Since joining Education Scotland as part of the Professional Learning and Leadership (PLL) Team, all things leadership have become my bread and butter. But it’s hard to turn my back on my love of poetry (and of teaching English) without a backward glance…

In the world of poetry a sonnet is a carefully structured form:

• dealing with a single idea at a time
• a set length
• following a rhyme scheme
• adhering to a metric pattern
• experiencing a turning point

                                                                                   yet always reaching a resolution.

Deceptively simple and yet so clever; you know where you are with a sonnet.

This is how I felt listening to Dr Simon Breakspear on his Agile School Leadership programme for Education Scotland. What he said about improvement journeys made sense, offered structure, followed patterns and tied up nicely at the end.

It was a lightbulb moment for me in terms of leadership learning.

Dr Breakspear is an academic from New South Wales. His background is in high school teaching - he is now a researcher, policy advisor and popular speaker on education policy, practice and change. In addition to all his experience, study and accolades what he advocates just makes sense. Breakspear offers a paring back of leadership philosophy and advocates effective, simple tools that work. There is no rocket science here, but his is a considered system of leadership that has been honed with many years of experience and research.

He recognised the cognitive overload and conflicting pressures for leaders in education: the complexity of SIPs, local authority priorities, regional improvement collaborative aims and government directives. He understands the landscape of teaching. He argues that because it is cluttered, the leadership behind an improvement journey needs to be clean; it needs pared back so it makes sense and offers achievable outcomes.

Agile School Leadership is a motivating programme of professional learning. From the pre programme videos, the comprehensive workbooks to the facilitation of the 3 x 1/2 day sessions - I was hooked. Finally, a take away that had immediate impact on my day to day practice. In addition, we were offered small workshops between group sessions where we could discuss the practicalities of using the new tools. For me, as with all the PLL programmes on offer, collaboration opportunities were the icing on the cake.

And there were a number of evidence-informed improvement approaches introduced over the course of Agile School Leadership.

I had two favourites:

• The clarify canvas is a genius tool that allows a team to come together to focus on an area of improvement, drowning out background noise and extraneous detail.
• Another offering was the Kanban approach. Kanban is a Japanese word which means ‘visual signal’. You may well have used similar if you’re a ‘to do lister’ like me. I’ve dabbled in Trello and Planner so was aware that ‘To Do’ ‘Doing’ and ‘Done’ columns could be powerful for teams, but I’d never fully committed to them. Not sure why?

But if Simon says do this… then I’m invested.

Using this visual approach with renewed enthusiasm in our teams and collectives has seen productivity increase. The satisfaction at the end of a week / month / improvement cycle is quite possibly THE BEST feeling at work.

Celebrate your wins, people: keep them visible.

The educational landscape is being prepared for reform on a large scale. To this end we need to equip leaders with quality professional learning - and effective, easily incorporated improvement philosophy.

It’s easy to see why Breakspear’s Agile School Leadership has been so well received in Scotland. Our education leaders need equipped for an improvement journey that follows a structure, is not overly lengthy, repeats a pattern - and despite a turning point or two - reaches an identifiable conclusion.

Simon Breakspear is on it. Like a sonnet.

Team Health Workshop

Dr Breakspear offered a further session with Education Scotland tailored to middle leaders or leaders with responsibility for teams.

Scotland Middle Leaders Team Health Workshop with Dr Simon Breakspear - Vimeo

We also have a professional learning activity covering this session that could be completed alone or with colleagues as a collaborative resource.

The importance of building healthy teams (education.gov.scot)