Endpiece
Letter from America Jason Morrow
Jason Morrow reports from New York City
A recent tweet by Kevin Stannard (GDST director of education and innovation) caught my eye in which he asserted: ‘Take inspiration from other education systems, but never forget we speak a different language.’ This seemed very apt for me as I embark on leadership in a British international school and seek to understand and articulate what that means in a world city such as New York. Here are some of my initial reflections on life and work in the Big Apple.
Start as you mean to go on In the midst of all the preparations and the sense of anticipation and potential that characterise the start of the new year in a UK school, it is hard to deny that there is usually also a sense of time pressure or rush from day one. Pupils typically start to return on the second or third day of the new school year and there can be a feeling of having to catch up right from the outset. When I first received the term dates and calendar for my new school in New York, I was therefore intrigued by the seven full days set aside for training and preparation at the start of the year. The first two days enabled new members of staff to spend time with senior colleagues and begin to familiarise themselves with school systems and the practicalities of life in America – including the Byzantine complexities of the health care system. (Note to self: try not to get sick!) The following week was set aside entirely for whole staff training, department or age-group level collaboration and blocks for individual staff to plan their first units of work and make sure their classrooms were welcoming and engaging spaces in which to learn. Perhaps not surprisingly, the outcome of this dedicated training and planning time was a positive, calm and purposeful start to the year for staff and pupils. The benefit of that lack of stress and time pressure in the opening days undoubtedly continued to contribute to the energy and creativity levels across the school throughout the early weeks of the new year. I have to say that I am therefore an early and convinced convert of the benefits of such an extended pre-term training period and would encourage colleagues in the UK to trial it.
A common language It may be something of a cliché to observe that the USA and UK are divided by a common language, but it is also a truth of which to be mindful in conversations with parents, staff and students. It took me several conversations with prospective parents to appreciate how many connotations the term ‘rigour’
has in an American educational context. It didn’t initially seem problematic for me to say that I recognised the value and importance of ‘rigour’ in learning until I realised that might give the impression that I didn’t place the same value and importance on breadth, inquiry and creativity. Although it is not unusual to have discussions around the balance between such elements, I hadn’t previously encountered it in such dichotomous terms as a choice between ‘rigour’ and ‘progressive’. Ironically, the latter has a slightly quaint or retro feel for me, as it seems to evoke an educational debate that I imagine might have happened in the ’70s in the UK, which has since moved on to acknowledge and incorporate notions such as ‘inquiry-based’ and ‘childcentred’ as staples of a balanced educational provision for most schools. Or perhaps I am guilty of wearing rose tinted spectacles in my perception of this debate in the UK, as the spectre of league tables and the constant focus on grading and categorising schools may suggest the debate is just as fierce and alive in British schools, albeit dressed in different terminology. There are plenty of other faux amis style terms with which to grapple, but the one I find sits most uncomfortably at present is ‘administration’, and a perception among some that the primary focus of the Head is as the ‘school administrator’. There are so many crucial responsibilities and elements to that post, and I don’t underestimate their importance to the success and development of a school, but it is also a potentially hazardous zone in which to operate as the Head. The greater clarity and collective understanding in the UK that the Head’s primary responsibility in a school is to ensure the quality of educational provision for all students, is perhaps something that has been diluted in the US, and is worth preserving in the face of potentially distracting regulatory excess or fundraising expectations.
Are we there yet? Thanksgiving is finally on the horizon, and it will certainly arrive as a welcome break for staff and students, especially given the absence of a UK-style half-term holiday in October. I was intrigued to see how my own energy levels, as well as those of the school generally, would fare without that recharge moment at half-term, and I have to confess I have been pleasantly surprised that focus, productivity and attendance have not noticeably dipped, for the school at least. That is partly thanks to the blaze of colour, invention and fun which
Spring 2016
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