[Miscellany]

The shift in Education Leadership lately has been towards a business model of management.  I've never worked in an office but I've seen The Office and as far as I can comprehend the business model basically consists of a complete tosser at the top who has no idea what they are doing/might be good at managing one thing, middle management who don't care and the plebs who do all the important stuff while stealing the highlighters when no one is looking.  It's a money driven system with an agenda of maintaining or expanding a commodity.

In teaching, it is ridiculous to think of learning and students as a commodity.  A commodity implies that there is a direct return on an investment, which is all well and good in theory except that the business world is notoriously impatient and only wants results in one form (economics).  Getting an economic return on the student investment will probably not be evident for 30-50 years if something was put in place today.  This is too long for a political party to wait in order to brag about their effectiveness in government.  Despite allegations to the contrary I honestly do no believe any of the major political parties want to promote anything that won't show a result within their term of governing.  Is this cynical of me?  It's only true.  Furthermore isn't the return we actually want to see is a healthy, happy community of people who are life long learners and critical thinkers?  Isn't THAT the point?  Oh wait, that's not the same as money.. okay.

When compared to the business model the current school model of leadership has some similarities particularly in that there is also a complete tosser at the top, middle management who don't care and plebs.  However while an office pleb has only a small level of authority, a school "pleb" gets to be King of the Castle in their own classroom.  They are the authority in a very real way.  This means that in order to have effective leadership of staff from the top, you absolutely need to make sure that at the bottom line what is being taught in the classroom is always at very best standard possible.  Therefore f you don't have excellent curriculum knowledge from the top then a few plebby teachers can ruin the stability of the school.  A shitty teacher = shitty parents = shitty school.

In my view, good leadership in schools comes not from economics but from exclusively employing exemplary, inspiring teachers with excellent knowledge of curriculum for the top jobs.  Yes, sure economics is important, as is being able to work out timetables and the like but these things can be learnt on the job (and let's face it, don't we all know trained monkeys who are able to work out timetables and meet with the accountant every 3 months?)

My view of leadership is not exactly shared by the Department of Education.  They speak of leading from experience and exemplary teaching but in fact the opposite is what is being pushed into leadership now.  Those on the road to leadership these days are groomed by Department heads more interested in management than Leadership.  There's a difference.  The moment schools become "managed" by business graduates who have an interest in economics rather than knowing exactly how to teach and lead curriculum is the moment schools lose out.

In my opinion a good school has personable managers, a healthy budget in surplus with excellent teachers who carry the load and get the job done.  An excellent school has a leadership team that could walk into any classroom and teach or help teachers plan a lesson in a way that inspires another teacher to be better at their job.  There is no surplus in the budget (perhaps just a rainy day fund) because the budget is used for resources, professional development and mentoring and to pay exemplary teachers extra money for excellent work and Leadership have a good idea of what the needs of staff and students are.

We are moving away from a model of excellent and moving towards 'good'.  This is horrific in my eyes.  I can see it happening right now in my place of work.  The latest promotion to a very senior leadership role at the school is a manager and not a leader and what is the most horrifying is that I know that this was desirable from the perspective of the school.

My idealism is crushed and my heart breaks for the kids and for the good teachers out there in Education.  We are heading down a very bad road by treating schools as companies or businesses.  Hiring a trained monkey may seem like a good economic choice but we are not in the business of economics.  We are in the business of learning and learning just happens to be a money pit politically speaking.  The thing is I don't care about the politics of it, I'm all about connecting the dots here.

If we hire trained monkeys at the top then what exactly do we expect is going to come out at the bottom?

Labels: a case of the leader not wanting to be lead, boss, education, leaders of the world they are, new leader, school, stressed teachers, teacher dramas, teaching, teaching the teacher

posted by M at 1:17 am 9 comments

I'm determined this year that I'm not going to let the stress of teaching affect all my moods all the time. Sounds piss easy, I hear you say but actually people like me find this quite difficult.

I have two moods: On holiday mood = happy and relaxed. Working mood = grumpy bitch from hell.

MVOR says that I give way too much of myself especially when it's apparent that the situation calls for me to just back away and let it go. So basically, if you hate and reject me I'm going to go right ahead and prove to you why you should love me even though there is no winning with you. There fore all my hard work goes unnoticed and I get further disgruntled which then self-affirms my feelings of being rejected and abandoned by everybody and I'm left there like a cartoon image of myself yelling "hey, what about me? WHAT about ME? I'm useful! Heyyy, ..anybody?". I'm ace, no really, so ace.

Work is a constant source of me not feeling good enough - this is despite the fact that (...and coming from a person with zero self esteem), I'm a really good teacher and operator. I just need to stop caring so much about what I can and can't achieve with other adults and just let the rest go. But I can't...

New manager is not a doer. As in... coasts along and waits for someone else to do it. Who am I? I'm a worrier and a pleaser. What do I do if I see a gaping hole? Why, I fill it of course. You can see where this is heading can't you? On the one hand I am so glad that I came to the decision to give up this leadership role because I *am* less stressed out - on the other I'm constantly in battle with myself to not to keep doing her job for her.

I find things difficult because:
* we haven't had one team meeting since the year started despite things that are in disarray.

* The team still comes to me with their work related issues and then get all defensive when I refer them to the new leader (ie: defensive because ...hey you shouldn't put all the pressure on the new leader!)

* New leader doesn't know the ropes... or anything resembling a rope and yet refuses to come to me for help despite me saying my door is open (like a million times) - now I'm getting other people coming to me saying that new team leader (NTL) is asking all these dodgy questions ..and shouldn't she be asking me instead?

* I'm still actually doing a chunk of her work because I can see that things need to be organised and yet they are NOT!

* NTL actively is using an effigy of me to stick needles into each night.


As a consequence of all this, despite goal not to let work affect my moods and health I look like a crazy lady who has been living in the forest for 2 years and forgotten what it's like to be human.

Does work give you woe? And if not, how did you achieve that kind of bliss?

Labels: MVOR, new leader, rant, stressed teachers, teacher dramas, work

posted by M at 2:44 pm 5 comments