The End of Busy

sourced via Tom’s Blog. Read it!

The Worth of a Teacher

Collective agreements are due for renegotiation at the moment and teachers are being cautioned that, in a fiscally tight environment, payrises are unlikely. There is a degree of realism to this which I think most people accept. However it did remind me of an email received a couple of years ago, which I can’t put my finger (mouse?) on at the moment. Essentially though, it goes like this:

 Assume the average wage of a teacher is $50,000 per year – some earn more, some less, but for the purpose of this exercise, $50k.

Minus tax ( as calculated at ird.govt.nz), the salary is now $40450.

Assume that the teacher doesn’t have a Kiwisaver or Student Loan.

Buy into the populist argument that teachers only work 40 weeks a year and do nothing during the term breaks. $40450 divided by 40 weeks = $1011.25 pay per week.

Buy into the populist argument that teachers only work 9-3. Take off an hour unpaid for lunch (disregarding the reality of meetings, duties etc). $1011.25 divided by 25 hours per week = $40.45 per hour.

Assume the average class size is 25 (some are larger, some smaller). $40.45 per hour divided by 25 =  $1.61 per hour.

Conclusion: a teacher receives $1.61 per hour to teach your child.

This number becomes much lower if we do factor in all the other things that a teacher does beyond 9-3, and beyond the actual time spent delivering lessons. Add in prep time, meetings, duties etc and the hourly rate dips pretty low. In my school I would say it is closer to an hourly rate of 86 cents per child per hour.

I compare it to holiday clubs/courses where supervision/fees are $10+ per hour for each child – and we would hope that teachers are actually providing something more than supervision during the time our children are in their classrooms!

So – how much is a teacher worth? And how will that worth be recognised in upcoming negotiations?

The final stretch

I don’t quite have the whip in hand, as today’s picture demonstrates, but it is definately a case of keeping your eyes on the finish line, with a couple of days left to go of term. People are tired, we are getting into winter (dark mornings, dark nights), and psychologically an 11 week term is just a week too long for some.

My challenge to the children and staff is to finish strongly (even if that doesn’t make perfect grammatical sense). We have learning celebrations today – a great link with our community and “purpose” for our learning – and a teacher swap morning on Friday. The children are getting very excited about having a different teacher for the morning, and while there was a feeling of “here we go” and rolled eyes when the idea was first mooted a fortnight ago, I sense an excitement from the teachers about it as the day gets closer  – lots of conversations about what they will be doing. For some it means a level that they haven’t worked with before and they are getting quite enthused about it all.

Friday (last day of term) is also a mufti day – we are raising funds via a gold coin donation to assist a school in Samoa to build new classrooms. This is a co-ordinated effort by the NZCPPA and is always highly successful.

Interesting times nationally too. First round of reports have gone out for many schools this week which incorporate the controversial national standards. Education minister Anne Tolley speaks at our national principals conference this week – I expect the question time to be fiery! I am not attending but do look forward to hearing all about it.

Death by Meeting – a review

One of the goals of this blog that I’ve neglected are book reviews. Recent reading for me has been Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni, a San Francisco based management consultant. A fellow principal name dropped him recently, so I did some research and picked up this book, intrigued by the title.

The book is written like a fable, similar to Who Moved My Cheese? In the same vein, we follow the story of Casey, whose small business is in the midst of a takeover by a larger company. Casey is aware that his meetings are pretty poor but counts it as a necessary evil. It takes a passionate trainee to make him realise that this attitude to meetings may be the root cause of his underperforming business.

Death by Meeting is such an easy read, and so applicable to educational leaders. Through the simile of movie making, it is explained how we have to run meetings that excite, grip, compel and empower people, rather than having them staring at the clock, willing it on. I’ve sat in those meetings, I presume most of us have, but Lencioni suggests that there are simple strategies we can use to make meetings not only worthwhile but central to a well operating business. The structure  is 2/3rd’s story, 1/3rd theory. A good balance for me and easy to read at this stageof the term, when the brain cells are just about shot and struggling to take on board new ideas. I thoroughly recommend this book to all educational leaders, there is bound to be something here that will ensure better meetings and use of time.

Patrick Lencioni has a number of books available through his website and locally they can be purchased via fishpond. Ideal reading with the term break coming up!

Guilt

Just a quick link here to a great post on the guilt that comes with leadership reflection. It’s not unique to education circles – any number of business management books refer to the same thing, so it is pretty much universal to all leaders. Worth reflecting on.

The importance of conversations

In the midst of a busy term I had been putting off a meeting with one of my teachers to discuss career pathways. I had seen it as a “slow burner” – a conversation that was important to have, but not urgent.  The meeting date had been chopped and changed a number of times during the current school term and consequently the agenda had grown quite large.  “We’ll talk about that when we meet” has been in most informal conversations between us lately.

Last week we sat down for the long awaited talk and it was as empowering and enriching for me as it was for the teacher. We discussed vision, curriculum, careers, opportunities and challenges. It was a long-ish meeting because so many things had been banked up to be talked about, but so valuable and rich in dialogue.

I meet once a term with all teachers with an open agenda – this meeting had slipped through the cracks of that system – and it reminded me how important it is to keep the lines of communication open and regular. My reflection and learning from this is that it is more important to have those conversations regularly and to make time for them – don’t bank it up until the meeting becomes necessary, do it regularly so that the lines of communication are kept open.

Winter Tournament today  – a great day for it weather-wise – and a super effort from all our teams with a number of placings and victories.

…

…a quick post tonight before settling in to catch up on the day’s football. MySky is money well spent during the world cup!

A really interesting sabbatical report here. Interesting to read the perspectives of a number of different principals and the issues they face. It just proves that none of us shoudl work in isolation because we all face very similar situations and issues. Networking and sharing problems is so important!

A great post here from Luke. I used this at our management meeting this morning with particular emphasis on N0.8 - having a bias ”yes”. Easier for some than others! It is an interesting discussion starter – particularly if you feel that rules, boundaries, processes etc are the be all and end all. Challenging stuff.

Gutted that Spain lost this morning, and I’m still not sure how they managed to. They are my pick for the cup and they are by no means out yet! I’m still on cloud nine from the All Whites game the other night so am clinging unreasonably to hopes of an All Whites/ Spain final!

Another document to read…

I’m very interested by the document that turned up in today’s mail entitled “A Vision for the Teaching Profession”. I need to read it more thoroughly before posting on it, but some first-read thoughts:

* Will having only one year post graduate degrees actually produce a lift in the quality of teacher graduates?

* Is there a demonstrable quality difference between one year post-graduates and those that do dedicated three year teaching degrees?

* What might be the criteria for ascertaining a “disposition to teach”? I would have thought something like this was part of the initial vetting for teachers college recruiters?  

* Why don’t they just come out and call it “performance pay”? Let’s call a spade a spade.

* Principal pathways is an ongoing concern – and unless the rural route is given more mana this will continue. Making a rural leadership role part of the required pathway to principalship might be a good place to start. Would this deter people? Maybe in the short term – but surely longer term it would mean increased capacity and in turn quality filtering through?

More thoughts to come once I have thumbed it through a bit more. If you haven’t got it yet, get it in PDF here.

Tricky Situations

As school leaders we all have them – parents, children, staff, board members, they can come from anywhere at any time. We are often on the back foot too, because these people bring to you a situation they have stewed over for ages and expect you to fix it without any opportunity to think the situation through or to seek your own counsel. The ability to stall -i.e. promise action, but ask for time to ponder the issue – is really vital so that you don’t end up going down the wrong road and mishandling the situation.

A different tricky situation is when YOU see the problem and need to act. It’s easy to look away sometimes, even when we know it is the wrong thing to do. I find it helpful to remember, when seeing something is not right, to remember that doing nothing is also a decision and an action – one of condoning and/or abdicating our responsibility as leaders.

None of us have all the answers though, and I for one have been helped many times by seeking the counsel of other principals. Often they have been through the same situation and can offer the voice of experience; sometimes, it is just a different perspective that helps us to see a situation in a new light. In all the talk around educational leadership, managing people seems to get overlooked an awful lot. It is very hard to say to someone, “that’s not good enough”, or to confront a long-standing rot, or to stand by an unpopular decision. But it must be done or we are failing ourselves. This, I believe, is the stuff that leads to such turnover in our profession, or the lack of candidates to join us as school leaders. Not long ago I assisted a board appointing a new principal. One of the questions asked of each of the interviewees was scenario based, and asked how they would manage a “renegade” staff member. Not one interviewee gave a decent answer. Not surprising maybe, as they were all applying to be first time principals, but I wonder what support is being given (apart from the informal networks formed) to the person that board eventually appointed? We asked that question for a reason!

A few good sources for reading more about managing change and improving performance:

 Difficult Conversations.-  I have read this book so many times that I’m just about due a new copy. Ideal for dipping into, with so many insights and interesting ideas, totally applicable to school leadership.

The Learning Leader – again, an easy read, full of practical ways to address issues and bring about change.

The Daily Disciplines of Leadership - my current read, good stuff so far. Especially good for systems and guidelines for improved and focussed relationships.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – a fable about “what not to do”. haven’t read it yet but have it on order via fishpond. It comes recommended and I look forward to getting into it over the next term break.

What else is out there that people have found useful?

Making Standards Work

“What are you doing about the standards?” has replaced “what are you doing about the revised curriculum?” as conversation starters at the principals meetings and other events that I’ve been at over the last term or so. It’s a telling change – principals and school leaders are spooked, there is no other word for it. Not spooked so much by the standards (although there is plenty there to be concerned about) but by how we are supposed to implement them. Most of us are unsure because we have not seen enough to satisfy us that this is really the best way forward for our communities, unsure becuase we do not believe it is the best way that we can serve our children. Nonetheless, they are here and need to be worked with.

Fletch has made a couple of insightful posts on this recently and I think he is on the right track – let’s spend our energy making them work for us, not against us. They don’t have to consume us or take over our localised curriculum, we just need to think smarter about how we can make them fit in with what is right for our communities. We may personally and professionally see them as flawed but our communities expect us to spend our time and energy making it right for their children, not getting caught up in a “no-win” battle. Luke sees it differently, and I agree with him also. There are all sorts of opinions out there, what matters though is the one you bring to your community and how you make it work.

An apt quote is the one I got from a leading and management advisor (remember them?) in my first principalship at a two teacher school: “the parents won’t care if you don’t get the policies right, but stuff up their kid’s education and they will never forgive you”.

So for my school, it’s all about getting that OTJ right. That’s where we can make it work for us; using the tools and strategies that are based on sound pedagogy and proven strategy. We can dress it up however we like but if we get the basics right – and quote some John Mitchell to our parents: “it’s not about the result, but the journey” – then we can hold our heads high. We will be using the standards for our children, not against them.