I am a Headteacher in Aberdeen where I have lived for 27 years having completed my ITE in Ireland.  My school, like many others, is a fascinatingly diverse community.  I am deeply committed to the importance of language and culture and its impact on a child and family’s self-efficacy.  I am equally passionate about children accessing a curriculum that reflects who they are and meets their emerging needs in an engaging way.  There is complex work to do in schools and I want to ensure that I really understand what is going to make a difference.  So, I relentlessly pursue relevant, contemporary and collaborative professional learning opportunities!

Having recently completed the Excellence in Headship Stretch programme, I have taken some time to reflect on the evolution of my professional learning and its impact on my practice, my school community and my contribution to systems leadership.

The Standard for Headship states:

Headteachers proactively contribute to leadership for improvement at system level (authority, regional and national). This includes the ability to work collaboratively and collegially…

I generally have much greater success when I work collaboratively - I tend to remain much more motivated by the dialogue and the group expectations and as a result this is the kind of professional learning I seek out.

Prior to Covid I was engaging in the Excellence in Headship Learn events both online and in locations across the country.  I read professionally on leadership, pedagogy and curriculum development.  I used my learning and collaboration to:

• to temper and validate my decision - making
• to support my strategic thinking
• to look outwards, and, as a result, be more reflective when looking inwards
• and to influence the professional learning journey of all my staff

I saw every new piece of learning as an opportunity to address a particular challenge.  I would shape it into an activity we collectively could learn from and I enabled collegial work to address the challenges we had. After a while I began to see a shift in how my leadership team and teachers were developing their sense of agency through the activities we were engaged in.

However, Covid happened, and there were few challenges to be shaped into opportunities, just daily challenges, and the iterative process of evaluation and next steps could not be applied in the same way.   

My response to this was, in the same way I had always done, to sign up to every event that I felt would give me answers.  However, it was an ineffective approach.  I needed a focus, something that would sustain me as a leader through difficult times, and, importantly, I needed to work with others again. 

This is where the Excellence in Headship Stretch programme became an opportunity from the challenge.  It was the ideal conduit by which I could redevelop my sense of agency and empowerment. 

The quality of the contributors to the programme and the ability to apply the learning from those contributors was particularly motivating.   For example, as a result of the session with Peter deWitt, I have begun to revise my approach to self-evaluation through a de-implementation process.

The opportunity for collaboration with like-minded people from across the country was invaluable for developing a network of like-minded (and helpful!) colleagues.  Systems level thinking requires you to critically evaluate your own opinions and leads you to be more generous with the space you give to others.  I find it leads me modify my own thoughts in order to achieve positive outcomes when working as a team.  It was a great internal reminder to listen better!

Having the space and time to think clearly and critically about the enquiry was invaluable.  Carving out time remains a massive challenge during the working day but the long-term benefit is a stronger leader operating at full strength and in a position to think clearly in many different situations!

Finally, working through the structured approach using the three fields of knowledge and logic models that can be applied to the deconstruction of a task, made the construction of our enquiry much easier.  The guidance we received from our mentors was outstanding and has impacted positively on the quality of the logic models I use in my own school.

Santiago Rincon Gallardo argues for pedagogical change in his book, 'Liberating Learning: Education Change as Social Movement', where leaders and educators interact with and transform their surroundings. 

I believe that those involved in the Excellence in Headship Stretch programme, even at a micro-level, are those agents of change. 

We collaborated with headteachers and education activists nationally and internationally, we did not allow ourselves to become immersed in groupthink approaches, we were innovative and creative in how we gathered our information and we learned from each other.

I feel privileged to have been part of such significant professional learning that continues to have an impact on the way I think and act. Headteachers need this sustenance - schools are changing and, as a result, we need to act differently in order to sustain, not only ourselves, but our educators too.  We can only do this if we remain contemporary and  learn how to facilitate change together by engaging in high quality collaborative enquiries such as that found within the Stretch programme.

So, where do the ‘stretched’ go next?!  Well, a reminder again of the Standard for Headship:

‘Headteachers proactively contribute to leadership for improvement at system level (authority, regional and national).’

With my now post-covid refreshed outlook, confidence and motivation, I will be actively seeking opportunities locally, regionally and nationally to support the leadership development of others!