KING’S
AIS Leading from the Middle A School-Based Strategy for Mid-Senior Level Leaders in Schools
AIS Leading from the Middle
2
Welcome
“ Leaders help their peers achieve positive results, let the best ideas win in an environment of intellectual rigour, and garner mutual respect.”
Dean Dudley, CF Director of The King’s Institute John Maxwell wrote that there is a belief that people cannot lead until they get to the top of an organisation. He refers to this as the destination myth. The thinking goes something like this: “When I’m a leader, then I’ll figure out how to influence others in a positive way,” rather than learning these principles in order to be a leader. Leadership is nothing short of a journey of learning. The beginning of that journey requires people to adopt new ways of thinking, new skills, and new habits. In my opinion, leaders in the middle of an organisation are leaders of leaders. These leaders help their peers achieve positive results, let the best ideas win in an environment of intellectual rigour, and garner mutual respect. These leaders
are expected to constantly develop and maintain credibility, exert influence, and grow professionally. Leaders in the middle of an organisation often experience frustration and struggle to succeed. They may not be sure of where they stand. The pressure of wearing many hats in a middle leadership role can be overwhelming and they don’t always get the credit they deserve. Part of leading successfully from the middle therefore rests in the establishment of good relationships no matter where people are in the organisation. Middle leaders must be able to connect with everyone around them.
1
The Leading From the Middle program is a collaborative venture between The King’s Institute and the Leadership Centre of the Association of Independent Schools of NSW (AISNSW) to provide selected candidates with these skills. It asks them to grapple with real school issues through the construction collaborative, creative, and meaningful leadership projects. I commend you all to review, critique, and discuss the truly inspiring visions these middle leaders share for the future of our school.
AIS Leading from the Middle
Special Education Integration Program (Transition Class) Rationale
Tara Cameronne
In 1832, Archdeacon William Grant Broughton declared “that the education in The King’s School would not be for the exclusive benefit of those upon whom it is bestowed, but for that of the entire community.” With this statement in mind, the newly developed Special Education Integration Program (delivered through the Transition Class) is aimed at ensuring that all students are celebrated for their uniqueness and have equitable access to education and the opportunities it provides. The idea of this program originated from the need for a structured and individualised program that caters for students with a mild to moderate intellectual disability. As we value community and the individual at The King’s School, it is very important that our community has a strong focus on inclusion and celebrates diversity. The ‘Transition Class’ essentially aims to provide a wellsupported and bespoke pathway, within an already diverse community, that allows each individual to reach their full potential at their own developmental level.
2
The Transition Class is designed to demonstrate leadership in education by facilitating student learning through the use of encouragement, empowerment, personal growth and academic learning. Outstanding teaching practice facilitates student learning by providing the necessary tools, both cognitive and personal skills, upon which to develop their understanding and encourage a love of learning. Through the application of evidenced based practices and theories, primarily Vygotsky’s ‘Zone of Proximal Development’, teaching is continually adjusted and/or developed to meet individual learning profiles, in order to maximise a student’s potential in all walks of life. In addition, through the School’s Values, students will be equipped to demonstrate excellence, honesty, humility, compassion, respect, integrity and responsibility of service to the benefit of others. This initiative benefits the whole King’s community, as each individual learns from, understands, recognises, advocates and nurtures individuals with diverse needs.
Design for Success
and choosing flexible options that match their learning preferences. As the Australian Research Council (2018) states, the design of a school classroom is intimately connected with the quality of education that students receive. Student agency is viewed as central to education, (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2018; Kirby, 2020). Students were led through a process of reflecting on themselves as learners, recognising their learning preferences and giving voice to the design of their environment. This voice led to action, with the redesign of their learning space… and continued action, in terms of students appropriating the space and using its flexibility to support their learning differences.
Lizzie Davis
Rationale Drawing heavily on current education research, the rationale for this project was threefold: 1. Improving learning outcomes, self-regulation and student agency of our Year 3 students 2. Developing inclusive practices in our classrooms 3. Creating an inspired, inclusive, flexible, engaging, organised classroom The project was deeply rooted in the Quality Learning Environment criteria as primarily, it required the teacher/s to provide an engaging learning environment. To provide a learning space where students were encouraged to take ownership of their learning by using
Inclusivity, agency and improved outcomes are attributed to the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework (Howley et al, 2020). This approach is aimed at meeting the needs of every student in a classroom and this project draws heavily on this approach. UDL is beneficial to all students, including those with more diverse learning and thinking differences. This focus on an inclusive learning space/classroom naturally aligns with the Significance criteria, addressing issues of inclusivity in the classroom. UDL takes careful planning by teachers but provides more flexibility and fewer barriers to learning for students, and as such, is essential to including and engaging all students. One way that the physical classroom environment can support individualisation is by offering flexibility in design and a variety of opportunities for different modes of learning which research suggests results in a 16% improvement in achievement (Barrett, et al, 2015). The project was designed to provide benefits at many levels. At the whole campus level, this project will serve as an exemplar of
3
an intentional and deliberately designed learning space. Additionally, it will serve as an action research project/example adding to our academic staff’s existing work on implementing the UDL framework. At the classroom level, the goal is to prove that considered learning space design supports teacher pedagogy, enhances inclusion, fosters engagement, contributes positively to the students and teachers’ sense of wellbeing and is an inspiring, practical, best-practice place to be. And most importantly, at the student level, this project encourages and challenges students to take ownership over their learning space, deeply reflect on themselves as learners, learn ways to manage their learning based on their needs and preferences and benefit from their agency and action. References: Barrett, P., Zhang, Y., Davies, F., & Barrett, L. (2015). Clever classrooms. http://www. salford.ac.uk/cleverclassrooms/1503Salford-Uni-Report-DIGITAL.pdf Howley, A; Faiella, C.M.; Kroeger, S.D.; Hansen, B. (Eds). (2020) Inclusive Education: A Systematic Perspective. International Baccalaureate. 2017. Examining Learner Agency in your setting. Kirby, P. (2020). Children’s Agency in the Modern Primary Classroom. Children & Society, 34(1), 17–30. https://doi-org. ezproxy.uow.edu.au/10.1111/chso.12357 OECD. 2018. The future of education and skills: education 2030. OECD: Paris.
AIS Leading from the Middle
Feedback for Growing Young Geographers
Rationale
Alex Dewar
With the embedding of a new syllabus, it is quite natural to at first focus on the new content to be taught and finer details such as how to assess, can be at first, overlooked. I have wanted to add value by transferring any appropriate good practice that helps bolster effective progression of teaching and learning within Geography. With the explicit curriculum requirement that Assessment for learning (AFL) be an integral part of the Geography course in the most recent curriculum, I saw an opportunity to help scaffold and model AFL opportunities within the teaching and assessment of Geography at The King’s School. It was thought that the old model of ‘assessment of learning’, with its emphasis on quantitative data and ranks, tended to foster a closed mindset with negative impacts (William 2011) not compatible with the character development aims of The King’s School. For students to grow as young Geographers and take ownership of their learning (Woodworth, 2017), they need to be asking ‘how can I make my work better?’ and not ‘what was the class average?’ or ‘what was my rank?’ For feedback to be effective it needs to be relevant to the individual learner and transferable to new academic challenges so that they can move towards becoming experts within the particular learning focus being assessed. For this to occur, students need to be engaging with the qualitative advice from the teacher and not become fixated with and defined by their mark. My challenge as a middle leader was to provide support for both teachers and learners in helping move away from an ‘assessment of learning’ model towards an AFL model using my experience from teaching in a school where AFL had been effectively embedded.
4
Over the last two years I have been given the opportunity to scaffold and model AFL. Time was set aside to map what progression within Geography looks like. This broad mapping of progression allowed for the creation of AFL aids such as student friendly target sheets to help progress students in the different strands of Geography along with student friendly assessment matrixes and writing scaffolds. The outcome has been a Department that now shares a common language on assessment in Geography progression along with teacher feedback following assessments. To support this cultural shift in assessment, I have (in my role as Year 9 lead) modelled effective AFL opportunities to support both the learner and teacher. Further to this the Covid pandemic has provided the incentive to fulfil the Department’s aim of automating feedback of closed questions as a way of reducing load on teachers, in addition to providing immediate feedback to students and providing a focus for teacher intervention, which all links to effective AFL. Moving forward over the next year, the aim is to create a consistent approach across the Department in the way that teachers within the Department submit feedback on assessment, by withholding marks, to at first focus on how to improve and allowing students to become reflective learners with a developing growth mindset character in pursuit of academic excellence.
Personalised Student Performance Management Rationale
Emma Fearnley
This initiative aims to shape the current Academic Management system to target the needs of individual students. The current Academic Improvement Plan contains a number of disparate activities, some best handled by tutors or housemasters, and none of which directly connect to the Blue Card. The cards themselves have somewhat arbitrary scoring methods – scoring ‘organisation’ out of five and neglecting a student’s progress towards their individual goals – and would benefit from more active student participation and more streamlined data collection to allow for greater ease of analysis. I aim to change the Blue Card to a more goal-oriented process involving daily student reflections, and digitise the system to allow for more easily accessible data. I propose that in lieu of the existing AIP booklet, students be encouraged to set at least one behavioural goal (eg answering more questions in class, sitting
5
away from friends, bringing all required materials) and one academic outcome goal. The Blue Card will allow for teachers to score the student’s progress in their behavioural goal, as well as the existing categories of Classwork, Behaviour, and Homework. At the end of each day, students will score their own progress in each category, and weekly summaries will be provided to the Year Coordinator, Housemaster, Tutor, and Parents. This eliminates lost, forgotten, or damaged cards, and provides us with manipulable data to have informed conversations about progress across time and in different subjects, as well as student perceptions compared to teacher observations. Overall, a more personalised approach to student Performance Management will allow us to better support the growth of our students.
AIS Leading from the Middle
Developing a Music Enrichment Program in Stage 4 Rationale
The Plan
The Need Numerous students are commencing Year 7 having undertaken many hours of instrumental or vocal tuition in their junior years. These young students have achieved remarkable levels of musicianship and advanced performance grades, with many entering Year 7 with 5th Grade practical certification, and above. This program creates a pathway to further enhance the capacity of the student musician and enables and fosters a culture of Musical Excellence at The King’s School.
The Current Situation
Sarah Feltham
Current Elective Music numbers reveal that many of the advanced Music students do not choose Music as an elective subject. The current structure of the Mandatory Music Program randomly splits all students, across eleven classes, bringing beginners and advanced music students together for 6 periods a cycle. The differentiation required to successfully deliver a lesson to the novice and the advanced musician, at the same time, creates a serious musical divide. In particular, the advanced musician is at risk of receiving a less than successful year of classroom music, altogether, losing interest in their craft.
6
By creating an Enrichment Program the student musicians are offered the required extension that their unique ability demands. Taught in an orchestral setting, with their instruments ‘in hand’, the program is tailored to each individual music student: encouraging service to community; championing solo and ensemble participation; focusing on the development of musical excellence in performance, composition, and musicology; and furthermore, providing a future acceleration opportunity.
The Overall Benefits to All 1. Meeting the current needs for Extension and Acceleration in Music 2. Students achieving as real musicians 3. Growth in subject selection numbers 4. Development of a two-stream music elective program (Advanced to Exemplary, and Beginner to Intermediate) 5. Future School enrolments, to access the unique Music Program 6. Exceptional results in HSC Courses 7. Students moving into Tertiary Music Studies
Consistency in the Face of Change
Rationale Differentiation will always be part of what we do as teachers; however, what is foundational to any study is the content that must be delivered to the student. In the case of English Standard, the change of syllabus meant that there could be a reconsideration of how the course content and skills could be delivered and therefore, an approach that encouraged collegiality and collaboration would benefit both the teachers and the students.
Cassandra Lum
The problem that I am tackling is concerned with streamlining the new NSW English Standard Syllabus with the purpose of ensuring a collegial and collaborative environment for teaching and learning. The vision I had for this work was to create a baseline from which teachers and students can work so that the teaching of the units is consistent and the skills being learnt are mapped accordingly, but with enough autonomy for teachers to differentiate for their students. In recognising this opportunity for change, an assessment was made in order to evaluate how best to address the delivery of the course content and how to give the students their best chance at success. The vision was developed in consultation with the Co-Heads of Department of English, who both agreed that this would generate a positive culture for teaching and learning.
7
As the English Standard Coordinator, I utilised the online platforms available to us in order to distribute the content. I also crafted and streamlined the content and skills-based lessons for English Standard so that the target skills for essay, comprehension, imaginative, and discursive writing would be consistent across every class. This streamlining also included integrated lectures and sequenced skills based lesson, which cycled according to the speciality focus of the teacher. Therefore, every class would have access to the same content, information, and scaffolds. This bred a collegial environment for both the students and teachers, which has so far had a positive impact for the study and teaching of English Standard.
AIS Leading from the Middle
Living Leadership – The Gowan Brae Monitorship Program Redefined Rationale The King’s School is a Christian community that seeks to make an outstanding impact for the good of society through its students, and by the quality of its teaching and leadership in education. The King’s School proudly offers many quality leadership opportunities for students across all year levels in various co-curricular, academic, and pastoral spaces, so that they may make “an outstanding impact for the good of society.” The Gowan Brae Year 10 Monitorship Program has always provided a unique and special opportunity for Year 10 Kingsmen to strengthen their leadership, as it allows for them to care for and guide the youngest members of the senior school community.
Linda Perkovic
This program, in its current format, certainly is purposeful and meaningful for all stakeholders. However, there is room for further flourishment by reshaping the holistic learning experience for these Year 10 leaders, where we can see tangible evidence of their growth development. Program participants will become involved in new ‘concrete experiences’ which have not been offered before. They will enter into a forum of thought exchange where they will assimilate and distill content and observations into ‘abstract concepts’. Drawing from these experiences, participants will then actively test and exercise their learning in a safe and structured environment. The program will conclude with participants solidifying their learning through deep reflection and evaluation. This redirection of a long
8
standing and highly regarded program closely links with David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory (ELT), where “knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (Kolb 1984). Kolb’s ELT model is portrayed through a recursive cycle where learners experience, reflect, think, and act (Sage 2009). As of 2021, the rollout of this program will breathe across three key pillars: Pillar One – Mentoring Pillar Two – Gowan Brae House Pillar Three – Reflection / Evaluation / Progression In order to develop Global Thought Leaders, it is necessary to provide genuine opportunities for our students to develop in areas of academic excellence, Christian community, and character development. The 2021 Gowan Brae Year 10 Monitorship Program will provide such opportunities for students so that not only will they personally grow as learners and leaders, but the School and wider community will reap the benefits.
Venturing through the Virtual – The King’s School Virtual Tour Program Rationale
Timothy Ross
The vision for the Virtual Tour Program (VTP) is to create a life-like and engaging visual facsimile of crucial learning and community spaces across the three campuses that will allow students, staff and families within the community to browse and experience the facilities of The King’s School. Initially, the project scope is to display areas within the Centre for Learning and Leadership (CLL), with a focus on the facilities and resources of the Senior Library. There are various online services and resources offered by the Senior Library that provide students and staff with the facility to peruse and access digital materials via the internet. The purpose of the VTP will be to provide students, staff, and current families with an orientation tour of these services. In addition, the end-user will have the opportunity to virtually navigate the physical spaces of the Senior Library at their discretion, all the while being in complete control of the exploration experience. Participants in the VTP will enter the foyer space of the CLL and have the ability to view the collection of artefacts and art on display; for example, the portrait of King William IV. The user could return to the starting point or proceed further into the virtual tour, entering the School’s Senior Library space. The tour would allow the user to enter each different area within the Library; for example, The Maker Place and be able to click on objects within the room such as the LEGO wall, 3D printer, or Chroma Key setup to obtain more information displayed on these particular objects and learn about their functions. These so-called “hotspots” will enable the user to select on any items set up within the software environment to find out more information about a particular area or service provided. Focusing on the Library’s
9
information terminals, for example, would allow a user to highlight all the search parameters and options available while browsing the library catalogue. The technology will permit historical photos and facts from the School archive to be directly blended with the contemporary spaces currently within the library. In consultation with the Information Services team, a working prototype has been in development for the last six months. This involved planning and capturing multiple exposures photos from key library areas. The photos were then processed and stitched together to create the 360-degree panoramic images. Following this, the panoramas were transformed into the interactive environments within the software platform. The system has scope to deliver the tour as an embeddable object or a self-contained computer application. As the Library continues to adjust to dynamic legislative and School policies regarding social distancing in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the concept of creating a 360 virtual tour has further relevance as a means for staff, students and parents to explore and learn about the functions and services offered within the Centre for Learning and Leadership.
AIS Leading from the Middle
Learning to Serve Doesn’t Always Require a Tennis Racquet Rationale Boys of The King’s School Preparatory School are exceptional at raising funds for charities and making donations to help others in need. However, how do we measure that their generosity is not just a fleeting thought of throwing a gold coin into a bucket or dumping a blanket into a crate for someone else to deliver to those in need?
Joanne Usher
As educators at The King’s School, it is our responsibility to ensure our charges grow to become young men of character that contribute to the good of society. For some of our Kingsmen, this journey starts in The Preparatory School. Proverbs 22:6 teaches us, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it.” As such, the development of character and servant leadership must start with our youngest Kingsmen. The King’s School Preparatory School is an International Baccalaureate School, following the PYP program. The PYP, together with our SEL program, will be the vehicle for our youngest Kingsmen to develop their understanding and practice of service-learning, ultimately preparing them to be servant leaders.
10
To enable continuity and ensure our Prep boys are talking the ‘same language’ when they enter the Senior School, I propose to develop a scope and sequence to be implemented into the Prep curriculum following Robert Greenleaf’s model of servant leadership. I envisage this pedagogical strategy to be embedded into the PYP and a Unit of Inquiry, allowing the boys to take ownership of their learning and demonstrate any action they have taken outside of the classroom. This approach will allow academic outcomes to be mapped to Servant Leader competencies. Furthermore, I propose working closely with our Students and Community Wellbeing team to expand our SEL Scope and Sequence and establish local and global partnerships. These partnerships will provide opportunities for our boys to participate in meaningful and relevant acts of service.
Experiential Learning in Agriculture Growing Boys Organically – Learning through Experience Rationale
Jordy Wickham
We are blessed at The King’s School to have a large area of land that has been previously underutilised. We developed the Ag program to refocus a portion of existing land to support a growing, sustainable agriculture program for the Prep School, allowing students the ability to connect with nature and with purpose, both in a physical and mental sense. How do we measure the impact outdoors can have on children’s wellbeing? We can look at the research into a growing scientific field that has shown a strong connection between time spent outside in nature and improved mood, decrease in anxiety and stress. However, we need not look further than the boys at the Prep for anecdotal evidence of the Ag program’s positive impact. There has been a perceivable change in the atmosphere. For some boys, the only joy they find in their day is being at the Ag Plot, where they find engagement and purpose in tending to the animals and gardens. The program has grown organically and has not been without challenge. Foxes have been an ever-present danger, bugs in the organic vegetables and gates left open. However, these negative challenges did not deter. As the Chinese proverb states, ‘Fall seven times, stand up eight.’ There is now the positive challenge of expanding interest and numbers of boys wishing to be part of the program.
11
The Ag program is now too extensive for one person to manage. Slowly but surely, agriculture at the Prep has spread across all grades. In 2020, Year 1 and Year 5 integrated agriculture into their Units of inquiry to develop rich and authentic learning experiences mapped to the curriculum outcomes and the PYP. There is more to be done, but we are well on our way to embedding this outdoor learning experience across all Year groups, whilst building deep learning of sustainable agricultural practises and a connection with rural Australia, in line with our strategic directions and our foundation as a School.
AIS Leading from the Middle
Differentiation through Acceleration
Rationale Education continues to evolve in its understanding that one size does not fit all. Whilst it is impossible to truly differentiate every concept for every student in every lesson, and no program can replace the authentic face to face interactions between students and teachers as the best way to differentiate, there is still scope to structure classes, courses and teaching strategies in such a way to maximise differentiation and therefore learning outcomes. Students and parents have some choice as to which school or pattern of study works best for them, and teachers have the ability to differentiate within the classroom, but further structural changes beyond these choices will help drive better academic outcomes.
Jeremy Wicht
Providing an option for students to accelerate subjects can lead to significant benefits for accelerants, other students, teachers and the school. Both accelerated and non-accelerated streams will benefit from a narrower range of differentiation requirements which should allow teachers to improve the quality of the differentiation for the students in front of them. Accelerated students will not only receive better direct instruction for their chosen subject, but will benefit from
12
learning transferable literacy and study skills earlier in their academic journey, which can be applied to other subjects. It also leaves further areas of study open for those students who are disappointed when being restricted to only a handful of subjects in their senior years. This School has developed and implemented several opportunities for gifted and talented students to be challenged academically and accelerated subjects are another avenue for students to access many of the benefits of cluster grouping identified by Karen Rogers over many years. Judicious selection of students, targeted pedagogy and direct monitoring and improving should lead to greater outcomes for all students undertaking this course over several years.
www.kings.edu.au | P: +612 9683 8555 | E: tks @ kings.edu.au | A: PO Box 1 Parramatta 2124, NSW Australia
Cricos No: 02326F | The Council of The King’s School, ABN: 24 481 364 152 | Incorporated by The King’s School Council Act 1893