We sang a song with a happy beat (Wet Willie)

Where I work - OSG Hastings' Campus

Starting with two days in Auckland with other Principals, it was an amazing week just gone.

OneSchool Global is an extraordinary organisation with a truly inspirational environment within which to work. I mean, really!

Quick refresher: OneSchool Global is a worldwide network of campuses for the children of Plymouth Brethren families. Students stay with us for the last 11 years of their schooling. In NZ there are 17 campuses spread over both islands split into 5 districts. I am privileged to be a District Principal for the North East region (taking in Hamilton, Gisborne and Hastings' campuses).

My week: 

Monday am - flew to Auckland from Palmerston North for two days of Senior Educational Leadership Team (SELT) meetings. We discussed topics such as our ten foci for 2022, the Culture of Care within our campuses, our goals for our Learning Centres (where students in Years 9 to 13 work), and more!

Tuesday pm - flew back to Palmerston North.   

Wednesday - spent the day with my Hastings' Year 13 students as they had a series of workplace visits - touring three Brethren businesses and working on CV's and job seeking type activities. This was a real eye-opener of a day - I had no idea about the sheer scale of these businesses!

Thursday - my first full day at Hastings' campus for a while catching up with people and completing my various reports - a normal Thursday responsibility.

Friday - a public holiday in NZ called Matariki (Matariki signals the Māori New Year).

Quite a week!

Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm (Bob Dylan)

Photo by Marcos Luiz Photograph on Unsplash

Recently, a global survey by OneSchool Global, the organisation I belong to, asked 1,000 community business owners what attributes they were looking for in employees and the usual suspects came to the fore:

1. Positive Attitude
2. Self-Motivated
3. Team Player
4. Diligent
5. Problem Solver

Interestingly, the top 3 attributes have remained the same as a previous survey done 4 years ago, showing that attitude and work ethic are critical.

More interesting still (to me at least as a Campus Principal and English teacher), the survey identified three key improvement areas:

1. Humility, and a respectful attitude towards all employees.
2. IT skills and opportunities.
3. Professional communication skills, particularly verbal.

I'm surprised at #1 and #2 because our students develop IT skills from Year 3 onwards, but clearly not the right ones for business owners, and respect is one of our 5 key values. So those ones definitely need looking into.

The third one isn't too surprising though. Lazy speaking and shying away from speaking opportunities (often in favour of videoing a speech to a very small audience) means students often lack good verbal communication skills.

I'll be very interested in the next steps action plan that has been promised for all three of these areas.

It’s a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack (Germany Kent)

The previous post indicated some leaders that I'm very grateful to have worked with, or who I am continuing to learn from.

Ten years ago I wrote about 25 things I was thankful for. At the time I was living and working in the Middle East.

Here's some other things I'm thankful for (in a work sense) in the present tense:

• I am very grateful for being employed full stop. But further to that, I am very grateful to be employed by OneSchool Global. We all provide a Good Feel Index (GFI) rating each week out of 10 and each week I give a 10 for that reason. To do otherwise seems churlish to me. Thank you OSG!
• I am thankful that I have been following my bliss since I was 12 years old (the desire path was teaching). I continue to love my choice of profession (even on bad days like last Friday).
• The people I have worked with since I started teaching (I am lucky to have worked in five different countries around the world and I'll tell you this and I'll tell you no more - there are good people in teaching everywhere I've been)
• The facilities I currently work in are amazingly bespoke for self-directed learners.
• I am thankful to the bosses I've had who have trusted me and left me to get on with it and not micro-managed me. Currently - thanks Paul!
• The mentors I've had along the way stay with me (Colin Prentice is like Obi-Wan - when cancer struck him down he became more powerful than he could have possibly imagined).
• I've appreciated all the learning I have received from some outstanding individuals along the way apart from Colin Prentice: Colin Donald; Alison Ivey; Annette Sivak; Sonja Schutte; Tom Ryder; Terry Heaps; Roger Moses; Peter Joyce; Margaret Wilson; Rob McMurray; Graeme McFadyen; Jenni Dittmer; Toni Dunstan; Greg Semmens; Amy Reid; Dionne Thomas; Jackie Barron; Andrew Plant; Sue Miller; Peter Garelja; Martin Mitchell; WOH Gibbs; Jim Seumanu...and that's just a few that immediately spring to mind!

Strength lies in differences, not in similarities (Stephen Covey)

Currently, I am leading/supporting three OneSchool Global campuses (Palmerston North, Hastings, and Gisborne) and that's a very privileged thing for me to be doing, as it provides a window into the various leadership teams in those campuses.

All are very different and all are very successful.

As well as that I have a recent memory of the Maungituroto campus (where I was Campus Principal from 2017 to 2018).

So, not counting my two campuses in England, I have knowledge and a very particular set of skills gained from experiences fronting the leadership structures in four OSG New Zealand campuses.

My over-riding take away - the leaders in all four campuses are all very different people, with different strengths, and that's why they are so good.

So, this post is a special shout out to the strong leaders in those four campuses: Mandy; Terese; Justine, Rebecca, and Sonja.

They are exceptional people who have done/are doing a phenomenal job in their roles (Junior Lead Teachers or Learning Leader in Sonja's case) and I have learnt a lot from each one by observing their very different leadership styles. 

They certainly provide superb evidence to back up Covey's point.

Hello hooray - let the show begin I've been ready (Alice Cooper)

Photo by Gary Bendig on Unsplash

OneSchool Global NZ is a pretty complicated organisation. 

There are 17 campuses from Keri Keri (the northern-most) down to Invercargill (the southern-most) and for convenience's sake these campuses can be split into three broad regions: north, central, and south (all the South Island).

On the next three successive Wednesdays, students and their relevant Virtual Classroom teachers will journey to a representative campus to meet each other (northern students to Auckland, central to Palmerston North and south to Christchurch).

My two campuses, Hawke's Bay and Gisborne, go to Palmy on the 11th of March.

Although it hasn't been overtly stated, I believe the aims of this event were summed up by Jennifer Gonzalez, writing about how to motivate students in her blog, Cult of Pedagogy.

Put simply - students are more motivated academically when they have a positive relationship with their teacher.

Part of that positive relationship is the students feeling that they are valued by their teachers. They certainly should feel that on those days as their VC teachers are travelling to them from those 17 campuses.

All up then, this is a worthwhile and important couple of days, and I am exceedlingly glad that someone made their suggestion (I'm reading a lot of Dickens at the moment and I fear he is rubbing off on me in a multitude of ways).

Anyway: hurrah for this OneSchool Global initiative!

You say goodbye and I say hello (The Beatles)

Photo by Kristina Paparo on Unsplash

Teaching is such a transitory profession: people come, people go.

I've just heard news of two colleagues in other campuses, both excellent teachers, resigning from our organisation - OneSchool Global, a private school, to head off onto pastures new.

Last week, it was time to offer a sad farewell to a staff member at one of my campuses, who is moving back into the state system. Our students and staff had emotional morning teas and a farewell assembly to see her off with style.

And yet, when one door closes, another one opens.

Staff, like me eventually, will be replaced. Fact of life.

What to do when new people come onboard the crazy train?

John Boitnott has got that covered.

Here are his ten techniques, mainly dealing with establishing good working relationships that aren't covered in the normal orientation procedure.

I've pulled out a few (is four a few? Not sure) I think are the most worthy of a try.

Get coffee

We have a great coffee machine in the staff room, but we also have The 13th Stag coffee shop nearby - great for a social quick coffee or lunch to get away from the hurley burley.

Send them on a scavenger hunt

Give newbies (or the whole staff) a list of tasks, like finding an employee who’s been with us the longest/shortest time,  or who likes to cook, or has the most Beatles records. I've used a colleague's selfie challenge a few times now and it works a treat as a fun icebreaker activity.  

Give them a meaningful gift

OSG does the company branded gift thing really well.

Set them up right

Boitnott: It might sound simple, but take the time to ensure that employees are set up with all of the right software, a functional email account, login accounts and passwords. Ideally, do this before they arrive for their first day. If new employees lack these important tools, it can lead to frustration, delays and a slow start. 

We need to lift our game on this one.

Another year over, a new one just begun (John Lennon/ Yoko Ono)

Our 2019 Year 10 girls decorated an entrance way with this chalk mural. They are an incredibly talented bunch and great leaders/organisers.

As 2020 ticks around in the coming days, it's fun to speculate about the coming year. 

Let's hope it's a good one!

There comes a time when we heed a certain call, when the world must come together as one

Currently, I'm gearing up for a return to active service with OneSchool Global.

During the last few days, a rebranding has happened, so that the NZ campuses no longer go by the Westmount School name.

Instead, we are now known as OneSchool NZ.

OneSchool is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive, truly global schools, with over 9,500 students, 130 campuses and 2,500 staff operating across 20 countries.
The 130 campuses span five regions; Australia, North America, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and Europe – and cities including New York, Paris, Sydney, Rome, Auckland, Melbourne, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Hastings and Gisborne (the last two, on the east coast of the north island of New Zealand, are now my patch).

If you want to know more, click here.

I'm really looking forward to getting back into some routines and helping to lead this innovative school as best I can.

Also looking forward to linking up with my NZ colleagues, in and out of OSG, over the remainder of this year.

Here comes the sun (George Harrison)

The start of my UK stint as Head Teacher of a OneSchool Global campus and it’s all getting keys, having a tour, meeting people, and getting a lie of the land/taking the pulse/surveying the terrain.

There’s a lot to be done and I’m ready to roll my sleeves up (yes, literally).

First thing that made my ears prick up? When I commented on seeing a familiar LEAN board in the staff dining area and my new colleague said – oh, mmm, that just arrived and we don’t know what we should do with it. Like all the ideas it seems, they start in NZ and eventually they arrive here! 

Noice!

Well she's walking through the clouds with a circus mind that's running wild (Jimi Hendrix)

It's conference and PD time in Wozza's World this week.

I am super impressed at the commitment by my current employer to provide all staff with quality PD opportunities. Yes, all!

These things aren't cheap - three days out of school for each staff member, accommodation for two nights, flights and so on. A massive undertaking.

With great outcomes! In all sorts of ways.

One of the things I missed at Woodford House (and I do really love you WH and I do kind of understand why but not really) was the lack of such opportunities for me personally.

This week there have been two great professional development events for me to attend. The first was about Campus Trading and the financial aspects of what makes Westmount and OneSchool Global keep on ticking. 

Sure, some of it was gobbledegook and way over my pretty little head, but it was wonderful to see colleagues getting so passionate about revenue streams and stuff. Very inspiring!

Now, okay, normally my eyes glaze over when finances are involved but I came away with new, and deeper, and more meaningful appreciation for the context I work in. And that was a good feeling people!

Next up are three days leadership PD with the delightful Karen Boyes. Rightfully world famous in Nu Zild, Karen is a superb presenter, and all round lovely person. She makes learning fun! 

Three days with Karen is a joy.

Niggles: sorry, but, going forward, if I hear one more , learning journey underpinning the nitty gritty, I will cover off a retreat...and may just scream!

Again we are positioned in rows facing forward, looking at a screen, as a talented individual lectures us (at times about the nastiness of this practice in the 21st century). The irony is not lost on them. But still it continues.

And the English teacher in me hates it when slides to power points have grammatical errors. Okay, I know most people d'o'n't' care about apostrophes but would it kill to get them proofread?