Friday, October 9, 2015

Ulearn 15 - A brief reflection

Today is the final day of Ulearn15 and it has been an exciting and thought provoking few days. I think choosing from one strand and focusing on leadership meant I got to see leadership through a variety of lenses. 

A brief reflection on 2 workshops

I already had a good understanding of Leadership v Management and one is not better than the other. This was reiterated today in Mark Osborne's workshop on 'Leading Change Effectively'  when he said " It is important to look across your team, you need excellent managers and excellent leaders." 

A brief definition:


MANAGEMENT  = PROCESSES 
What are we doing that we don’t want to lose, what worked well -do again, capturing and using institutional knowledge. Planning, budgeting, organising, procedures… Management is about today


LEADERSHIP  = CHANGE. Leadership produces change: establishing direction, aligning people, people, vision development - Leadership is about tomorrow

It was helpful to understand the difference between first order and second order change. As it is often the negative reaction that comes from the discomfort of second order change.  "Second order change - adaptive change, is difficult because it is about the distribution of loss - "what people resist is not change per se, but loss". Once Mark explained this idea of loss in second order change it was logical to  next  look at how to support people through change. It is the "daily job of leadership is building relational trust" this will assist and support people through change.

This aligned very nicely to a workshop yesterday that Westley Field ran on 'Leading change and contemporary learning'. Westley, in his introduction discussed the need to put student well-being at the centre of student learning. If their well-being is out then they cannot focus on learning. This is the same for teachers - look after the well-being of teachers and then they can concentrate on teaching. 

He spent time discussing the importance of having a clear vision: Vision = the lens through which everything is measured - it is not about a brilliant leader it is about the whole school on board and leading together.

There were 2 key things for me that came out of Westley's workshop. This was being able to identify needs through the Stakeholders Analysis Chart and then being able to identify the needs of staff to have targeted PD and support when going through change.

The combination of both these workshops has given me a deeper understanding of how to support others going through change and how to be supportive when implementing change.

This is just a brief reflection on 2 workshops and I plan to write a more detailed post on all workshops soon.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Getting ready for Ulearn15

This afternoon I fly up to Auckland for Ulearn15. Always a great conference with brilliant keynotes and exciting, thought provoking workshops. It is also a chance to meet up with other educators from around NZ face 2 face. Always find it funny when I know someones twitter handle better than their name!

This year when booking breakouts I have gone with the 'Leadership' strand. In the past, I have taken a bit of a pick n mix approach to breakouts wanting to get a broad spread of ideas and information. This year I wanted to go further into one particular aspect and see what emerges. I'm also helping with the Knowledge Building workshop Darren Sudlow is leading- which should be exciting.

I'm also looking forward to the Twitter Dinner tomorrow which Justine @digitallearnin has organised.

Will keep the blog updated as the week goes on.

Remember to follow the Conference  twitter hashtag #ulearn15