Another item for my Kiwi readers.
FutureMakers Newsletter 30 March 2024
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Kia ora koutou
As the Easter Break provides us with time to rest, reflect and refocus I’m using this newsletter as an opportunity to share some of the key thoughts and ideas that emerged at the recent Principals’ Retreat that Maurie Abraham and I ran in Hanmer. It was such a powerfully motivating time for everyone there!
Ngā mihi
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Developing System Leadership
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| A key focus of the Hanmer Retreat for principals that I was recently involved with was on understanding the role of principal as a system leader. In this blog post on Developing System Leadership, I explore a little more of what this means, providing some practical advice for working this way in your school context. |
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Leading with a common set of beliefs
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| At our Hanmer retreat Maurie Abraham began with an excellent session on ‘defining our why’. He used a creative set of activities to engage the principals in a process of identifying the beliefs they hold and how these drive their activity as principals. He captures some of this thinking in one of his blog posts titled How might we lead with a set of common beliefs (about learning!) |
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| In one of our sessions we explored the obstacles that are slowing us down or preventing us from pursuing the ambitions we have for transformation in our schools. This activity provided a valuable start point for exploring the things that can be done to overcome the perceived obstacles. Most of what we identified was (unsurprisingly) what was identified in the Roadblocks and Drivers thought-piece available on the FutureMakers website. The challenge for system leaders is to find ways (and there are many!) to address these things and not allow them to dominate our thoughts and hinder our ambitions! |
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Placing the Learner at the Centre
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| Ensuring we maintain a laser focus on the learner was a key theme of our discussion at the retreat – and everyone received a printed version of the Agency By Design: An Educator’s Playbook to help identify specific actions to take in order to create the conditions in which learner agency can thrive. This book is available to download for free from the Aurora Institute Website |
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| Following the success of our initial Refresh, Reconnect, Refocus programme, Maurie Abraham and I are keen to find what interest there is in running more of these events into future. These could be at a national level, such as what we did in Hanmer, or regionally provided. We’ve also been asked to consider providing the programme for APs and DPs which we’re currently exploring. If you’d like to be part of any future programmes please register your interest here and we’ll keep you informed. |
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| At FutureMakers we use a range of forums to curate good ideas and resources. Check out the following… |
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| If you’ve enjoyed reading this newsletter please feel free to forward it to others to read, or better yet, ask them to become a FutureMakers subscriber so they will receive their own updates delivered to their mailbox. |
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| I’m always interested to hear your feedback or ideas about what you’d like to see included in future newsletters – please use the link below to email me with your suggestions. |
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