelines are clear but NZEI are not as clear
• Spend more time developing the achievement challenges and ensure the process for this is transparent
• Use the development maps from earlier on to give some direction

The challenges of being an across school leader and how to stay connected and collaborative

• If you are not already connected or collaborative, being part of a CoL will highlight that.
• Eg: Can I find you when I google you? What legacy are you creating for education?
• Challenge is: Stick to your self promise. Today is my CoL day, do not ask me to do anything else today and stick with that self promise. The ministry gives your school two days per week for your work. Be firm about your responsibilities. Ensure you still get CRT release as you are entitled to that too.
• Read lots and widely - around leading from the middle, collaborative frameworks, agency etc. so you know the theory of networked learning communities

I am wondering how you manage your  time?

It ebbs and flows.

Be aware that it is like everything else in teaching - how long is a piece of string?

• Have a timetable
• Have a list that you tick off.  

Read in quieter times

Connection to local daycare or kindergarten centers. Is that a connection you are currently include or are hoping to include in your CoL?

Yes we are working on this. You can hear from Gaylene Brownlie here.

How to manage principals and their empires?

What lessons have you learnt, that we do not have to learn the hard way?

• Interesting way of phrasing this question. Have you been a principal?

• Roll your sleeves up, FAIL and move on. Being an ASL is a journey and we cannot do this for you.
• Principals must be totally on board with this initiative, otherwise there will be problems down the track. They need to be challenged if this is not the case. Should be sorted early on.
• Communicate often with your principal in the first instance and then keep up the communication lines between the two groups.

Excited to learn about what direction/steps others are taking.

• You have the right idea. Find others who have taken this pathway and learn from then and with them. Be active on social media because that is where ASL/ ISL are sharing.

Just beginning my journey as an Across School Teacher so looking for ideas on where to start. What are the top three things I should do first with my other AST? What will be my wine consumption over a week from now on?

1)Make Connections

• I still believe that ASL should have a visible profile somewhere on your site so you can find out the skill sets. (I am still working on this). Connect up on social media like twitter.
• I want to know why the others were chosen. It takes time to find out about each other. We have been a family for nearly twelve months and we are still learning about each other. Tell me who you are and I won’t remember. I want to go back and find out more about you.   
• Take time to get to know the others, what makes them tick and how they like to work. Each member of the team has different talents, worth working out what they are so that when the things need to happen fast, you know who is best on what job (e.g. writing a report, organising a meeting, speaking in public)

2)Collaborate

• Set up systems of communication. One CoL had all the ASL and ISL together and they documented the best way of communicating and came to an understanding that most teachers prefer social media for communicating, except when it came to school. So by unpacking the why they decided that they would use social media because this helps build connections.

3) Co- Create

• Community event together EG: create an event for ISL so they can all meet each other.
• Virtual sharing sessions like TeachMeetNZ

Celebrate and reflect on the process

• Maybe that could be where the wine comes in -off school site of course.

How do we go about approaching ambitious "reach" achievement targets without getting demoralised about the task at hand? How do we get other staff to buy in to this process too?

(I am guessing you are ISL)

• Focus on the progress. Unpack data at team level. Look at all your data historically including attendance and track cohorts.
• Check the data (qualitative as well as quantitative) frequently to tell you what is happening celebrate the small examples of progress as you go.  Hattie says we should see a difference after 12 weeks - if nothing is visible then review the changes that you’ve made.  
• Getting buy in? - Look to the PTCs. How do your staff fulfill criteria for registration?
• Remember these are long term goals, you are not expected to reach targets in the first year!

What are the structure and process you have in your CoL? What iterations of these have you been through since you were established? We are at the beginning stages of our Kahui Ako development and am keen to hear your journey. What has worked well and what were some of your challenges?

• Connect- Collaborate- Co-create- Celebrate
• You may get an idea of this by looking at our site and blog (links in our presentation)
• One big goal - Building community through group meetings - getting to know each other
• Another goal - forming common understandings around concepts such as agency (using techniques such as Educafe style discussions)
• Delving into discussion and inquiry - cross sector groups meeting to discuss focus topics such as writing moderation, transition to high school, strategies for meeting the needs of students who are non English speakers etc.  - The groups were great for building networks but not always relevant to everyone involved.
• Now moving to more focused inquiry model with topics that fit into strategic plans for each school.

Lessons learnt?

• Get social and connect with other educators.
• Have the AP/DPs part of the loop from early on
• They have the bigger picture of the school so work on that relationship
• You will work with them so build those relationships
• They can feel left out of the principal and you discussions so keep that transparent
• When visiting other schools, find them and build connections

• Importance of digital structure. Get that in place or collaboration can’t happen. (All talk and no action).
• Transparency eg: If it cannot be found digitally within our ACCoS drive,  it does not exist.
• Make connections through across school events.
• Blended Meetings- Use both F2F and virtual ways of holding meetings to build capabilities
• Lead by example- never ask teachers to do anything that you are not prepared to do yourself.
• Work with principals  because they need to report your work to the BoT and MOE
• Ensure strategic direction from the school's fits in with that of the Kāhui Ako - adjust both so that everyone agrees on a common focus (or in our case, form groups with common focus)
• Importance of systems
• Transparent communication systems -eg: Google+ -Hangout, -Community
• Documentation systems eg: Google Drive
• Tracking using calendar -EG: Google Calendar
• Reflecting on the process EG: Blogger
• Sharing our work EG: Sites
• Read, Read, Read and then read some more.

Overall we had a great session sharing our journey. We made connections as a team away from the usual ACCoS ASL sessions and we made connections with other Kāhui Ako. We collaborated on ideas of what we needed to cover. Then we co-created our slides using examples from our shared ACCoS folder. Finally we were able to celebrate our work by sharing our story at uLearn.