One by one I counted all those happiest of days; Yeah, That was my mistake (Split Enz)

Recently, I was doing a lesson observation of a teacher when she asked a student to do some work on the board. The student was fine to do that but said to the class, "Don't mock me if I get it wrong".

I thought that was brilliant. To their credit the students' classmates didn't mock her or even look like they were going to before of after her statement. But the worry was clearly there.

Students generally won't ask for help because, just like adults, we all care deeply about what others think of them.  

I hate asking for directions and I grew up with my father often asking me, "What are you trying to do?". So I get it. No one likes to look and feel incompetent.

The solution?

Awareness and care/compassion is a good start.

Teachers like the one I observed help address this by reassuring students and enabling a safe learning environment for making mistakes. One on one conversations in class and in Zoom's break-out rooms can also begin to turn this around.

Productivity begins when you extend trust to competent people (Dan Rockwell)

Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash

Leadership and trust are inextricably linked. 

In my experience it's a binary thing.

People either grow to trust you as a leader, or they don't.

No half measures.

If staff give you their trust, all can weather the storms.

Micro-managers don't use trust to get things done. But leaders do.

I firmly believe that when you employ competent people you should trust them, and get out of their way. 

Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view (Obi Wan Kenobi)

Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash

Dan Rockwell, as I've said before, is prolific on his blog - The Leadership Freak.

Because he is bold and forthright, I enjoy his work. He usually makes good sense too.

Here he is on leadership and being liked - People don’t like you until you like them.

People don’t care if you’re successful. A few want you to fail.

Most people look at leaders with skepticism. They wonder about your motivation. Are you in leadership just for yourself or will you lookout for the interests of others as well? This is a question of heart. Is your heart big enough to make room for others?

We are fascinated with ourselves. The best leaders are fascinated with people.

A leader who doesn’t care about being liked is a tyrant or a fool.

It's twue, it's twue (George Harrison)

Common misconceptions are prevalent in all walks of life. The learning styles myth continues to flourish in education.

Mathematics remains a struggle for me, and many others.

Here's a maths misconception to whet your appetite (and to make me feel better about my inadequacies in this area):

If one were to flip a fair coin five times and get heads each time, it would not be any more likely for a sixth flip to come up tails. Phrased another way, after a long sequence of unlikely independently random events, the probability of the next event is not influenced by the preceding events. Humans often feel that the underrepresented outcome is more likely, as if it is due to happen. Such thinking may be attributed to the mistaken belief that gambling, or even chance itself, is a fair process that can correct itself in the event of streaks.

Well, you can't say yes and you can't say no; just be right there when the whistle blows (The Rolling Stones)

Photo by Sam Moghadam Khamseh on Unsplash

There is no substitute for focused work when it comes to preparation for exams.

Our two week study break is coming to an end and students will have two heavily disrupted weeks to finish their preparations at school. Then they are on their own.

There are plenty of good tips out there for how to prepare for exams, like this article from Edutopia. But unless a student decides to commit to study and then use these kinds of techniques to focus on what they have learned and then be able to apply that to exam questions they won't do themselves justice.

Bottom line: commitment and focused preparation.

We all have our everyday hopes and fears and you'll find no exception in me (Todd Rundgren)

Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash

Reports. Curious things reports.

I have written about the report conundrum before in 2015 while at Woodford House (you can check the post here). 

It's seven years later and I'm proofreading a set of the latest reports for  our seniors who are heading to external exams in a few weeks' time.

Musing again on the whole report writing thing, and how they fit with students' digital trackers, and modern technology's instant access.

The musings are set for a while yet it seems.

I did good, I kept it on track, yeah (Alex G)

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Penmanship is rapidly becoming a dying art, or even a thing.

We've started our Term  3 into 4 study break for two weeks, but the memory of students doing their recent practice exams on devices, lingers.

It seems rare now to see students using pen and paper in their normal day to day lessons, so it's inevitable that NZQA would introduce digital exams at some point.

Students still have the choice but not one of my students elected to forgo using their laptop in the two weeks of exams.

In the senior school, they are used to typing now, more than writing, so they reported positive benefits from the experience. They wrote a lot more and I would say the quality of their answers will be better, plus the marking of their 'papers' will be a lot easier - no deciphering of rubbish hand-writing any more.

Given all that, I'm not about to be a crusader for using pen and paper, but as I'm of an age, I still love writing with a fountain pen, real ink, on real paper. And I can still bemoan the lost art of penmanship, and encourage educators to persist against the odds.