Making change happen, workshop with Michael Fullan.

Today I attended a full day workshop with Michael Fullan, expert on Change Leadership in education. We were provided with an informative booklet full of articles and ideas. There was in fact so much information that I reached saturation point at the end of the day. Below are some of my thoughts and pick-ups.

What works (in Change Leadership):

  • Focus
  • Capacity building
  • Consistency of practice
  • Learning from each other
  • Leadership that obsesses with points 1 – 4.

Teaching like a pro means:

  • Continuously inquiring into and improving one’s own teaching.
  • Planning teaching, improving teaching and often doing teaching as part of a high performing team.
It’s about undertaking difficult, inspiring work; constantly trying to improve practices and working with all the collective might and ingenuity of professional colleagues to do so. 

“Even with the best intentions  even if you seem like a ‘natural’ as a teacher, unless you deliberately learn how to get better so you can teach the students of today for the world of tomorrow, you will not be teaching like a pro. You will just be an enthusiastic amateur.” Page 24.

Reading shared by Michael Fullan:

Teacher as activator (effect size .60), rather than facilitator (effect size .17).

  • Facilitator: Simulations and gambling  inquiry based, smaller class sizes. individualised instruction, Problem Based learning, web based, inductive teaching.
  • Activator: Reciprocal teaching, feedback, teacher-student self verbalistion, meta-cognition, goals-challenging, frequent effects of leaning.
It is getting worse loss of enthusiasm by grade level
From a workshop by Michael Fullan

 

 

When implementing something new, figure out how to make it non-threatening.

Difference between coaching and mentoring.

Books I want to read (I’m an optimist):

  • Visible learning for teachers (John Hattie)
  • Formative Assessment (Dylan Williams)
  • How to change 5000 schools (Ben Levin)
  • Student Centered Leadership (Robinson)
Via Twitter I saw that Linda Shardlow (@ShardsL) was there too. Linda blogged about her experience in quite a bit more detail than I did! It’s always interesting to see what another person picks up from a day like this. Thanks for sharing Linda. http://4maths.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/change-the-fullan-way/ 

 Some of my tweets::

  • Professional Development: A great way to avoid change, mention by #Fullan goo.gl/krfEj
  • #fullan What works: -Focus -Capacity building -Consistency of practice -#Leadership that obsesses with 1 – 4
  • Right vs Wrong drivers for change. #fullan http://pic.twitter.com/3CXBf1aK
  • De-silo-ing a school to create a collaborative culture. I like that.  goo.gl/G7G2N
  • Simplexity and motion leadership. #fullan

Here is the storify of the tweets I sent: