I’ve been thinking a lot about perspectives lately and what this means for the life of schools. Not least because it is November, and everything feels more intense and exhausting. Sometimes we can get to embedded in the ‘way we do things here’ or our own heads that we forget the importance of taking a step back and seeing the woods for the trees when it comes to our own practice.
I mean this literally and figuratively.
I’m currently 30 weeks pregnant and have been moved out of the hustle and bustle of the canteen to the top of the staircase overlooking everything happening below. My job now is to essentially make sure no one sneaks up to use the out of bounds toilets, but I also get to see the canteen from a totally new perspective. Whilst you’re in it, it can feel busy and a bit stressful, especially on chip day. Looking at our canteen as a whole however, I can see a clear one-way system, friends sitting together and talking about their days and teachers making sure that the queue for food flows calmly. Its nice to be able to talk to my work colleagues at the end of lunch when they’ve been on their feet for an hour and tell them they’ve done a really good job. I usually get a jab back about sitting in my ivory tower (!), but if I weren’t there, I wouldn’t know and wouldn’t be able to tell them what a great job they are doing.
This is a small, literal example, but sometimes we need to step back and consider how we have formed the opinions that we hold, whether they are still as true as when we formed them and whether we are the only ones that see it this way!
Perceptions in schools are based on roles
Take for example perceptions of inset. According to data collected by Teacher Tapp, exploring the perceptions of over 10,000 people who work in schools, when asked if the last inset day they added was useful, this is how different groups responded:
Of course, senior leaders feel that the inset was useful. They were either part of the planning meetings or delivering it! They have also not got classrooms of their own to set up and have fewer classes than everyone else in the room. To be a senior leader is to have that overview of where the school needs to go and what training staff will need to achieve this. To be a teacher is to focus on your teaching day and setting up ready for the kids. Neither are wrong… but neither are totally right either.
When I first became an assistant principal, a colleague remarked that they couldn’t believe how quickly people forgot what it was like to teach a full timetable. Additionally, I know I used to walk past SLT in offices talking to a teacher or working on their laptop and think that they had so much free time. Now I’m SLT I feel the weight of the difficult conversations, not keeping people waiting on emails and desperately trying to analyse data ahead of the meeting next week. As our priorities shift, so do our opinions of systems, groups and individuals.
Whose opinions matters?
I visited a school recently that has a brilliant approach to coaching. Rather than the usual methods of coaching which focus on the practice, this school focuses on the person. Most of their coaching conversations focusing on relationships (professional and personal): from the big life changes to the niggly issues with the head of faculty who has set another deadline that feels impossible.
They provide space for people to air how they feel, free from judgement or reprise. Then, they remind the person of their own agency in the situation. Its just so powerful. You are part of this community and what would you like to do next? If it’s about an impossible deadline, why might it have been set? Can you do anything about it? How are you going to broach the conversation?
Reminding all members of a school that they have agency and have a part in what happens next is simple and brilliant. You won’t be surprised to hear that this school develops their own leaders and has incredibly high staff retention.
Problems we all face and how to overcome them
I read Tessa White’s The Unspoken Truth for Career Success recently, and whilst a useful title with regards to marketing, I think her book is actually more about perception and reality that it is about progression. White reminds us of the importance of remembering what the aims of an organisation are. She is talking about business and urges her readers to remember that all businesses will want to focus on keeping costs down and results high. When an individual within that company tries to pitch something that will improve their lives personally, there needs to be an acknowledgement of the organisation’s aims as well as their own preferences. The same is true for schools. Whilst I’m not going to get into a deep philosophical debate about what schools are for, for now let’s agree that they are about keeping children safe, creating a supporting learning environment and getting good results. Therefore, our communication needs to be based on the school’s core values as well as our own to avoid frustration all round.
In the same way that the school I visited recently reminds staff of their agency within any given situation, White does the same thing, telling us that if we want something to change, we have to be willing to be part of the solution rather than just identifying the problem.
If you are reading this as a teacher, you might be interested in reflecting upon on your perceptions have changed over time. Education is fast paced, high stakes and if we are totally honest, susceptible to fads. Even if you haven’t been teaching for that long, you’ll be able to notice the aspects of the role that you love and those that you tolerate. You may have had an idea presented to you in inset to which your initial reaction will be ‘nope’ or picked up something recently that you hadn’t considered before which has turned out to be a total game changer.
If you are reading this as a leader (at any level), you will need to consider the way in which you use anecdotal data. We cannot build an effective, functioning, supportive school if we are weighting the views of some staff over others. Whose opinion do you give more weight to? Why is theirs? How much emphasis do you subconsciously put on how people communicate with you rather than what they are actually saying.
Regardless of our position in a school, using phrases like ‘staff think’ or ‘leaders all agree’ are loaded in that there is no way we all understand the same things in the same ways and draw the same conclusions. I’m not saying we can’t be a unified group, of course we can. However, we must own the fact that it isn’t possible for everyone to hold the same opinion, for the same reasons for a sustained amount of time. Within every group that collectively get behind something there are zealots, happy followers and those who had considered the options and found compliance to be the most tolerable solution.
This is fine. This is inevitable. This also means that no one person can express an opinion on behalf of everyone in the school. This means we have to be careful about how we communicate what is going on in our schools. What we can say is ‘we all do this’, but that is very different from ‘we all think it is brilliant’, which you can only say when you have hard evidence to back up this statement.
In conclusion, I think we all have a responsibility to acknowledge the limitations of our perceptions and do our best where possible to view all interactions at work from the perspectives of others. There isn’t a down side to inspecting how we have built our own perceptions and how we developed them. Also, its the longest, coldest, darkest term. If you really feel that something needs saying, maybe leave it until January!
Reflective questions
How often do you step back and reflect upon your own practice/school policies to reflect on how well they align with your values and if they are working?
How do your current relationships with colleagues shape your perceptions of what’s happening in school?
How do you actively and regularly seek out different perspectives?
How confident are you in your own agency to change a situation you’re not happy with at work?
How do you communicate your ideas?
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