It’s true that Australian Teachers are pressed for time. The impact of workload on those who sustain the system again hit the media last week in examining why so many Teachers are leaving the profession in the first 3-5 years of what should be a rewarding career.While we bemoan a lack of understanding and action…
Wowee! Term 3 has been flat out for us at Real Schools delivering enormous value to our Partner Schools – and we know it’s been a busy time at your school too. For us, that has left very little time and focus for things like running some public events. You see, we sometimes forget that…
I’ll start exercising on Monday. I’ll enrol in that yoga course once the kids leave home. I’ll start a family when we’re financially secure. I can’t begin my diet until I get Christmas out of the way. I’ve got so much admin to do that I can’t focus on what really matters at school.Like all…
When exactly do we win the war? If indeed we have an enemy in these bullies and if we therefore need to be anti-bully, then how would we know that the bullies have been vanquished? It sounds silly when put like this doesn’t it? Which is why we need to take back the national conversation…
I use this picture for a note-taking postcard about “Committed Teachers” when we run Real Schools Professional Learning. Commitment is a difficult thing for us educators to talk about and we often get a bit touchy or defensive when questioned about how committed or dedicated we are. Fair enough too! The problem is not our…
Dear Australia’s Principals, There have been some beautifully penned letters by Australia’s Principals this week who are determined to let their students know that they aren’t going to be defined or judged by this week’s NAPLAN results. Personally, I hope you are able to apply the same logic to yourselves. The designers of the NAPLAN…
I do a fair bit of reading about Teacher Stress. It’s not chiefly because I want to complain or even advocate on behalf of any particular Teacher that I know. It really isn’t even so I can “see I told you so” to anyone who might want to throw rocks at the apparent holidays or…
I read a wonderful sign on a wall recently of a quote attributed to Rear Admiral Grace Hopper that I think applies intimately to the current schools challenge in Australia. And there are examples of the wreckage caused by this thinking all around us. The concept returned to my attention when I read the blog “It’s…
We don’t allow just any old Tom, Dick or Harry (or Angela!) to guest host our webinars. The good news is that Ange is far from ordinary and she comes with a message that is critical for today’s Teachers and School Leaders. In fact, if we don’t start looking after ourselves as educators soon –…
Along with other “big words” like Respect, Responsibility, Empathy and Excellencethat are often hijacked as meaningless values in our schools, Trust is a concept that we find to be equally aspirational and elusive. As with our values, the answer to this conundrum is often that Trust hasn’t been collectively defined. We simply don’t yet know…
Did you wake up this morning on the treadmill, wondering how you got there? Did you wake up accidentally eating half a grapefruit as opposed to the usual Coco Pops? Of course you didn’t. A change in behaviours like these requires a choice and making a choice requires thought. There are, of course, a myriad…
I read an interesting piece this week about confirmation bias and how important it is to the FBI. Apparently, they train their agents to notice conformity and prejudice in themselves before they even commence to look for clues, evidence or facts relevant to any new case. Confirmation bias is the very human habit of only…
When things are tough in a school or in a Teacher’s classroom, support is the mechanism that leaps to mind as being the most appropriate. That support can take many forms including mentoring, coaching, release of disruptive students, peer observation, professional learning and online courses. Of course, sometimes all we need is a chat with…
Do we have to “feel” motivated before something important can be done? Can we “fix” student motivation with an entertaining speaker? Does “fun” alone motivate our students to think more, to do more or to be more? Well, you can probably tell by the rather leading nature of these questions that I think we’ve gotten…
This week, a revamped MySchool website was launched alerting parents to various chunks of data related to NAPLAN test results, finances and the wonderful variations within your cohort of students and their families. With it, comes the usual avalanche of media pieces appropriately titled, such as: The Top 20 Schools In Your State. Your Kids…
Almost everybody remembers the movie Groundhog Day. It’s one of those flicks that, true to it’s message, seems to appear with monotonous regularity in our lives. It’s certainly one that I frequently stumble across during a Sunday afternoon session of channel surfing. In the movie Bill Murray’s character, Phil Connors, is stuck in the American…
People often ask me why I advocate so strongly for Restorative Practices. I find that the question is usually posed without the Firstly, my sincere apologies to the many, many friends I have who are either Muslim or vegetarian for the clip I’d like to provoke you with today – but it’s funny and also happens…
People often ask me why I advocate so strongly for Restorative Practices. I find that the question is usually posed without the expectation of a genuine, rational answer. It’s almost rhetorical. The truth is that there are far too many Teachers our there who’ve had a negative experience of Restorative Practices – whether it be…
It’s time for your school’s Staff Meeting. Folk wander in at 3.45pm…ish after another day of facilitating the growth of batches of 25 or so resistive young people. Jarryd (damn those J names with their multiple potential spellings) has just had another one of those days and you’re feeling particularly weary, perhaps even a little…
Frankly, far too many Teachers and School Leaders report being stressed. Some studies have up to 27% of Teachers experiencing emotional exhaustion and burnout at any particular point of the school year. Can you imagine what that’s doing to our effectiveness? And it’s why we’re kicking off 2017 with perhaps our most important webinar ever…
Prompted by an exceedingly clever fellow in Dr Jason Fox, I allocated 2016 to one word. Picking one word (rather than making lame resolutions or setting unlikley “new year, new me” goals) is a great way to set the scene less for what you’ll stand for, but more for HOW you’ll stand. Jason’s word for…
Our Real Schools mission to raise Teacher status is on. And my commitment is to do it as comfortably and appropriately for early January as possible! I’ve just finished a coffee on my favourite outside couch and a fantastic little book called “88 Ideas to Teach More Effectively” by Tim Bowman. It’s a ripper. One of Bowman’s…
I have five non-content based learning intentions for each Professional Learning day that I run. One of them is to Provoke, mindful as I am of the affirming and unnecessarily nice nature of much PL offered to schools. We should not be in the business of learning that merely affirms or reinforces unhelpful patterns. And don’t worry,…
When you book a trainer to run a PL Day, the impact drops away remarkably as soon as 48 hours after the event. In fact, the feedback most people provide from a PL Day connects to the temperature of the room and the food provided – not quite “return on investment”. That’s why Real Schools…
It’s late in the year. So let’s make today’s message short, simple and easy to take meaning from. A little weariness at this time of year is something you can be forgiven for. At these times, we can retreat somewhat into ourselves. I just need to get MY reports done. I just need to complete…
