CEO and Director of Heritage International School, Rob Ford on the belief in 'skills, competencies and trusting the autonomy of teachers' to produce a highly effective learning community.
"There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about." Margaret J. Wheatley
In the summer, we did what most families do with time on their hands, we decided to tackle the things stored at the back of the garage. As we moved things into the cold light of day for the first time in a long time, a big wooden sign appeared that said “South Glos’ & Ridings International Learning Centre”. The near Proustian moment took me back to a time in my career in the early millennium when a real community of professionals and idea came together across sectors in the English local authority of South Gloucestershire, bringing all kinds of teachers together in the centre I helped establish as a once then LA lead practitioner for international learning.
The energy and achievement from this time has always stayed with me in my career and is one of the reasons I moved from England to Wales at the time of the Coalition government in the UK. Largely because professional learning communities and communities of ideas in schools and between schools, were being squeezed out with a new political agenda that seemed to be less about collaboration, teacher autonomy, trust and the development of professional capital.
As the academic deputy head at Crickhowell High School in Powys one of my roles was to develop the Welsh Government’s policy for schools using the work of Professor Alma Harris, then of Swansea University, developing professional learning communities (PLCs) (1) for teachers and teaching assistants, and this was coordinated within the clusters of schools across Powys and the wider SW Wales region. This was a very innovative approach that helped develop individual skills, share ideas and give voice to teachers in the classroom, in lots of different classrooms and across the curriculum.
My Headship took me back to England and a school community right on the border of Wales at Chepstow at Wyedean. I was very fortunate to inherit a very strong, motivated and skilled teaching cohort who were already well versed in weekly shared teaching and learning briefings that came from below and not from the top. They were also practising an approach to lesson observations in “Lesson Study” (2) that really did see the development of ideas in the community of staff, students and parents and Wyedean was a school where teaching and learning remained at the heart of the school’s mission and vision.
It also helped move the school on from a difficult legacy from the previous leadership team and coupled with an outward facing approach, had a very powerful impact on systems and school improvement. It gave teachers trust and autonomy back which in turn saw greater buy-in from everyone and an arena where ideas and innovation flowed in the community. What all great school communities anywhere in the world should be about.
In his book, “The Principal”, education writer, Michael Fullan made the simple but powerful case to all school leaders not only for the development of professional capital but how to go about it; “In our work in whole-system change, my colleagues and I have shown time and again that if you give people skills (invest in capacity building), most of them will become more accountable.” (3)
Before my move to Moldova in 2019 I had already worked with schools, teachers and communities in Eastern Europe and the former USSR sphere of influence. Part of the legacy issue here is that very highly trained, intelligent, committed educators are still largely in systems based on the near omnipotence and arbitrary rule of the principal, who is in turn stuck in a self-serving bureaucracy that didn’t work 30 years ago for children let alone now for the 2020s.
Heritage International School was founded as something to be completely different from any school in this legacy system and with the mission to educate and prepare young people for the challenges of the future. That school leaders are there to enable and the culture of servant leadership is key here. Part of this innovation is the belief in the skills, competencies and trusting the autonomy of teachers within a community of ideas and professionals to develop the high performing, high achieving school in a successful and sustainable model.
This was realised less than a year into my tenure when the completely new model of online and hybrid learning that was being operated in the Heritage schools reached the ears of the then minister whose team descended (4) rapidly on the school and a community of ideas supported the national education community through the extraordinary challenge of Covid in Moldova.
“A community is a group of people who agree to grow together.” Simon Sinek
This wider national community has continued to collaborate, share ideas and find answers together as Moldova faced the challenges of the Russian invasion of neighbour Ukraine, energy outages and rising costs in a country that doesn’t have the wealth or development of the UK. The model I was a part of as a school leader in my previous schools, I have brought with me to continue to develop teachers and teaching assistants professionally and the skills and ideas have benefited all at a national and international level.
Starting in 2022, Heritage has introduced nationally the “TeachMeet” arena from the UK so that this forum of professionals can bring ideas to share and collaborate upon. This has been extremely successful especially facing the relatively new challenge of AI/ChatGPT in learning. We have also worked across sectors especially with colleagues in Higher Education. (5) Through our networks such as COBIS, Global Schools Alliance, Climate Action Schools (6) and the Varkey Foundation/Global School Leaders, academic leaders and teachers have led online webinars and spoke at conferences on a range of topics that we have been prioritising at Heritage from sustainability, to leadership development to academic learning opportunities.
Looking ahead to 2024 and the potential challenges for schools from the rest of the decade, the hope in our schools, to prepare students with the skills and knowledge for the future, rests fundamentally in our systems and ability to allow our communities to be professional learning communities and communities of ideas. This is not a tick box idea for a manager in a school but a deeper, transformative culture that will not only keep teachers in the profession but it will keep them interested as a key lever of influence on outcomes, ideas and successful change.
References
Professional learning communities and system improvement; Alma Harris and Michelle Jones. 2010.
A studied lesson in recovery; Julie Smith, TES 2016.
The Principal 2:0. Michael Fullan. 2023
What Happened when the Education Minister Came for Tea; Rob Ford, TES 2016.
Why international schools should embrace the power of an MoU; Rob Ford, TES 2023
Why sustainability projects are no longer optional; Tatiana Popa, ISN, 2022
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