Cynic or Skeptic?

‘In a democratic society scepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.’ - Napoleon Bonaparte

In order to get back on track, we need to think about our attitude to the status quo, to be prepared to change or remove those aspects of school activities which do not add value to pupils’ learning. Then, to have reasonable conversations about what might be worth thinking about and doing differently. We have some choices about the stance we adopt. We can either subscribe to a cynical position, which is essentially one of intellectual defeatism or we can take the more nuanced approach of the skeptic.

Both the words cynic and skeptic have interesting roots. The etymology of cynic is the Greek ‘kyon’ which means dog. The philosophical movement of cynicism began in the 5th century BCE and Diogenes[1] was one of its founders. Cynicism as a school of thought in the ancient philosophical tradition argued that people can gain happiness by rigorous training and through living in a way which is natural for themselves, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, and fame. Instead, they were urged to lead a simple life free from all possessions.

The modern usage of cynicism, however, generally refers to a reluctance to believe the sincerity and honesty of others. It tends to take the view that people are motivated by greed or ambition and shouldn’t be trusted. While it is possible to have a positive reading of cynicism which involves the desire to expose hypocrisy and to point out gaps between ideals and practices, generally cynicism implies a defeatist attitude to the world and its woes and as a result, it’s not worth the bother of trying to change things.

The cynical path has the potential to take us down some long and unproductive rabbit holes. The space of cynicism is occupied by blame, by defeatism, by negativity and helplessness.  It is not the temporary helplessness of someone in the deep throes of loss or pain, but rather a mindset that robustly asserts that this is the way things are and they can’t possibly get any better. The real poison of the cynical stance is that it believes it is right, that it also has the right to shout down other possibilities, other ways of doing things. And that is why we need to be alert to commentary such as: ‘Things are awful, and they will never get better’; ‘What can you expect from pupils from these backgrounds?’; ‘What can you expect from this group of leaders or this government?’ The real danger of cynicism’s negativity is that it does not allow for possibility, it depresses both those who express it and those who hear it. It is resolute in not allowing the agenda to be opened up and for alternative ways of working to be explored.

The argument here is that it is more helpful to consider scepticism as this is a more productive space from which to consider our work and what might need to be changed or removed, in order to focus on the activities which had the greatest value. The word sceptic also derives from the Greek ‘skepsis’ which means inquiry or doubt.

The sceptical viewpoint, in contract to the cynical one, recognises all of the problems and challenges shrilly proclaimed by a defeatist stance. The skeptical position does not have its head in the sand, it does not follow a Pollyanna position of denial, puppies and trite exhortations to believe in better. What it does do however, is take up a clear sighted position and ask questions about whether things are good enough, strong enough, relevant enough for current circumstances. And then turn to what might be better.

The sceptic asks questions, refines the skill of questioning, turns questioning into an art form. Following, whether intentionally or not, a Socratic line of enquiry, where the outcomes are not predetermined, where they are not set out in advance but are engaged in, in an attempt to seek, not absolute truth, but a better way of going about business. And as it goes through this process, it means that those elements of our practice that still remain, do so because they have earned their right to be there. They are not there simply because they have always been there.

A significant thread of the sceptical mindset is to ask why, repeatedly. Not in an aggressive or threatening way but in a spirit of curiosity, of openness, of helpfulness, of amusement, and of being prepared to be surprised. To do this takes self-confidence, a deep knowing that it is alright not to know the answers or solutions straightaway. The likelihood is that we will not to be prepared to go to this space if we are concerned about our image, about how we come across, about what other people think of us. We have to put those factors to one side and to say: the pursuit of clarity means that it is worth letting go of some of our preconceptions.

Matthew Syed in Rebel Ideas[2] makes the case for individuals and organisations keeping an open mind, of seeing what is possible and what might be different. He tells the history of suitcases with wheels: these were only added in the 1970s. We might ask ourselves: ‘What is sitting right in front of us, staring at us, that will seem mind bogglingly obvious once we make the connection?!’

Doing this kind of work means that we have to pay attention to culture. We need to develop collective wisdom, underpinned by psychological safety. An environment is psychologically safe when people feel they can offer suggestions and take sensible risks without provoking retaliation. Syed argues ‘These wise groups express a different dynamic. They are not clone-like. They do not parrot the same views. Instead, they are more like groups of rebels. They do not disagree for the sake of it, but bring insights from different regions of the problem space.[3] As the psychologist Charlan Nemeth puts it: ‘Minority viewpoints are important, not because they tend to prevail but because they stimulate divergent attention and thought. As a result, even when they are wrong, they contribute to the detection of novel solutions that, on balance, are qualitatively better.’

[1] https://academyofideas.com/2013/05/diogenes-the-cynic/

[2] https://www.matthewsyed.co.uk/resource/rebel-ideas-the-power-of-diverse-thinking/

[3] Syed, Matthew. Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking John Murray Press

Making the case for less

‘Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done.’ - Greg McKeown

We find it hard to throw things away: to trim, to prune back to the essential. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes we just don’t notice how things have piled up, we just get used to there being more and more; sometimes we hang on to stuff in case it comes in useful and sometimes it can all feel too much to try and sort out what’s still needed from what can be thrown away.

However, we cannot just keep adding more and more to our work schedules, otherwise we will go under. But it takes bravery and discipline to ask ourselves, do we really need this? What would happen if we got rid of it? And yet if we want to create the time and space to focus on the important work, we need to roll up our sleeves and do some metaphorical cleaning out of the attics.

Our guiding principle for this work might be William Morris, who said that we should have nothing in our homes unless we know it to be useful or believe to be beautiful: when we place this idea within our work context we might ask ourselves whether the systems and the resources and the materials we are working with, really are useful? And as for beauty: this does not mean that we decorate our worksheets with sparkly butterflies, but instead ask ourselves whether they are fit for purpose: whether they are really clear and carefully designed to make sure that pupils can really learn from them.

The idea of making the case for less has a long pedigree in academic and management literature. Vilfredo Pareto, Professor of Political Economy at Lausanne discovered and described the '80:20' effect, now known as the Pareto Principle.[1] Pareto’s work was in analysing wealth and income distribution trends in nineteenth-century England and he discovered that broadly 20 percent of the people owned 80 percent of the wealth. This insight was developed later by others, such as Joseph Juran, the quality improvement expert who developed ‘Total Quality Management’. Juran refined and developed Pareto's theories to make them applicable in business and management. Juran realised that organisations and people tend to expand activities, materials, and stuff of all sorts, over time, and all of this 'stuff' becomes expensive and cumbersome to keep. He took the Pareto Principle – the top 20% of any country’s population accounts for 80% of its economy – and translated it into business. He developed the Juran Trilogy that addressed the planning, control and improvement of quality in products.[2] While Juran’s focus was on wasteful processes in manufacturing, the principles provide insights into how we go about our work in education. We might ask ourselves a question such as: ‘What is the 20% of our work which has 80% of the impact?’ Or ‘What is the impact of the work we do outside the classroom? Does all of it have real impact? How do we know?’

An unexpected organisational guru for this section is Marie Kondo[3]. This might be surprising as she is known for her advice on decluttering our homes. However, as with Pareto and Juran, there are some insights that might be applied to our work. Kondo says ‘My criterion for deciding to keep an item is that we should feel a thrill of joy when we touch it.’ Now ‘joy’ might not be the first thing that comes to mind when we are thinking about our work and the things we use to get that work done. However, if we unpick it, we might ask ourselves questions such as: ‘Is this the most professional way to go about this? Do I feel a deep sense of satisfaction with these power points and resources that I am offering my pupils? Are they the best and how do I know?’ And when we are able to answer yes to these, then we tap into a professional pride, which on Kondo’s terms might be called joy.

She has some interesting things to say about why so many of us allow ourselves to be surrounded by disorder. She argues that visible mess helps distract us from the true source of the disorder - in other words, we might have so much paperwork to complete that we forget to ask ourselves why we are doing this and who it is for. She goes on to say that there are usually two reason why we are reluctant to let something go: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future. And translated into a school context, this might be ‘Well we have always done it this way’ or ‘What will happen if we change our policy from marking every piece of work to whole class marking?’ The prospect facing up to the fact that we might need to do things differently and this can take many of us out of our comfort zones.

At a more extreme level, we might want to consider the work of Cal Newport,[4] a computer scientist who has spent the last ten years working on and writing about digital minimalism. The case he makes is that only by stripping back and managing the distractions offered by the internet in general, and social media in particular, can we create the head space to do what he calls ‘deep work’. His position is a radical one and not for the faint hearted. However, even if we don’t follow his guidance to the letter, the main messages of his work will alert us to the subtle calls on our time.

We need a radical approach to ‘spring cleaning’ many of the things we do in education. This involves taking a close look at the number of meetings we have, to the resources we source and develop and to the way we go about teaching. We cannot afford to hang on to things that no longer serve our purpose. As Kondo says about our homes: ‘Can you truthfully say that you treasure something buried so deeply in a closet or drawer that you have forgotten its existence? If things had feelings, they would certainly not be happy. Free them from the prison to which you have relegated them. Help them leave that deserted isle to which you have exiled them.’

When we release ourselves from some of the things that are getting in the way of cracking on with our best work, work which has impact, it is liberating.

[1] https://www.businessballs.com/self-management/paretos-80-20-rule-theory/

[2] https://www.sixsigmadaily.com/remembering-joseph-juran-quality-improvement/

[3] https://shop.konmari.com/collections/books

[4] https://www.calnewport.com/#aboutSec

Curriculum pace

‘The slow philosophy is not about doing everything in tortoise mode. It's less about the speed and more about investing the right amount of time and attention in the problem so you solve it.’ - Carl Honoré.

‘Curricular materials in high-performing nations focus on fewer topics, but also communicate the expectation that those topics will be taught in a deeper, more profound way...’[1] If we are to do justice to the curriculum, we need to take the right amount of time. The pressure to rush through the material was one of the drawbacks of the previous version - it encouraged speed at the expense of depth, swiftness of coverage over security of that coverage and superficial knowledge at the expense of deep understanding. It is fair to say that the latest curriculum is more demanding and that the orders for English and maths expect children to have mastered aspects from an earlier age than they had previously. However, for all other subjects, apart from history, the content coverage is much less. Somehow, however we have got it into our heads that fast is good and slow is bad.

There was a time when some schools were encouraged to inject more pace into lessons and that was because the thread of the lesson was drifting, and, in some cases, it was sluggish, with too little being expected of pupils. However, most of that has been eradicated and instead speed trumps more thoughtful ways through the curriculum. One way of thinking about this is by considering the curriculum as a banquet. In this analogy, the gifts of the subjects are offered and opened up to children. But because speed is the trump card, they do not have enough time to do more than taste a few elements and if they do swallow some of it, they get indigestion because they are being moved quickly on to the next ‘course’. If we are to honour the curriculum and children’s learning, we need to think of pace differently - pace needs to be appropriate to the learning. There will be times when it is appropriate to move on quickly, but only because it is clear that the children have got it and now need something additional. Mostly, however, things need to slow down. It is simply not possible to work through a curriculum at break-neck speed. All that happens is that the destination is reached, but without any of the necessary equipment or indicators to be able to say whether it had been a successful journey or not.

When pace is privileged over security of content, there is often some confusion between the work and the learning and it goes something like this: well, we have done it, so they should have got it. But between the doing and the being able to say that they have got it, lessons need to slow down so that the curriculum matter can be properly digested. And this can only be done through talk, discussion, making mistakes and addressing misconceptions. Mistakes need to be celebrated as the launchpad for new learning - if all our pupils understand things the first time round then the work is probably too easy. And the demands of the new curriculum, which require greater depth, mean that it is no longer reasonable or realistic to plough on at great speed.

What are we doing when we slow down? We are not talking here about going at a snail’s pace, but at the appropriate pace for deep learning. When we get this right, we are allowing pupils to engage with material - this should be source material wherever possible, either extracts or full texts, according to the ages of the pupils - to go through unfamiliar words, talk about them in context, check for pupils’ understanding of these terms and ask them to make sense of the material.

In fact, in everything we do, we should be getting to the heart of the matter. And it is the appropriate use of pace which allows us to help our pupils to go deeper and learn better. To really take this to heart and put it into practice, it means that we do not take superficial, one-word answers, but expect pupils to explain their reasons, to listen carefully to their responses and to expect other pupils to do so, and ask them whether they agree or not. If we are helping our children to infer as well as to take on board surface details, we need to probe, to check what they are thinking and to see if their peers agree. One way to make this more efficient is to ask the pupils to talk in pairs about what they understand the key points to be. While this is happening, it is possible to wander round the room, listening to what they say. Then, when it is time to bring things together, it is possible to highlight some of the things which have been heard: ‘I noticed that you focused on this, can you tell us why? What do the rest of you think?’ and ‘Over here, I’m not sure that you understood the question correctly. What do you think it means? Do the rest of you agree?’

By slowing down and going deeper, we not only make things more meaningful for children, we are also able to select fewer resources, which we explore in depth, rather than racing through a pile of irrelevant material.

[1] Schmidt, W. & Prawat, R. (2006) ‘Curriculum Coherence and national control of education: issue or non-issue?’ Journal of Curriculum Studies vol38 (no6) pp. 641-658

Beautiful work

A few questions: do we provide enough opportunities for our pupils to produce beautiful work? Do they have the chance to polish and refine something? Are they clear about what good work looks like? Have they been inspired by the finished work of others? How often do pupils get the chance to produce work for a real audience? Are there opportunities for multiple drafts, punctuated with honest and specific feedback? The schools which do this are providing their pupils with something important - authentic work of high quality, something that pupils can be proud of.

Again, how often do pupils have access to the highest quality materials for their final work? In a Reception class in a school in Birmingham, I noticed that children were using artist-quality pastels. What was the rationale behind this? The response was interesting: if we want our pupils to produce beautiful work, we need to make sure they have the best materials. They know that these are used by professional artists. This means they take care of them, do not waste them and are inspired to do their best work. And the expense? Well, we’d rather have fewer things of the highest quality…

The notion of ‘beautiful work’ has been championed by Ron Berger, who argues that it is possible both to meet standards and create authentic work. Underpinning this is the idea that children’s work should be honoured. It should be of the highest quality and it should also have an audience. ‘Once a pupil creates work of value for an authentic audience beyond the classroom - work that is sophisticated, accurate, important and beautiful - that student is never the same. When you have done quality work, deeper work, you know you are always capable of doing more.’[1]

The beautiful work exemplified by Austin’s butterfly[2] did not happen overnight. Underpinning beautiful work is the imperative to draft, take feedback which is precise, robust and kind, redraft and repeat. Then we are ready to showcase to the world. The key takeaway from Austin’s butterfly has been focused on the drafting and the quality of the final piece. However, it is also worth noting that this work was for a purpose: for many years, pupils in this school studied birds, and created beautiful note cards with a scientific illustration of a bird on the front and information about the bird on the back. Those cards were printed on quality card, bundled in boxed sets and sold in the community and throughout the state, including at state rest stops on highways; all the profits were used to support preservation of bird habitats.[3] And so we have the criteria here which are twofold: quality work and a real audience.

There are samples of high-quality work collected on the Models of Excellence site. One, for example, where pupils aged 13-14 created a book for younger pupils, featuring original fables and accompanied by cut-block print illustrations.[4] The students studied the genre of fables, wrote personal narratives to surface issues in their own lives and created animal protagonists and stories to embed those issues in fables with helpful morals. This involved considerable practice, as they only had one chance to compose the woodcut. What is important about this is that pupils were producing both high-quality literary and artistic work. The rules and criteria for each discipline were adhered to. This, and other examples, show how academic standards can be reached from work that is deeply artistic and connects the heart to learning.

If we want to produce more beautiful work, should we think more about the quality and quantity of worksheets, most of which do little to promote beautiful work, or should we be investing instead in high-quality sketchbooks, for example? While these are designed for art, they also make great resources for showcasing beautiful work. Work that is original, that represents the fruits of considerable labour and which are worth keeping. How much of pupils’ work gets thrown away at the end of an academic year? What does this say about the sector’s attitude to learning? And if funds are tight, there are electronic tools for capturing beautiful work, such as Book Creator[5] and Explain Everything.[6]

This is not to make the case that every lesson needs to produce a final produce of beautiful work. Rather it is the opposite: that there should be opportunities across the curriculum for this quality to take place, over time. It is a worthwhile endeavour not just for pupils, but for adults as well. It shifts the landscape, it raises the game and it means that we have to continually ask, is this the best it can be? It’s a question worth asking: What do standards actually look like when met with integrity, depth, and imagination?

[1] https://www.edutopia.org/blog/deeper-learning-student-work-ron-berger

[2] https://vimeo.com/159082211

[3] http://modelsofexcellence.eleducation.org/projects/austins-butterfly-drafts

[4] http://modelsofexcellence.eleducation.org/resources/wolf-would-forgive-illuminating-standards-video

[5] https://bookcreator.com/

[6] https://explaineverything.com/

No-one wants to feel like a muppet

Curriculum conversations can be tough, for several reasons. One reason is that it’s a hefty job. This is why the conversations need to happen over time. And a second reason is that any conversation about our practice or provision can made us feel vulnerable. For the senior leader the vulnerability can come from not knowing very much about the subject they line manage. For the subject leader, the vulnerability can come from fear of being judged about their work. One way to ease this is to use ‘distancing’ language. What is ‘distancing’ language and how can it help? 

At the heart of ‘distancing’ language is recognising the importance of separating the work from the person. It’s important because the work doesn’t have feelings, whereas we as human beings do have feelings. When we use distancing language, we are creating a gap between what is being discussed and the person with whom we are having a discussion. We all feel a deep connection to our work and if our work is criticised or judged then it can feel personal. So, it’s helpful to try and separate the two by the language we use. Instead of saying:

• Why are you doing that?

• I wouldn’t have done it like that

• You’ve got that wrong

• That’s not good enough

• This is how you should do it or

• You should have known better! 

It’s more productive to say:

•  I noticed that

• This appears to be the case

• I wonder what this means

• Tell me if I’ve got this wrong, might have got this wrong, but this appears to be the case

• I’m not sure about this, can you let me have more information?

What we are doing here is critiquing the work, not the person. So instead of saying, you’ve got this wrong, or this isn’t good enough, the distancing language enables us to open up the dialogue without anyone feeling like a muppet. Because no-one likes to feel like a muppet!

And we know that conversations between subject and senior leaders can be stressful for both sides. John Tomsett has created seven starters to open up curriculum conversations in a way that is both robust and fair.

How high challenge and low threat can help pupils to learn the curriculum

We are a challenge seeking species, we like doing things that are difficult. However, no-one wants to be made to feel stupid! There are plenty of examples where we do difficult things such as crosswords, Sudoku, word, and maths puzzles, by way of relaxation. The great thing about these is that we can do them in our own time, without any pressure.

We want to make sure that our classrooms have an atmosphere of high challenge and low threat, and to make sure that we shift away from high challenge and high threat. The high challenge takes the form of demanding work, the low threat comes from reassuring pupils that they don’t need to know all the answers because we are going to scaffold the ways in and support them, primarily through talk. 

One example of this is Richard Kennett providing his pupils with extracts from Marc Morris’ account of the Norman Conquest. This is a demanding text and Richard wanted the class to read and answer the questions for homework: this is high challenge. However, he went on to say that if they couldn’t answer all the questions, not to worry. This is the low threat. What did he find? Well, he found that all the pupils, even those with a reading age below 10 were able to have a go.

Pupils themselves are saying that they enjoy doing demanding work, so let’s not put limits on their learning, and let’s remind ourselves that in the School Inspection Handbook it says that we should be offering a curriculum that is ‘ambitious for all pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils and including pupils with SEND.’

There’s a short film suitable for staff meetings, where I talk about high challenge and low threat on Myatt & Co. You can watch it here.

How developing curiosity can help pupils to learn the curriculum

Some of the insights from psychology and cognitive science can be helpful in supporting to learn the curriculum. And it also has to be said that many of them are common sense! However, while they might be common sense, they are not always common practice.

One of these insights from Professor Daniel Willingham, is that human beings are curious. Who knew! He also goes on to say that thinking is hard work. It turns out that curiosity can play a role in creating a bridge into doing hard work. When poorer readers were given demanding texts to read as a class, they subsequently made gains in their reading ages. They were asked why they thought they had done so well with more demanding work than they usually tackle. They said that they had wanted to find out what happened next, in other words, their curiosity had been provoked!

When we are curious, we have an intrinsic motivation to want to find out more.

So how can we provoke curiosity in our pupils? One way is through beautiful images, a second is through interesting texts and stories and a third is interesting vocabulary. There are plenty more, but these are useful for starters.

Based on this insight, what some schools are doing is to ask themselves, to what extent does the curriculum in our school provoked pupils’ curiosity?

There’s a short film suitable for staff meetings, where I talk about curiosity on Myatt & Co you can watch it here.

How stories help pupils to learn the curriculum

Helping pupils to learn well is obviously important, otherwise we are likely to be wasting our time.

There are some ways that are more effective than others. It turns out that if we identify the big ideas and concepts and teach children these, then they are likely to know more, remember more and be able to do more, over time.

It also says in the quality of education judgement in the school inspection handbook that pupils are learning well when they are ‘making progress in that they know more, remember more and are able to do more’. And that ‘teaching is designed to help pupils to remember long term the content they have been taught and to integrate new knowledge into larger ideas’.

We have some helpful insights from psychology, for instance Daniel Willingham’s research that indicates that our brains ‘privilege’ story. Stories help pupils to make sense of new content, they help pupils to make connections and finally they are enjoyable!

There are plenty of stories across the curriculum which we can use to help our pupils know more, remember more and to be able to do more.

Find out more about how stories can help pupils learn more of the curriculum in this short film on Myatt & Co.

How rich vocabulary helps pupils to learn the curriculum

Helping pupils to learn well is obviously important, otherwise we are likely to be wasting our time.

There are some ways that are more effective than others. It turns out that if we identify the big ideas and concepts and teach children these, then they are likely to know more, remember more and be able to do more, over time.

It also says in the quality of education judgement in the school inspection handbook that pupils are learning well when ‘teachers consider the most important knowledge or concepts and focus on these’.

The concepts and big ideas are generally tier three vocabulary. They are the gateways into the individual subjects. If we want pupils to know more and remember more, it’s worth spending time teaching them, talking about them, and showing them in lots of different contexts.

It is important to do this, because most of the conversations in classrooms use tier one and tier two vocabulary. There is nothing wrong with this, however it does mean that it’s important for pupils to have the chance to talk about and explore these. A rich vocabulary is likely to lead to better outcomes for all pupils, and particularly for those who might not be exposed to them outside school.

Where is the best place to start finding these lovely words? There are two main sources: the starting point is national curriculum documents for each subject. In the purpose statements at the start of the programmes of study the big ideas and concepts are set out for each subject. I wrote about how concepts help pupils learn here. 

And the second place to find them is in high quality texts. When we work in this way, we are increasing the odds of our pupils knowing more, remembering more and being able to do more.

It can be tempting to think that pupils will struggle with these big words. But it turns out that they enjoy learning them!

Find out what pupils have to say in this short film on Myatt & Co.

How concepts help pupils to learn the curriculum

Helping pupils to learn well is obviously important, otherwise we are likely to be wasting our time.

There are some ways that are more effective than others. It turns out that if we identify the concepts aka big ideas and teach children these, then they are likely to know more, remember more and be able to do more, over time.

It also says in the quality of education judgement in the school inspection handbook that pupils are learning well when ‘teachers consider the most important knowledge or concepts and focus on these’

It’s helpful to know that there is research from several quarters that supports the idea that learning is likely to be deeper if we spend time identifying and teaching our pupils concepts. (As with any research, these are insights that might be helpful, as opposed to something we are compelled to use). Daniel Willingham discusses the importance of concepts for learning in ‘Why Don’t Students Like School?’  

And this is echoed by Stephen Pinker ‘Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the web: They might as well not exist.’ Pretty strong stuff!

The good news is that there are plenty of concepts, but there aren’t too many. Where is the best place to look for them? Well, there are two main sources: the starting point is national curriculum documents for each subject. In the purpose statements at the start of the programmes of study the big ideas and concepts are set out for each subject.

And the second place to find them is in high quality texts. When we work in this way, we are increasing the odds of our pupils knowing more, remembering more and being able to do more.

For a short recording and additional resources, here is a short film - ‘Helping pupils learn the curriculum through concepts’ - suitable for staff meetings on Myatt & Co.

Curriculum and staff development

Based on a conversation with Garry Littlewood for ‘Huh’. Garry is assistant head teacher responsible for curriculum and assessment at Huntington School, York and subject leader for food and textiles.  

A school which privileges curriculum development will ensure that time is found for curriculum work to happen. Schools like Huntington in York finish early fortnightly and have a two-hour developmental subject based session. There is always an agenda for this meeting. It is not administrative, it is about teaching and learning, it is about planning, it is about curriculum development. When it was introduced, the school wanted to move away from department meetings. The sessions had to be about teaching and learning. It revolutionised practice by providing time to really work together collaboratively.

It is important to identify the needs of the team. In food and textiles particularly, there are specialists in specific areas of the curriculum. There are textiles specialists and food specialists and they all need individual support. It is important to be able to communicate with your line manager, both your department’s strengths and the areas that are requiring some development. You must work hard at using some of that time helping to support and train colleagues who do find certain aspects of curriculum delivery difficult. As well as developing the curriculum, there are also training sessions where you have got that expertise within your department to share with other colleagues. Curriculum development is often about developing teachers’ subject knowledge.

Developing your schemes of learning with your team is crucial. Schools need to privilege departmental planning time. Teamwork is crucial to curriculum development, sharing resources and pooling both experience and subject expertise. It allows your schemes of learning to be developed over years and even decades. The line manager needs to be open to listen to someone with a specialist background and deep expertise, someone who has genuine nuggets of subject specific understanding of the curriculum. Those nuggets are self-evident to the subject leader, but actually they are not to someone who does not have that background. Being prepared to be surprised is a constructive outcome of the conversation between SLT line managers and subject leaders. 

Subject leaders really value the chance to talk the curriculum materials through with line managers. When deep work has been done, it will have taken lots of sweat and tears and also joy and laughter because it is very interesting as well, but it is not without some heavy lifting behind it. Senior leaders are paying someone a compliment when they ask, ‘Could you just talk me through this? So why have you got this here and why are you teaching that?’ Now all those big questions are actually very professionally rewarding. This is light years away from subject leaders handing in their schemes across five years, if that’s the case, and no one asks them any questions like one of the basic questions, ‘Is it ambitious?’ These deeper professional conversations are the real heart, the real grist of collaborative curriculum development work between SLT and subject leaders.

Primaries do an amazing job

Some thoughts on transition, prompted by Scott Pughsley, head of geography in a secondary school, who posted this:

In some, but not all parts of the sector, primary and secondary phases might as well be on different planets. While there is much excellent work going on, it's not the default. I think there are a number of aspects to transition that need further attention:

First to acknowledge the good work: there's much strong practice on the pastoral aspects of pupils moving schools. Most secondary schools make pupils feel welcome and pay attention to the emotional and social aspects of pupils' experience.

However, I believe more attention needs to be paid to the distinction between 'induction' and 'transition'. Most schools have good systems in place for 'induction'. These include pupils in Year 6 visiting the secondary schools, visits to primaries by secondary leaders with responsibility for transition, information about timetables, uniform, tutor groups, expectations etc.

If we are serious about closing gaps, then I believe we need to pay as much attention to and put our efforts into 'transition'. And a great deal of this relates to the curriculum. Ofsted's Key Stage 3: The Wasted Years? identified poor transition as one of the reasons why the performance of secondary schools had stalled:

And while paying attention to the pastoral needs is essential, the academic needs to go further up the agenda:

And we really need to nail this:

It's not rocket science

And finally, we need to stop talking about 'feeder' schools! Why? Well it implies that pupils are going to be gobbled up. Now, of course they aren't literally going to be consumed by their secondary schools, but language matters and I believe there are a number of problems with the phrase 'feeder primaries'. For one thing, it implies there is a hierarchy, there is a flavour of the secondary phase being more important than earlier phases in a child's education. This is not the case. Every point in a child's journey matters. What then would be a better term? Well, I suggest 'partner' schools. I am sure there are others that reflect the joint work that the sector is, or should be, doing as pupils move from one setting to the next.

Why we need to stop doing the Romans!

Poor Romans! They don’t want to be ‘done’ to. And the same applies to Judaism, poetry, volcanos etc. Instead, we need to talk about ‘teaching about’ the Romans and the other units. Why does this matter?  Well, it’s more than semantics. It has implications for how we think about planning, delivering, and evaluating the curriculum.

If we are ‘doing’ as opposed to ‘teaching’ a unit on the Romans, then it can sometimes legitimise using poor quality resources; not necessarily in every case, but there is a real danger of this. When we flip it to ‘teaching about’ we are obliged to pay more attention to the ‘what’ of what we intend to convey and then check for whether our pupils have learnt it.

There is a joke about two men in a bar. One says to his friend ‘I’ve taught my dog to speak French.’ ‘Really?’ says his mate, ‘let’s hear him then.’ ‘I said I taught him; I didn’t say he’d learnt it’ comes the response. There is something important in this anecdote and it is this: that the fact that I have taught something does not mean that my pupils have ‘got’ it. And they are unlikely to have really learnt something unless they produce something worthwhile with the material they are studying.

In the video explaining the rationale for the national curriculum, Tim Oates talks about curriculum ‘products’. When he talks about products, he means the things which pupils write, say, draw, the low stakes tests they complete or the things they make. All these provide insights for the teacher into the extent to which pupils know, understand, and can do something on their own terms.

We are more likely to take this measured, intentional approach if we start shifting the language from ‘doing’ to ‘teaching’.

Informed debate is the fuel of curriculum development…

When John Tomsett and I were working on our new book ‘Huh: Curriculum conversations between subject and senior leaders’ we wanted to explore the somewhat uncertain territory between the ‘knowledgeable one’ namely the subject leader and the potentially ‘less knowledgeable one’ their line manager. In some cases, a subject leaders’ line manager has the same academic background as the faculty, but more often than not, this isn’t the case.

In order to unpack this, John used the same format for each of the interviews:

• With a class of Year 9s in front of you, if you have taught them a rich, challenging curriculum, what does success look like in terms of what those students know, understand, and can do in your subject?

• If that is your destination, where do you begin in Year 7 and how do you build up to that point?

• What would you like your senior leader line manager to know about your subject?

And that basically is the heart of the book. From these simple questions, conversations emerged which identified the unique landscape of each subject, and which prompted further questions organically. From the recordings, we structured the chapters with the same format:

• We condensed the interviews from about 8 000 into 3 000 words, with a brief introduction to the history of the subject on the school curriculum

• One side of A4 overview of the key stage 3 curriculum

• Three documents/articles/books the senior leader should read

• Five questions the subject leaders would like their line managers to ask them about the curriculum. 

 And some absolute gold came out, as a result of this structure, for example:

‘You tell them that they will be talking in terms of how academic musicians would talk about music.’ Liz Dunbar

‘You know, you can start a programming lesson by asking students to write a sequence on how to make a cup of tea?’ Tristan Kirkpatrick 

‘When students claim they can “do” a language, they are really thinking about is whether they can speak it.’ Hannah Pinkham

‘Latin…the guilty secret of a student's weekly lessons.’ Dr Lucy Cresswell

‘Rescue a lumpy sauce to send a student home with a decent macaroni cheese; teach a student about gelatinisation and they’ll perfect sauces for life!’ Garry Littlewood

‘I’ve done a lot of work around sequencing over the last couple of years, so much so that my poor Year 7 students don’t do any biology until we get to about March time because we're far too busy laying down the groundwork.’ David Gash 

And finally, ‘Start with what the subject leader is really proud of and why.’ Claire Hill

Curriculum development is an ongoing process; it's not going to be finished, ever. And that’s why we have called the book ‘Huh’ named after the Egyptian god of everlasting things.

You can watch a recording of John and Mary’s webinar here via the free membership.

Curriculum conversations between subject and senior leaders

School leaders need to have purchase on the curriculum: why they teach the subjects beyond preparation for examinations, what they are intending to achieve with the curriculum, how well it is planned and enacted in classrooms and how they know whether it’s doing what it’s supposed to.

This is what John Tomsett and I set out to do:

While there has been truckloads going on in schools on the curriculum, we were aware there is sometimes a gap in the professional learning discourse between subject and senior leaders. And that this is potentially problematic when the line manager does not have a background in the subject for which they are responsible. John gives the example of his line managing languages: the head of languages has a double first from Cambridge, in German and Russian, while John has a CSE grade 1 in German. He has summarised the problem for senior leaders, including himself, as follows:

• We sometimes struggle to support subject leaders with curriculum development because we are often intimidated by the terminology used to discuss the curriculum

• We do not know enough about curriculum design

• We do not have a thorough knowledge of the subjects we line manage.

And from subject leaders, these are some of the things we have picked up 

• We feel we have to reinvent the whole curriculum

• We do not have the resources we need to shape the ideal curriculum we envisage;

• We are given unrealistic deadlines for completing our curriculum development work by senior leaders who do not know our subjects. 

So, we thought it would be a good idea to explore this space. And we did it by having conversations with terrific subject leaders. We argue that the onus is on the senior leaders to make the time and space to get to know the headlines of the subjects they line manage. And to do this, they need the support of subject leaders.

In the sessions we recorded, the subject leaders were asked by John what they expected a student to know, understand and do by the end of key stage 3 if they had experienced a really rich, interesting and demanding curriculum. John then asks them how they get pupils started in Year 7. These are John’s question prompts

• With a class of Year 9s in front of you, if you have taught them a rich, challenging curriculum, what does success look like in terms of what those students know, understand and can do in your subject?

• If that is your destination, where do you begin in Year 7 and how do you build up to that point?

• What would you like your senior leader line manager to know about your subject?

And this is what we found

One: That subject leaders are delighted to have the chance to talk about their subjects: a proper conversation about the ‘stuff’ they plan for their students.

Two: That individual subjects make a unique contribution to learning and all those we spoke to were clear that their subjects add value to lives beyond the formal curriculum. 

Three: The subject leaders were clear that key stage 3 was much more than ‘mini key stage 4’ and there are real opportunities here for subjects to treat key stage 3 as the intellectual power house of the secondary phase.

Four: We shouldn’t be intimidated by some of the tremendous teachers and speakers who make us feel this language and understanding is normalised. Only a minority of existing middle leaders have the language being used commonly about curriculum theory and so it needs a steady, pragmatic approach if we are to meet middle leaders where they are.

Five: As Claire Hill says ‘When you think about the vocabulary you use when discussing the curriculum with subject leaders, we need to be sensitive to the individual subject leader’s knowledge levels. It is all too easy to use curriculum-related vocabulary that intimidates colleagues. Across any school or trust there will be a significant variation in terms of where different departments are in understanding how to develop their curriculum. Whilst you might have some common language around core knowledge, hinterland knowledge and disciplinary knowledge etc., how you address that in different subjects varies depending on where that subject is in developing their curriculum.’

In summary

• Our subject takes students beyond qualifications – we are educating them for life

• If the curriculum is so important, then we need time for collaborative curriculum development

• Developing the curriculum is intellectually rewarding work

• We are not developing the curriculum for the regulator – we are developing the curriculum for our students

• The principles of each subject apply to primary and secondary

• Curriculum development is a never-ending process.

And that’s why we have called the book ‘Huh’ named after the Egyptian god of everlasting things.

You can watch a recording of John and Mary’s webinar here via the free membership.

Five caveats for the curriculum

One: there’s no need to have everything in place for us to get cracking. Sometimes, there’s a reluctance to make a start until all the plans are written up. As long as there’s an overview in place, there’s no need to have all our ducks in a row before we make a start. The likelihood is that we are going to adjust the plans in the light of experience. Beginning, as Churchill said, is half done.

Two: The plans are never more important than the pupils in front of us. There can be a temptation to plough on regardless, even if something isn’t working and if pupils haven’t truly grasped something. The plans are there to support teaching, not dictate it. If pupils are not learning what we intend, we need to adjust. Which leads to:

Three: We need to beware the ‘curse of content coverage’. It can feel as though there is an awful amount to be taught. But if our plans are not underpinned by concepts and big ideas, it is hard for our pupils to make connections. As Stephen Pinker says ‘disconnected facts are like unlinked pages on the web: they might as well not exist’. Ploughing through the content is not a sufficient guarantee that pupils have learnt that content unless they are able to make the connections.

Four: Light touch assessments need to gauge whether what we have taught has been learnt. What we teach should be more important than mapping against multiple key performance indicators, which mostly don’t tell us anything and which can affect what we teach in order to turn our pupils ‘green’.

Five: The curriculum is a never-ending story. Lots of colleagues are saying that they are not as far ahead as they would like to be on their curriculum journey. That will always be the case: there will always be something that we want to refine, ditch, add depth. We need to enjoy the fact that curriculum is never-ending. What we are offering right now is probably good enough and that it will take time for it to get better. As Andrew Percival says ‘we need to create a curriculum culture in schools’ which means we relax into the idea that curriculum work is a living, breathing process.

Scarcity versus abundance

‘Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.’

- Epicurus

We are hard-wired to notice scarcity. For most of our time on earth, resources to survive have been in short supply. And for some people, in some parts of the world, they still are. Scarcity and danger were constant companions for much of our history. But, for most of us living today, that is not the case.

When we focus on what is missing we are less capable of noticing what might actually be there for us and the potential for what might be. Getting into the habit of looking for what is good is one way of helping us to feel hopeful, not helpless. In organisations which have the scarcity mindset, relationships are often characterised by competitiveness rather than cooperation, where there can only be one winner and the rest are losers. In these settings, it is sometimes the case that coming first becomes more important than doing the right thing. Competitiveness itself is not a bad thing, as it is one of the drivers for improvement, in providing better products and services, in becoming generally better. But when it is one colleague out to beat another, it is less healthy because the mindset is: there is only so much acclaim or prestige and I must get it whatever the cost.

What happens when an organisation shifts from a scarcity frame to an abundance frame? For a start, mistakes are not seen as the end of the world. Most of the mistakes which are made both by organisations and by individuals are not life-threatening. Mostly, they can be rectified as long as two things happen: one, it is acceptable to own up to mistakes without the fear of ridicule or humiliation and two, everyone asks themselves what can be learnt from this. The abundance mindset allows us to imagine what it might be like next time, and to act on that, rather than focusing on all the things that have gone wrong.

The organisations which have embraced this actually encourage mistake-making. Not because creating chaos is a good thing in itself, but because through the messiness of getting to good work, things often go wrong. Organisations and individuals who own up to mistakes often build up long term trust, because the default mechanism for many is to cover up, to deny and to refuse to respond. Those that do, convey a refreshing honesty, which is a way of signalling that we are serious about what we do, that we want to get things right in the future. Customer service theory has it that a dissatisfied customer is the best way of creating trust in a brand. As long as that customer’s concerns and complaints are dealt with fairly, it results in the underpinning of good, honourable, commercial relationships.

Similarly, in individuals, those who have an abundance mentality do not hoard their ideas or suggestions. They are prepared to share them, even if it makes them feel vulnerable, because they understand that there are always more ideas and suggestions, and that one idea that doesn’t go down well, is not the end of the world.

Again, those who have great expertise and experience in one area are prepared to share that with others, when they are coming from a space of abundance. Their contribution is always: how can we make this better, how can I help others, what have I got to give? The irony is that in giving themselves and their ideas away, they are accruing more from others. Not that they do it for this reason. They do it because they know that abundance is a more productive and healthy place to be, rather than one of scarcity. Individuals who think and work in this way, tend to feel more hopeful than helpless about their own futures.

In the classroom, teachers who work to abundance rather than scarcity principles know that however badly things have gone one day, it does not mean that their practice will always be like that. They know that on reflecting on their work, they can tweak it to make it better. They understand that the focus on abundance and more good things to come is a way of getting stronger. They also know that anyone who has done anything worthwhile has gone through moments of despair and despondency, but that these are not lasting when the wider ocean of abundance comes in to play.

And they model this for their pupils. They reassure them that nothing in the classroom is the end of the world, that there is always the next lesson to get things better. And to enjoy the process in the meantime. They encourage their pupils to see all the good things in their lives, including having them as their teacher, to honour nature, to savour the moment and to look forward to the future. They emphasise the fact that there is enough for everyone. That friendships are not limited to just one person; that human love doesn’t not reduce by being shared and that there is more good than bad in the world.

Leaders who understand abundance, notice it and talk about it. They don’t keep quiet about the things which are going well, the potential there is for all to improve, to find more satisfaction in a job well done, to make a contribution.

Paying attention

‘To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.’

- Mary Oliver

We have all experienced coming across a word which is unfamiliar to us. Then we find we come across the same word shortly after. What seems to be happening is that our brain has made new links and has reset our focus. The things were always there, we just see them in a fresh way, they are brought to our attention. We can only focus on so many things at any one time. What happens when we have an emotional connection with something, is that we set up the neural pathways to short cut other distractions so that certain things come into our radar. We can use this to our advantage.

What we can take from this is that if we are serious about wanting to focus on hope, we make a point of looking for the good. This is not a rose-tinted, delusional way of looking at the world. It is more a case of keeping it in balance. We are hard wired to notice the bad things that might happen to us. Our ancestors needed to be alert to the physical dangers that might kill them or their young. Hyper vigilance is built into our systems as a survival mechanism. If our ancestors hadn’t spotted that lion lurking, they would have been dead meat. While that level of vigilance was helpful thousands of years ago, it is only helpful up to a point for us today. The sadness and the evil in the world are there as a matter of fact. Some of us experience a hefty dose of these. But life is more than that. It is as good as it is bad, as any complex structure is. So, we owe it to ourselves and to our wider experience of the world, to counter-balance the negative by practising noticing the positive.

Linked to noticing the positive, are expectations. Our expectations both for ourselves (I know I am going to enjoy this) and for others (they will be better than the last time I saw them) are a consequence of paying attention as much to the positive as the negative. It is a prosaic observation, but there are two sides to everything. The Janus door, the liminal, the yin and yang, the black and the white. To fully experience life, we need to be open to both. This is why paying attention to keeping an equal balance is important.

So, I can choose to notice that my colleagues were not as cooperative or as open minded as I’d have liked last time we met. Or I can choose to remember a time when they were fully on board. And perhaps my own attitude conveyed impatience and a rush to crack on. So, by thinking back to a time when things had more flow, when the expectations were high and there was a level of synergy, we are priming our attention to expect more of the same the next time we meet those colleagues. We are priming our attention on the times when we had the conditions we wanted as opposed to the times when they were less productive.

It is the same with children in the classroom. Yesterday, tempers might have been frayed, everyone was under par and things did not go as we would have wanted. Now we can choose to ruminate and worry about that, or we can think back to a few days earlier, when everything was buzzing, all were on task and it seemed as though anything were possible. This is how life is, sometimes the flow is there and everything is good, other times it goes off beam. This is not to say that the rotten days don’t matter, they do. But the good days matter too. And if we want more of the good days, it is important that we think about the good days and experiences let them fill our subconscious and let the power of these power us forward. Like petrol in a car, or a good wind behind us.

If we think about what is likely to happen if we pay attention only to the poor stuff which happened. When we meet our colleagues or our class the next time, these negative feelings are likely to be expressed in subtle ways: in our body language, in our tone of voice and in our expectations. What we expect is often what we get. For our colleagues and pupils on the receiving end of this, there are very subtle messages which are being conveyed. I am not in a good mood. I expect it will be the same as last time. What’s the point? They will pick this up, whether they can articulate it or not. But when we flip it on its head, the opposite becomes the case. We can do this, we can be better. Let’s leave the negative stuff behind. Because, there is more good than bad in this world. We just need remember to pay attention to it.

Look at me

“Look at me” is one of the most fundamental desires of the human heart.’

- Bertrand Russell

Russell’s observation might have been driven by his childhood experiences: loss of parents at an early age. Home tutored. Cold grandparents, left to his own devices. Or possibly not. Perhaps he said this because he noticed that people want to be

acknowledged.

A child playing, trying something new, pushing themselves a bit further than they thought they could. Often the refrain when they are doing this is to call out, usually to an adult ‘Look at me, look at me.’ In fact this is the need to have a new skill, a new piece of growth acknowledged by someone else. It takes it beyond the child’s own uncertain understanding of what they have done; have I really done this? To having the new stage and the achievement acknowledged by another. It could also be that the child’s cry of ‘look at me’ is not just for the achievement, but also for them, as themselves. In that moment they are asking not only for their new achievement to be noticed, but also acknowledgement and affirmation of themselves as a person.

This need to be ‘looked at’ in an affirming, rather than a negative way carries on into adulthood. Many of the posts on Facebook and Twitter are reflections of our desire to be noticed. Either for the cleverness of our insights, our wit or the fact we are having a fabulous time. And it is good when others acknowledge that. The ‘look at me’ in this context is healthy.

In the hard-core, real world, it is healthy to want to be noticed as well. However, the ‘look at me’ doesn’t always need to be public. Not everyone is craving the full-blown publicity in a public forum. And no one is craving and insincere response to ‘look at me’. And the last thing anyone is looking for is a scornful response to ‘look at me’.

There are two sides to ‘look at me’. The first is recognising our own need for someone, every now and then, to respond to our moments of ‘look at me’. When we have done something which has been tough, when we make an additional contribution, when we have made something new, it is good to have another say ‘that’s impressive’. Like the child, we know in our heart of hearts that this is good ‘stuff’. But like the child, we might think it is just in our own head that it’s good. So, to have another person say ‘look at what you’ve done’ adds a layer of security to our achievement. It also means that we are likely to build on it.

The second side to ‘look at me’ is to recognise this same need in others. To remember that it felt good when someone looked at us and what we had done and in a sense to regard that acknowledgement as a gift. Then to offer that, when appropriate, to another person.

If we are going to make the case that a dose of responding to ‘look at me’ is a healthy thing for all of us, we need to think about when this turns sour, when there is a scornful response to the ‘look at me’. This is when there is a lack of generosity of spirit, when the need to put another person down, to be spiteful, is more important than building them up. The worst thing one human being can do to another is to hold them in contempt.

The ‘look at me’ is a moment when individuals are vulnerable, where they want the unadulterated warmth of another human’s estimation of them. And this vulnerability can sometimes be exploited in order for others to feel ‘better’ about themselves, by sneering and making unkind comments. This aspect of our psychological makeup, identified by Russell, has the capacity to go two ways. But assuming it is the opposite, that the ‘look at me’ is both expressed and responded to honestly, how does this translate into the workplace? First, if we think it is important, we give it out first. We respond to our colleagues ‘look at me’ signals, by noticing, by asking and by affirming their work.

The ‘look at me’ response might be quite low key, just a few brief words between two people. Or it might have a bigger forum, when it is appropriate for someone’s work and contribution to have a wider forum. But this needs careful thought. Not everyone craves the limelight. And indeed, the ‘look at me’ is less about a big splash and more about an honest acknowledgement either of a job well done, a generous act or simply and positive presence. In the classroom, there are plenty of ‘look at me’ moments. And they are more likely to be more demanding from the pupils and students who have not had this at home.

Every child needs to have one person in their life who will stop what they are doing, to listen to what they are saying. Not at every moment of every day, but enough to know that when they have something important to say, there is a significant person in their life who will take them seriously, who won’t sneer or minimise either their triumphs or their sorrows. The teacher in the classroom has a role to play in the ‘look at me’. This is the quiet acknowledgement of a child’s contribution. Instead of rushing straight on, just the pausing, the nodding, the saying ‘that’s interesting, can you tell me more’, the praise for honest, hard work, done without fuss, are all ways of acknowledging the ‘look at me’ need in the child.

This doesn’t only apply to young children. Every teenager, every adult, every one of us, needs to know that we are taken seriously. And that there is a space for ‘look at me’ which is neither vain, nor ambitious, but a simple joy of being recognised by another human being.

Being in the black

‘Success has always been easy to measure. It is the distance between one’s origins and one’s final achievement.’

- Michael Korda

It is possible that we have forgotten just how far we have come. This has happened at an institutional level and at an individual setting level. Because the world and our work could always be better, we sometimes forget that it already is.

The imperatives of continual improvement have blinded us to the fact that collectively and individually we have achieved so much. This is an argument for clocking, auditing and monitoring some of the things which we have achieved. This is not about being complacent or self-congratulatory. It is about having a clear-eyed view of where we are and the distance we have travelled. A kind of stock taking.

Schools might pause every now and then and produce a collective picture of how things are different from a year ago, from six months ago, a week ago. This helps to clarify just how far they have come. Because in living the work, day by day, we do not always appreciate how the small gains build up into large gains. These might be: more children coming to school (a rise in attendance), a greater participation in extra curricular activities (sport, debating, community service), more children doing well in public examinations, strong staff and positive pupil surveys; renewed commitment and energy; revised work practices such as streamlined meetings.

It makes a difference if these are visual. Some settings do this on a timeline. Here we were a year ago, and here we are now. What does it look like in comparison? What have we learnt along the way that is good? ‘Look how far we have come…’ while this is a simple way of monitoring it, it is very powerful because it helps us to understand the agency of the small things, done every day. Too often, the accumulation of the small, growing in to the large, is unnoticed, unacknowledged. And this is a pity, because we can become downhearted by the enormity of what we still have to do. But in slowing down and thinking about how far we have come, we reinvigorate our purpose, our resolve and our energy into taking the next steps forward.

What we are doing when we do this, is we are looking at the bank balance of our work, or an organisation’s work. The deposits, in black, are our achievements, our successes. And if we think of them as a bank balance, then they provide the ballast, the security against which to make more investment, in building and creating new things for the future. This is an essential part of being hopeful, not helpless. That the resilience, courage and hope for going forward with our heads held high and with energy restored, is taking full account of and acknowledging the good and great work which has already taken place. The same applies to different aspects of school life. It could be used as a review tool, a self-evaluation tool, an audit. At the moment, these are mostly on a deficit model. This is what we still have to do. But how about listing, clocking and celebrating just how far we have come?

What might be the downside to this? Is it possible to become big headed or complacent? Unlikely. It is possible that the opposite is true - that there is so much to do, how are we ever going to get through it? And, those colleagues and settings which are complacent, smug or big headed, usually get rumbled anyway. Through monitoring and celebrating just how an organisation or setting has improved, we are reinforcing our resilience and capacity to continue to do more of the same and to do even better. It is a mindset that says, if we can do this, then we can also do that.

The bank balance of being in the black is just a way of looking at our achievements, both at an organisational and an individual level. We could also do the opposite and see what the red, the deficit model, looks like. And this is a healthy thing to do, in order to keep the perspective in balance. However, the main purpose in this context is to secure our resilience, to give ourselves a quiet, or not so quiet, pat on the back. What we notice, we do more of. What we have done in the past, the things that went well, can become the springboard for the next aspect of improvement. It is a security blanket which is there not to make us complacent, but to propel us into spaces and places which are even better.

What sorts of tools are helpful in this exercise? Well, the main thing is that they are not cumbersome or complex. A storyboard might be one way of doing this; this is where we were a few years ago, last year, last month. This is where we are now. The Blob Trees are also a good way of capturing the elements of what it was like at a certain point and what things are like now. They are concrete ways of making concepts and ideas become real. And they give us a real purchase on just how much we have done and how far we have come.