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Inspiration and Ideas
This Month’s Leading Comment
The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I’. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I’. They don’t think ‘I’. They think ‘we’; they think ‘team’. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the credit… This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.
– Peter Drucker,
management guru
Top Tip of the Month
Handling paperwork
Does your incoming paperwork pile up because you have trouble making decisions on the spot? Try this: Write on every piece of paperwork as it comes in what you need to do to make a decision. This might mean making a phone call, consulting with a colleague, or getting more information. Then place the paper in your action file – and act on your instruction when you work through that file.
Management by Example
A letter to myself
Whenever the famous inventor Thomas Edison was angry, he sat down and wrote a scathing letter—to himself. He left it on his desk for a day or two, and then he tore it up.
There is a message here for all of us: do not write anything, certainly not a memo or letter to anyone (other than to yourself) while you are angry. Wait until you simmer down. What you write in fury you will almost certainly regret in composure.
An emotional upset impairs rational thinking and an uncompromising memo or letter in response not only reflects unfavourably on you but is also a permanent document which could easily return to haunt you.
For some more useful suggestions for keeping the lid on your anger and, importantly, for putting it to use constructively, check out Topic 102 in ACEL’s LeadershipLinks (www.acel.org.au).
Book of the Month
Breakthrough
Michael Fullan, Peter Hill & Carmen Crevola, Corwin, 2006. Softcover, 136 pp. $38.00.
This book provides the breakthrough concepts needed for developing precise, validated, data-driven instruction personalized to each and every student. Synthesizing the best of current instructional models, this framework focuses on the Triple P Core Breakthrough Components: Personalization – meaningful, student-centred classroom interactions; Precision – using formative assessments to monitor individual student progress; and Professional Learning – daily, ongoing learning for all educators. Helping educators create expert instructional systems, while breaking through the ‘prescription trap’, the authors introduce unique elements of the Breakthrough model, including improvement by design, assessment for learning, critical learning instructional paths, mapping instructional paths, smart use of data to drive instruction, and locking in ongoing improvement. Breakthrough establishes the tipping point for moving toward personalized, high-quality instruction and learning in the classroom to ensure continuous improve-ment and ongoing academic success. ‘Before making any changes, read this book first!’ – Thomas A. Sergiovanni
This book is available through the ACEL Bookshop. Visit www.acel.org.au for details; or phone 1800 680 559.
Classroom Management
How to avoid legal problems
No list of rules or recipes can ever hope to cover all possible situations in your classroom or school environment that could lead to legal problems for you as a teacher. Teachers can innocently and in an instant create a situation from which considerable stress, legal strife, and career-threatening consequences can stem. However, with cautious, reasoned, and deliberate actions on your part, you can avoid possible legal problems… More
School Management
How to tackle your priorities
Setting priorities is a decision-making process by which you rank in order of importance the tasks you or your staff members must do. By completing the tasks on your list in order, you will achieve your goals. It sounds easy—but it’s not. In fact, priority-setting and sticking to the agreement you make with yourself will be major challenges for you as a manager. Here are a dozen important suggestions to help you draw up a priority list—and make it work… More
Website Link of the Month
FindArticles is a website with articles from hundreds of periodicals, from current issues and archives dating back to 1984 – ‘millions of articles not found on any other search engine’. The periodicals and subjects are organised into nine major categories, including Reference & Education.
Access articles at no charge – from educational magazines, including Instructor, Principal Leadership, Education, Theory into Practice, Education Next, American Education, Teaching Pre K - 8, Childhood Education, The Educational Forum, School Administrator, NASSP Bulletin, NEA Today, Teaching History, Teacher Education Quarterly, Science Educator, Research in Education, Mathematics and Computer Education, Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Education, and more.
Or, for a fee, Australian Journal of Education, Reading Improvement, School Arts, The Social Studies, The Technology Teacher, Exceptional Children, Education Technology News, Elementary Science Education, Preventing School Failure, Teacher Librarian, Journal of Educational Research, Journal of Technology and Children, and more.
Why subscribe to costly journals when you can keep up with your professional reading by using browsing or searching techniques to find what you need at FindArticles! Link-up here (www.findarticles.com)
How to avoid legal problems
No list of rules or recipes can ever hope to cover all possible situations in your classroom or school environment that could lead to legal problems for you as a teacher. Teachers can innocently and in an instant create a situation from which considerable stress, legal strife, and career-threatening consequences can stem. However, with cautious, reasoned, and deliberate actions on your part, you can avoid possible legal problems…
1. Always try to act as a better than good parent would.
Teachers stand in the place of parents in all school-related situations. You are expected to be a superior-grade parent substitute, with responsibility for taking reasonable precautions to protect pupils from injury. By keeping this principle to the fore, you will, like a good parent, be in a position to foresee potential danger and to ensure pupil safety at all times.
2. Think ahead – always.
Do not rush in where angels fear to tread. In any school situation, ask: Is there a danger here? Is there some risk of injury?
In deciding whether there has been negligence causing injury to pupils, the law applies the concept of ‘the reasonable objective observer’, who theoretically might ask certain hypothetical questions about the teacher’s actions – or lack of action. Was the teacher’s conduct a normal, reasonable expectation for someone filling the replacement role of a ‘better than good parent’? Or, instead, would the independent objective observer conclude: ‘Yes, because of her actions, it could have been predicted that this unfortunate outcome was likely’?
Try to look at any doubtful action you might be contemplating through the eyes of such an objective observer. Is what you are doing, or are about to do, safe? If you are able to answer in the affirmative, then proceed.
3. Consider the hazardous implications.
Is pupil injury foreseeable as a likely outcome if you continue to do what you have been doing, or if you continue not to do something?
For example, at a school camp, if you ask a pupil to fetch kerosene from the storeroom and to sprinkle the contents over camp rubbish prior to lighting it – and the pupil mistakenly selects a petrol container instead – had you foreseen all the possible consequences of your delegation?
In a similar real-life circumstance, the courts found a teacher’s behaviour negligent because he had:
• stored petrol and kerosene in an unlocked storeroom accessible to children
• stored petrol and kerosene in almost identical and indistinguishable containers
• asked children to perform the rubbish-burning duties
• did not supervise the children in their rubbish-burning activities.
The court, through application of its criterion of ‘the objective person’ standing back and contemplating the various ingredients of this situation, had no hesitation in finding that the set of behaviours was potentially very dangerous. There was a strong likelihood of injury associated with the foreseeable risks, it said. Clearly, the teacher had failed to consider the consequences of his actions.
4. Avoid situations which can lead to legal consequences.
Be alert to the many situations in school life which have potential to land you in legal difficulties. For example:
• Do not put yourself at risk by being alone with a pupil behind a closed door – regardless of gender or the nature of the situation.
• Avoid the use of profane, sexual, suggestive, threatening, derogatory, racist, or inflammatory remarks, both verbal and written. Using them demonstrates a tremendous insensitivity towards others; and they can be used in a destructive way against you.
• Resist the temptation to show off, for example in sport: ‘Look, here’s how you tackle someone…’ or ‘So, you want to see how hard I can hit a cricket ball…?’ Pupils can be so easily injured by adults.
• Don’t send a sick pupil home by himself. Contact parents and organise appropriate transportation.
• Keep sharp knives away from small children in craft lessons.
• Be very cautious about using your own vehicle to transport pupils to and from sporting fixtures.
5. Be aware that routine tasks can hide danger.
Familiarity can often breed blind overconfidence. The fact that you have always acted in a particular way, or that others have always been in the habit of doing the same thing, is not a guarantee against negligence. For example, remember that electric extension cords, commonly taken for granted, are potentially life-threatening.
6. Protect pupils from their own follies.
It’s essential you intervene when you feel pupils are putting themselves at risk. Doing nothing can be just as negligent as doing something. Step in and stop fights, boisterous horseplay, rubber-band flicking, stone throwing, tree climbing, and so on. Such risky pursuits by pupils could put them in physical danger and you in legal danger!
7. And remember also…
• Repeat your instructions whenever necessary. Persist if you must.
• Compile a set of rules to cover risky situations, that encourage pupils to think before they act.
• Be consistent. Never turn a blind eye to any breach of the rules.
• Be aware of formal safety policies and manuals and ensure you implement their requirements.
• Alert playground supervision is a vital part of your duty of care.
• Keep your first-aid skills up to date. They will be needed sometime.
• The younger the children, the greater the supervision required.
• Legal duty of care extends to all school activities, whether inside or outside the school, held before or after school, or at weekends.
• Always err on the side of caution. It’s better to play it safe, than to be sorry later.
n This article has been extracted from ACEL’s The Classroom Teacher’s Book of Management Essentials. Over 200 step-by-step solutions for tackling everyday classroom management issues, arranged within eight essential themes: Managing Teaching Skills; Managing Resources; Managing Pupil Learning; Managing Evaluation and Assessment; Managing Pupil Behaviour; Managing Parent Relationships; Managing Legal Issues; and Managing Yourself and Your Career. Also featuring hundreds of relevant side-panel fragments that are intended to substantiate, extend, and challenge the core assertions presented on each double-page spread. An invaluable easy-to-read resource for new and experienced primary and secondary teachers alike. 432 pages, hardcover. Authors: Jarvis Finger and Barry Bamford. Published by ACEL/Fernfawn.
Obtainable from www.acel.org.au
How to tackle your priorities
Setting priorities is a decision-making process by which you rank in order of importance the tasks you or your staff members must do. By completing the tasks on your list in order, you will achieve your goals. It sounds easy—but it’s not. In fact, priority-setting and sticking to the agreement you make with yourself will be major challenges for you as a manager. Here are several important suggestions to help you draw up a priority list—and make it work…
1. Address management problems first.
Give top priority to any problem on your list that is making you ineffective as a manager. If, for example, you have a personal conflict with your superior or your personal assistant, your effectiveness in dealing with other priorities could be seriously hampered. Face such problems immediately; get them out in the open; and devise solutions quickly.
2. Group your priorities meaningfully.
It is sometimes possible to prioritise your daily goals and save time and effort. For example, by postponing an inspection of new equipment in the factory block across the parking lot until after lunch, you might find that you can do so after a scheduled mid-afternoon meeting with the factory supervisor. You may even be able to accomplish a couple more of your goals for the day during that one trip.
Sensible planning brings its time-saving rewards.
3. Do it—or remove it.
Don’t let an item become an irritation to you. If a task has been on your priority list for a long time, deal with it immediately or delete it from the list. If it has to be done, do it. If not, get rid of it; make room for something more important.
4. Resist chopping and changing.
Continually changing priorities will get you nowhere. If you start something and then switch to something else, you will soon lose motivation. If a task is near the top of your list, it’s worth completing. Management consultant Ivy Lee’s often repeated advice to US industrialist Charles Schwab is relevant here: ‘Dig right in on priority job number one and stick to it until it’s done. Tackle job number two in the same way; then number three; and so on. Don’t worry if you finish only one or two by the end of the day—you’ll be concentrating on the most urgent ones.’
5. Balance your priorities.
But by focusing on a major, very time-consuming task which you have placed at or near the top of your list, you can sometimes neglect others, causing further problems in the long run. Keep all your priorities in mind and avoid this confusion.
Ivy Lee’s advice – to stick at priority number one until it’s completed—may well be wise counsel for some managers, but it pays to be flexible when focusing on your top priorities.
6. Reassign priorities when necessary.
When a task proves so difficult that an immediate solution is not possible, you may be compelled to take more time to consider the options. Move this item down the list where you can watch it but not forget it.
7. Follow up on your priorities.
Check daily to see that your priority tasks have in fact been completed and assess their outcome. Only when you’re satisfied can you then confidently remove them from your list.
8. Confront those difficult tasks head-on.
Don’t lower a high-priority task just because you’re afraid to face it. Playing for time doesn’t solve many problems. Your priority list will not serve you well unless you are honest with yourself and put the important (though difficult) things first. Once more, remind yourself of Ivy Lee’s advice.
9. Communicate all vital information.
If one of the tasks on your priority list requires communication throughout the workplace or office, for example, it should receive special treatment. Delaying such action could cause even more problems to be added to your list.
10. Treat your office like an operating room.
Surgeons don’t get interrupted: they are required to focus all their attention on the task at hand. If you want to achieve your goals, you need to do the same thing. Develop the mindset that, during certain hours of the day, you are ‘in surgery’ and cannot be interrupted—no phone calls, no meetings, no drop-in visitors. During this time, focus 100 per cent on your high-priority tasks.
11. Accept that you will always have a priority list.
Whenever you complete a task, another will appear to take its place. As a manager, that’s what your job is all about. If your list gets too short, you’re simply not involved enough in the life of your organisation.
Finally, let your priorities determine your schedule. Don’t let your schedule determine your priorities.
n This article has been extracted from The Management Bible. Over 300 step-by-step solutions for tackling everyday general management issues, arranged within eleven essential themes: Managing Yourself, Managing Your Career, Managing Relationships, Communicating, Building Essential Skills, Planning, Staff related Issues, Managing Conflict, Marketing, Managing crises, Organisation-wide Issues. Also featuring hundreds of relevant side-panel fragments that are intended to substantiate, extend, and challenge the core assertions presented on each double-page spread. An invaluable easy-to-read, cross-referenced resource for those in leadership positions. 640 pages, hardcover. Authors: Jarvis Finger and Neil Flanagan. Published by Plum Press.
Obtainable from Plum Press, Ph. 0500 800 101, or email: neil@neil.com.au
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