Developing and Enacting a School Plan through Vision and Voice

In some schools, school strategic plans are characterised as over-complicated PDFs located on a school website hyperlink to serve a bureaucratic process. In other schools, a school strategic plan is seen as a living, breathing document, owned and used by school staff and that is flexible enough to respond to changes that will occur from time to time. In Western Australia, the Department of Education recommends schools drive school planning to produce successful students through the following enablers.

1. High-Quality teaching
2. Leadership 
3. Learning Environment 
4. Relationships 
5. Resources 

Throughout the 2019 Vision and Voice ACEL Conference the question of how my school intends to enact my school's 2020-2022 plan to meet our student improvement targets pervaded my thoughts. We have recently completed our final draft plan and prepare to submit the document to the school and student councils for feedback.

Clarkson CHS’s targets centre around improvements in literacy and numeracy, student, parents and staff responses through National School Surveys, attendance and reducing the gap between Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal students.

In response to the conference, I share and categorise some of the presenters’ ideas through the DoE School and Accountability Framework enablers below. 

High-Quality Teaching

Douglas Fisher championed the need for students to become assessment capable learners. Our school's engagement with Visible Learning Feedback from John Hattie and Shirley Clarke connects to Fisher’s recommendations. All students need to know where they are in their learning, employ study skills and many, may eventually teach others. When students become their own teachers and when they accept the challenge of learning, exceptional things can happen.

Leadership 

Victoria Brownlees emphasised the need for leaders to be the 'learner leaders', visit more classrooms and work shoulder to shoulder with colleagues to embed authentic formative assessment practices. Browlees emphasised that leaders needed to continually pose Hattie and Timperley's three questions to colleagues - Where are we going? (Learning Goal) Where am I? (Success Criteria) Where to next? (Formative assessment). Jeffrey S Brooks challenged principals to ask whether their school thinks local, global or glocal? In the shadow of SpaceX's giant starship spacecraft revealed by Elon Musk this week, the need for schools to produce innovative and critical thinkers is more important than ever. Moreover, Michael Fulan's 5 Pavillions of System Change keynote speech echoed Brooker when he championed the moral imperative for educational leaders to engage and change the world.

Learning Environment 

In order to address student disengagement, dysregulation and resistance, we need effective strategies to implement through a whole-school approach. Director of Education at Berry Street Education Tom Brunzell explained that students with a high number of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) tend to miss more school and struggle with empathy, impulses and trust. Brunzell highlighted and reminded us about the impact of Unconditional Positive Regard on traumatised students who crave acceptance and respect and are without judgment or evaluation.

Relationships 

Todd Whitaker explained what leaders do differently and emphasised our role as leaders is to continually take a positive approach, Whittaker posed when providing feedback, do you ‘blanket monkey’ and reprimand everybody over duty punctuality or email etiquette? Whittaker explained you can identify effective teachers by how they consistently meet students at the classroom door. When a teacher struggles to interact positively, effective principals always understand that the most important thing teachers can do is to model appropriate ways to interact with students. 

Resources 

Jeffrey S Brooker encourages school leaders to consider are the right people doing the right thing at the right time? In a context of limited resources, structure may inhibit culture and good teaching rather than supporting it.

Next Steps 

Authentic implementation of our school plan requires collective interrogation of our processes, programmes and policies; and agile decision making. I am confident we can meet or exceed our targets through a nuanced vision that’s conducive for capturing every school voice and engaging with education’s best thinking and practice.