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 4 Socio-Emotional Learning Classroom Tools that Leaders can use with their teams too. The Idea: Socio-emotional skills are essential for school leadership. This post offers 4 practical SEL tools for leaders to develop and apply these skills in their teams. I work with about 35 school leaders in our organization - some very experienced, but also many of them new, just figuring out how to navigate the many new opportunities and challenges presented by a leadership role. These leaders support and mentor 250 teachers across our schools. For the last 4 years, one of my key responsibilities as a leader has been to support these school leaders in succeeding in their different roles.  School Leadership needs Socio-Emotional Intelligence During this time, I discovered that being an excellent teacher doesn’t always translate into being a successful school leader. And on further investigation, I realized that when it didn’t translate, usually the missing piece was the lack of a strong socio-em
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Education FTW (for the Win-Win)

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  I wonder: Can educators serve students, society, and generate wealth for themselves and their organisations through win-win avenues? Exploring social entrepreneurship in education might help us unlock opportunities and solutions. Over the last few years I have been thinking a lot about creating win-win opportunities - where they can exist in education and what they might look like in my life. I wrote a little about it in this blog post. I also have been increasingly curious about the role of social entrepreneurship in education, particularly in schools (as opposed to EdTech companies on the fringes). Inspired by a fascinating win-win story: Maui Nui Venison Today I was inspired by an amazing win-win story in this Tim Ferriss Podcast episode with Jake Muise. Jake Muise runs a meat store that sells ‘responsible red meat’. When I heard this my first thought was just another meat company that minimised the suffering of animals, using humane means for slaughtering. Really nothing spec
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Crafting Communications with Care: Because life is too short for ugly presentations

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  Crafting Communications with Care: Because life's too short for ugly presentations The Idea: It is valuable to invest time and care in creating visually appealing presentations. Well-designed presentations enhance communication, engage the audience both intellectually and emotionally, and have a lasting impact. To help here are five simple recommendations for creating appealing presentations: (1) Draw out the message clearly before designing (2) Reduce visual clutter (3) Organize information to promote processing (4) Invest in learning to use design & presentation tools available to us (5) Leverage templates provided by professional designers. Educators and communicators will benefit from recognising the value of design skills in conveying ideas powerfully and fostering engagement. “Life is too short for ugly presentations” - Seth Godin  Today, Seth Godin ended his blog post with LIFE IS TOO SHORT FOR UGLY PRESENTATIONS. Immediately I highlighted the statement and messaged
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Nobody wants to be a robot: Motivating Teachers and Students

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The Idea: Both teachers and students are motivated by the same fundamental attributes: Competence, Relatedness, Purpose, and Autonomy. By establishing professional and learning environments that facilitate the growth of these core attributes, we can cultivate communities of motivated educators and students.
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Mission Possible: Balancing Bold Vision with Practical Action

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The Idea: Finding the right balance between "impossible" stretch goals and "possible" achievable goals is key to achieving success in complex systems such as education. Both types of goals serve important purposes, with stretch goals providing a bold vision and inspiration, while achievable goals provide practicality and encourage action. By combining the two, you can create a dynamic that inspires innovation while also ensuring that progress is sustainable and tangible!
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Large and Small Schools: Leverage your upsides well

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The idea: The size of your School/ Organisation can offer unique advantages to your strategy for creating impact.  Smaller schools can leverage quick alignment on Vision and Culture and Organisational Agility. Larger schools can leverage Institutional knowledge, Diverse/ Specialised Teams and Centralised resources for scaling impact.
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25 Books that offered me wonderful guidance as a School Leader

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Here is a list of books that have influenced my thinking in different areas. They have been a very important source of guidance in my journey as a school leader. So I thought it would be a good idea to compile and share some of them for anyone who might benefit!
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Data can deceive. Get to know your data better to avoid this

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The Idea: Data-informed decision-making is very valuable, but the users must also ‘know their data’. This means that users should not just jump to drawing conclusions for data they have access to, but also know what specifically the data is measuring, and how the data was collected. Without this crucial aspect of data literacy, the user is susceptible to deception by data. Encouraging questions and conversations during the data analysis process can support the development of this ‘know your data’ aspect of data literacy.
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Patient Optimism in Education

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The Idea: Patient Optimism is important for anyone striving for Transformation in Education. Change in this complex context is more likely to be incremental, and brought about by the advancement of both - technology and thriving communities, together.
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Ensure that your well-intentioned emails are received just as you intended

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  The idea: Emails are used frequently for communicating at work and a few small adjustments can go a long way in ensuring your message is received as you intended. These include 1) Setting context quickly before diving in 2) Asking Questions 3) Offering support or inviting clarification 4) Using emoticons to give your written voice a tone
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6 principles that made me a purposeful, enthusiastic, engaged reader at age 31

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The idea: Explore to discover the right content (what you want to read), purpose (why you want to read) and mode (how you want to read). Find a combination that is works for you. This can lead to sustained, enjoyable and impactful reading habits.
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Screen Time: An important perspective for educators & parents from screen time research

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The idea: This quote from the paper summarizes the message: 'For parents and educators, we suggest that, “it is time to move beyond a heavy focus on risk with little exploration or recognition of opportunities ”, and instead leverage the strengths and benefits of ST in a purposeful way while mitigating any associated risks during these exceptional times'
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Essential EdTech Ideas: from 'Failure to Disrupt' by Justin Reich

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  The Idea: Stay optimistic about Edtech but also think Long Term. Sustainable Change is most likely to be incremental, especially in complex educational systems. Edtech along with Learning Communities, has the best chance of bringing about positive sustainable change at scale, in education.
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My win-win obsession. If you aren't on already, I hope you jump on this bandwagon too!

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The Idea: Consider pursuing Win-Wins or Positive-Sum partnerships, they can be a high leverage path to team success.  Positive sum situations are those in which many people can gain, as opposed to zero-sum games in which if one person wins, someone else must lose.
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Do you want to help educators transform the education system? Don't be a backseat driver!

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  THE IDEA: Because educational challenges are complex, typically educators receive an ocean of well-meaning but unviable suggestions from ‘Backseat Drivers’. My personal opinion is that we educators find the ‘Passenger seat Pals’ more helpful. These contributors are curious and not cynical; they look to genuinely solve problems instead of complaining / protesting; they look to collaborate with educators rather than to ‘school the educators’; they ask questions to understand the challenges and learn together, rather than making dramatic statements or proclamations to disrupt or sway opinions.
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5 Questions to help you choose math strategies more purposefully

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The Idea: Be thoughtful about which math strategies you use or choose to equip students with. Use these 5 important questions (adapted from Adding it up ) to understand what each math purpose each math strategy serves: Transparency: Does the strategy help me understand the concept better?  Efficiency: How productive is the strategy? Does it reduce the time/effort?  Precision: Does the strategy give you a precise answer or an estimate? Clarity: How easy is the strategy to use? Is it easy enough to implement on my own? Generality: How transferable is the strategy? Can I apply it to many other situations or will it work just in this one context? You can use these key questions to help your students choose the most appropriate strategy based on the needs of their problem (for example, does our problem require a precise answer or an estimate? Do we need to break down the problem to understand it better? Do we just need to compute something quickly?) 
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Are Teachers chasing mice all day? How can school teams spend their time on the most important work?

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  The idea: Work that impacts student learning is the most important work. We need to to prioritize this work over less important tasks that fall on a teachers' plate. This can be done by (1) Prioritizing - knowing which tasks are most important and making time to do them first; (2) Optimizing - ensuring that productivity and collaboration are happening in the most optimal way possible; (3) Empowering the team to prioritize their work and optimize their time effectively.
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Why School Leaders should pay attention to 'Positive Outliers' in their organizations

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The Idea: School Leaders need to look out for ‘Positive Outliers’ - the few team members that tend to be unconventional problem solvers in their workplaces, even with the same challenges and resources as their peers. Leaders must recognize the potential of their ideas and knowledge and leverage them for solving the many complex challenges that schools encounter.
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What-Why-How: The structure you need to communicate any idea powerfully

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The idea: ‘What-Why-How’ - a structure to communicate any idea powerfully. This works well for Teacher Professional development, Classroom Lessons, Team communication on new initiatives or programs.  The What-Why-How structure has been my go-to structure for communicating important ideas to anyone. I have been using it for 5 years now and it has improved the quality of my communication tremendously.  Let me use the What-Why-How structure to describe the What-Why-How structure!
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Why 'long division' is my nemesis and why teachers should ditch it too!

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