Herald on Glow

Glow is getting lots of write ups, including this piece in the Glasgow Herald.

Loose Coupling

I hadn’t read Elmore’s “Building a New Structure For School Leadership”, 2000 for a while. It’s easy to download a copy of this online. I went back to this recently as I’m increasingly dwelling on just how to improve learning and teaching in my role as a QIO – my main role is supporting schools on the quality improvement agenda so unlike some QIOs I do not have a wide curricular remit in addition. This frees me up to really concentrate on this one area. Anyway the simplicity of his argument had a big effect on me when I first read it and still does as I revisit it.

For anyone who hasn’t read this its well worth a look or another read as whether you agree with what he says or not, there’s a lot for reflection in it, on how we really make concrete improvements to learning and teaching within the classroom.

Delighted to see what Caroline and Jaye have been saying about their Glow days at Stirling management centre – sharing success and making connections. It sounds like they’ve had a useful couple of days. And I like their animoto slides from it too!

Privileged

Being a Head is a huge privilege and often we don’t shout that out loud enough. Moving into my QIO post I’m realising what a privilege this is too. To be able to visit establishments on a daily basis and look at what is going on in them is wonderful. I visited Cathkin Community Nursery today. I stayed for a good while and saw some exciting and innovative evidence of ongoing work.

 

 

They have a sensory garden which the children designed and planned using mindmaps/floorbooks. Responsive Planning, pupil choice, real confidence in action!

 Loved the good news tree, which grows bigger throughout the session – different types of good news – little people who might have managed to sleep in their own bed the whole night, maybe they’ve got a new brother or sister. Huge opportunities for self expression, talking and listening, psd etc etc

They had done huge amounts of work on diversity with their persona dolls.

Bronze, silver and gold health promotion awards have been achieved.

 Innovative planning methods- really listening to the children – for instance someone found a spider – a huge focus of work then followed covering every curricular area you could imagine, all child led.

Christopher told me all about his record of achievement, explaining how much his drawing had improved over the years from when he was a baby and next he goes to school in August.

It would need a visit to take it all in rather than me giving highlights in shorthand! Liz Mercer the Head of the establishment her Depute and staff are inspiring and have a very welcoming ethos and love to share their ideas.

Sometimes in my previous school I would be taken by surprise by something which made me cry with the joy of it. Last year’s most memorable greet was when Zac in P1 came round with a grin from ear to ear and said “Mrs Reid I can read!” A whole new world had just opened up to him overnight and he’d suddenly cracked the code. He wanted to read everything he could see and find.

Today it was the amount of work parents had been doing alongside the nursery which caught me unawares. I managed to stop myself from blubbing, but the chin was wobbling and my eyes watering – in their persona dolls room there were paintings done by a parent related to equality called “its a small world after all”. Then in the toilets which could have been dull and dismal a parent must have spent hours painting bright pictures. I’ve seen lots of murals like these before, but there was just something about what these parents had put into the work of themselves which I found very touching.