Oxygen masks on!
4th November 2020
We must get our oxygen masks on quickly and prioritise wider personal and professional development for staff! We owe it to our young people to ensure CPD isn’t just about our technical IT skills, as important as they are.
Like myself, many people didn’t make the transition they might have expected to this summer. Many teachers and leaders decided not to hand their notice in at Easter or May because of a sense of loyalty to the school and the pupils they serve. Indeed Teacher Tapp research suggests that retention of teachers due to the pandemic will resolve the often previously discussed teacher recruitment crisis for now, which is excellent news for our young and their education. Many skilled younger staff cannot afford to take the risk of a step away into a new career , when there is so much uncertainty in the job market and, frankly, little else available. This year, many middle and senior leaders decided to stay in their current post rather than look for promotion elsewhere, perhaps also because of uncertainties over the housing market. And, in truth we all know how exhausting job applications are and how much time they take – not many had the stamina and emotional energy left for the demands of an application process in the thick of things during the Spring and Summer.
Those of us who did leave had very mixed emotions about the way things ended. I had been planning my move out of headship and into my coaching and leadership development business for 18 months and was excited about it. Being a Head, even if I had wanted to stay and ‘see things through to the end’, there was no way back from handing in my notice, as my successor was appointed back in January, well before we were aware of the impact that COVID would have. Once it was clear this was going to be a longer haul than just the Spring/Summer, like many, I felt torn. Any good leader wants to see a crisis through to its conclusion, and in some senses leaving in August felt like an abdication of the duty and service I had given myself to, more than wholeheartedly, for the last eight years as Head, 30-ish as a teacher. The huge relief I felt in enabling my successor to plan properly for September with the team, much earlier than she would have done under normal circumstances, only heightened that feeling, and I know I am not alone in this. The growing realisation that ‘seeing this through to the end’ will take years made me feel much better, and reduced the feelings of guilt at leaving ‘part way through’ and being excited about my next move.
What has become abundantly clear now is that it is essential for middle and senior leaders, and heads to prioritise their own wider personal and professional development, which has perhaps been left on the back-burner as they understandably grapple with honing IT skills and familiarity with the technology. The skills in providing excellent blended learning lessons with students at home, sometimes overseas, and in the classroom, and simultaneously. The challenges of delivering an excellent education for our young are, and continue to be, huge, and our teachers, senior leaders and heads are exhausted. I felt @curriculumNI put it brilliantly in a recent #UKEduStories session on blended learning when she said she thought we’d been focusing our efforts in developing ourselves and our teaching upon Maslow’s hierarchy of needs rather than Bloom’s taxonomy. What I took that to mean was our planning of lessons, curriculum and school systems have understandably focused upon physiological needs, our needs for safety, love and belonging, which have taken precedence over developing ourselves and our lessons in terms of the pedagogy at this stage. Our need to know HOW to do things technically has taken precedence over the WHY are we doing it like this and WHAT are the best ways of enabling higher order thinking and development, both for ourselves and our pupils. I think we are on the cusp of moving into the next stage of perhaps a more ‘Bloom’s focused approach’ – and some have done so, which is really exciting.
Development of our personal leadership skills, and skills necessary for the next career move, have been put on the back burner by many at the moment, perhaps understandably. But, it is no good if we manage to achieve great things for the school, only for the flame of our inspiration to go out because other areas of our life have been neglected and we are exhausted and dispirited. We need to look at how we can perform highly and sustainably across the board, because there is a difference between high achievement and sustained high performance, and this isn’t going away anytime soon. More than ever before, now is the time to bring this personal and professional development forward and spend time developing our sustainable ‘best-selves’. The airline analogy of needing to look after ourselves before looking after those around us has never been more appropriate.
These last few months (is it really only months?!) have also been a time when people are taking stock and reassessing what is really important to them. I am speaking to many leaders who are thinking differently about their futures and they need help to work things through, to people who want to develop themselves in order they can be the best leader possible, both in their current role and in the future. There is a growing realisation that personal development is key. We owe it to our young people to put our oxygen masks on first, to look after ourselves and prioritise our wider personal and professional development, so we can provide them all with the best run schools and therefore the greatest opportunities for them to have their brightest futures.
If you liked this…… Starting mid-November, I am running a 12 week group coaching course for senior leaders in a safe, confidential online environment to support you to develop your personal balance, energy and leadership skills, enabling you to lead your school as well as you possibly can. You will find the group provide support and challenge to you to enable you to be your best self at this difficult time – I know this works, and wish it had been available sooner when I was a Head! Do contact me asap to have a conversation to find out more about it via my email nicky@brightlead.co.uk or via my Calendly link on the http://www.brightlead.co.uk contact webpage. I look forward to speaking with you.