Educational+Leaders+Alert

Educational Leaders is an essential site for school leaders. If you see a resource that you think would be valuable to share, please let me know an I will feature it here. toc =First Time Principals videos= The First Time principals programme is run in collaboration with UniServices, the University of Auckland, FourthMedia and New Era IT limited. Visit their website here if you are interested in being involved. If you try to find their resource material through the Ed Leaders website, you come up against a few barriers. For example, you cannot view the videos shown on the Ed Leaders site unless you are enrolled in the course. However, these videos are stored on the FTP Vimeo site, and you don't have to be a member to see them so it's worth your while having a browse through them. They are only highlights (usually about 10 mins), not the full presentation, so are accessible while you're having coffee. Try these:

John Hattie - Evidence based leadership.
Highlights from Keynote Presentation by Professor John Hattie, filmed at the First-time Principals Programme Residential Course Two in October 2009.

Viviane Robinson - a guide to the Leadership BES (2010)
Highlights from Professor Viviane Robinson's keynote address on the Leadership BES presented at the First-time Principals Programme Residential Course One 2010.

Stuart McNaughton: Finding out about literacy in your school
Highlights from Professor Stuart McNaughton's keynote speech at FTPP residential course one. 2010.

=Maori=

Iwi, whānau, and Māori community engagement
This case study explores how Te Kopuru School’s principal Lee Anderson has spent the past 8 years changing the culture of her small Northland school to improve the education, social, and cultural outcomes of the school’s Māori learners. This two page case study is an easy read and has the benefit of reflective questions to help you get the best out of it with your staff.
 * Talented and Inspired Leadership the Key to Education Success**

The Challenge of Equity
One of the key goals we asked you to include in your cluster's action plans this year was around Māori achievement. //"In this short article **Marion Fitchett** looks first at the evaluations of the professional learning programmes for principals that are supported by Ministry of Education: the First-time Principals programme, the Leadership and Management advisory work, and the Experienced Principals development project. // //In reviewing these evaluations she reports that although most programme participants were seeking to improve their delivery to Māori students and whānau, many indicated that they needed more support to help them on how to go about it." // As is usual with this site, there are some good reflective questions that go with this article that will be useful to guide you and your staff or BoT to unpack the content.

=Leadership=

Stephen Harrison
Stephen's story of the gains he got from being involved in professional development for experienced principals identifies the models of distributed leadership and teaching as inquiry that are an outcome of his involvement. //"On the ground here I have certainly been thinking about my every day leadership practices, and also about the distributed model that we have put in place for leadership and the expectations we have for middle managers. We need to have a process so that we can actually talk about specific things, getting closer to the inquiry teaching model. You know, what is the information telling us? What plan will we put into practice? What has happened? How have I done? Where are we going next?"//

Open to Learning Conversations
We all like a good video rather than reading through papers, so here is one that will appeal to most of you. Viviane Robinson is a Professor of Education at the University of Auckland. She is an organisational psychologist, specialising in school improvement, leadership, and the relationship between research and the improvement of practice. I have featured some of her work in open to learning conversations in the cluster leadership page of this wiki, but here is a video of her taking you through her powerpoint on this topic. This video is from the First Time Principals link on the Educational Leaders site and comes with a reading and guiding questions to help you use it with your teams. I strongly recommend this material.
 * Building trust in schools through open-to-learning conversations**