Mick focuses on the following essentials to build teaching and leadership capacities and capabilities to enable outstanding learning opportunities for all students:

• Motivation – enhancing individual and whole school morale
• Empathy – empowering shared and distributed leadership
• Clarity–inspiring an understanding and valuing of roles and goals
• Engagement – enabling formal regular professional interaction and meaningful dialogue
• Learning – facilitating professional peer appraisal, growth and recognition

Developing a Performance and Development Framework

The purpose of this session is to arouse in staff a curiosity to learn more about the journey to developing a Performance Framework by willingly participating in further learning activities.

Mick describes the process developed at his Secondary College to create a developmental, non judgmental, approach to staff appraisal, recognition and growth including the formal allocation of time for staff to regularly enter into meaningful dialogue about learning and teaching, the giving and receiving feedback through open questioning and the sharing of goals, targets and strategies on their professional practice in a confidential group environment to ensure a cycle of continuous improvement and the establishment of strong collective efficacy.

Image of our Students

Create a vision for our students from the input and valuing of all staff; having an image of our students before we start teaching. Before schools can establish shared visions and goals for their students, every staff member must have his/her own individual ones. Consensus decision making is introduced during the activity.

Image of our Students (Community)

Harness and value the input of all stakeholders in the creation of a truly community vision for our students. Mick runs this visioning exercise with parents and interested community members after hours should schools wish; a collaborative activity that wins community confidence in the school as a valuable community asset.

Image of our Staff

The purpose of this activity is to develop a consensus vision and set of expectations which all staff have had input into, value and will live by; thus reducing the variation in learning and teaching between classrooms and us being more ‘readable’ for our students.

Giving and Receiving of Feedback

The purpose of this activity is to arouse curiosity, learn from each other and develop skills in the giving and receiving of feedback through open questioning and appreciative inquiry. Because many of us believe we know each other’s jobs, the activity becomes very enlightening for many staff and builds empathy for each other; they realise that they have little or no idea of what colleagues do on a day-to-day basis in their roles. It enhances role clarity across the school.

Norms of Meeting Behaviour

Establish a shared and owned set of behaviours that all meeting forums in the school will follow. Mick enables every staff member to have input and have it valued by colleagues, listening with their eyes, their ears and their hearts. The norms are authentically the staffs' to live by.

Goals, Targets and Strategies

Mick explains the relevance and need for all school and staff goals to begin with, “Students will…………, not “I will ...........”, and why SMART targets are necessary to measure our progress on our journey to achieving them. He then leads staff in strategic conversations to create shared strategies which are the things that “I do” on a daily basis to achieve our goals and targets. Mick then encourages staff to identify measurement tools for progress towards goals and the required professional learning to be undertaken. 

Crucial Conversations with Staff

Mick introduces the Leadership Team to a model for conducting crucial conversations with staff and each other which eases everyone’s minds and changes their workplace for the better.

Wanting to give feedback on success or otherwise after a selection process? After handling complaints? When dealing with staffroom talk that may be unhealthy? Following up on criticism of school or individuals by students and parents? Dealing with under-performance or when the leadership has concerns about a person or group? The purpose of this approach is to take you through the theory of preparing for and scripting a crucial conversation that will provide a person with an opportunity to redress a mistake, change behaviour or simply understand an issue from a different perspective before the potential ‘crisis’ or formal complaints process.

Reflection on School Leadership

Mick runs reflective leadership activities with school leadership teams to build their shared capacities to lead and challenge the status quo. He empowers them forget about the ever present operational and transactional discussions and enter into transformational conversations about how they lead and role model for their staff. The activity enables leadership teams to strategically address five key pillars of leadership which Mick believes are the essentials to a high energy and high performing school.

 Building Collective Efficacy

Mick leads staff to address the question, as a staff, what can we do together that we can’t do as individuals? The activity enables the giving and receiving of developmental, non judgemental feedback, through thoughtful open questioning, to discover sameness and build collective beliefs, expectations and practices.

 To quote eminent 21^st century American educator Richard Elmore,

 “Don’t confuse autonomy with professionalism…..Professionalism is when a group of people with strong ideas about practice subscribe to a group agreement with strong principles of practice”

 And further……… 

“We have to de-privatise the classroom. Beware the conspiracy of current practice and current knowledge!”

Mick can be contacted on:
Mobile:+61 (0)417 307 542
Email:mickwalsh54@bigpond.com
Skype:lynmickwalsh