Many teachers have confided in me that, since students have returned to regular face-to-face learning in 2022, there’s been a distinct ‘Lord Of The Flies’ feel about them. What they’re referring to is an absence of cooperative intent in the students and an increase in competitive behaviours associated with re-establishing a social pecking order. As…
A clever friend of mine, Darren Hill, explained the Rule Of Six to me once. Apparently radio stations use this rule when a new song is released. They have a quest to have you hear that song six times as quickly as possible, which is why it seems to us as though that song is…
A quick shout out to Bronwyn (you know who you are) in one of our NSW secondary partner schools. Bronwyn gets feedback. Last week, I observed Bronwyn’s Year 8 Geography class in action, and she asked for her feedback to be direct. I think her words were “hit me between the eyes”. So I did.…
I’ve spoken to a few Principals lately who have made the decision to focus on the culture of their school … soon. They want to wait first for some clear air, for ‘things’ to settle down, for some other programs and mandates to be implemented first. They’re worried about overwhelming their staffs and they fear…
I went to a wedding on Sunday and I think it was the best wedding I’ve ever attended. What made it so awesome was that it broke the usual conventions in preference for revealing the personalities of the two people getting married. Instead of cramming these two square pegs into the round holes of the…
In these first few weeks, I’ve had several conversations with teachers and school leaders about untruthfulness. Chiefly, these are wonderful practitioners who are trying to implement a restorative approach, but they’re authentically worried that their students will corrupt the process with lies. They often point out that the kids are like bush lawyers who call…
Only years later did I discover that one particular class I taught used to call me Voigty The Volcano behind my back. They reckoned that they could tell when I was about to explode. The whisper would float across the class that “He’s rumbling” and they’d know to back off any wayward conduct for a…
I had the wonderful opportunity to work with Throsby School in Canberra last week. They’re walking a path that’s dear to my heart in opening a brand new large urban government primary school. That was my last “day job” in 2011 before I founded Real Schools – to be the inaugural Principal of Rosebery Primary…
Some things change and some stay the same. Even though Covid has now been around two years there’s something distinctly different about what’s being asked of Teachers and School Leaders as we kick off 2022. Good luck with all of that. But one thing that will stay the same is that your radar will ‘ping’…
It felt, as my wife Anthea called it, like we were playing a little Russian Roulette. We went to a wedding a couple of weeks ago for a dear friend … and I caught Covid there. It knocked me around probably the average of way most in the ‘CoronaClub’ have been hit. I had a…