Professional Learnings NSWPPA Educational Leadership

Part 1 of 3 episodes: Rob Stone's Leading Schools with Passion and Purpose:

• NSW PPA Professional Learning

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Have you ever wondered what it takes to transform a school into a place where students don't just learn, but thrive? Rob Stones, a veteran in educational leadership, shares his journey from a fledgling leader to a principal who turned the tide in a remote school. With his insights rooted in the philosophy of William Glasser, Rob delves into the essence of building trust and embracing non-coercive discipline. It's an exploration of the trials, errors, and ultimately, the strategies that lead to an educational environment where students are not just present, but engaged and excited to be there.

Now, if you're ready to elevate your leadership skills beyond the basics, our conversation on the advanced masterclass is a must-listen. Designed for graduates of the Art of Leadership course, this segment offers a deeper understanding of how to shape the culture and ethos of your school sustainably. Rob cautions against the allure of quick fixes and spotlights the commitment to transformational leadership and effective coaching. For anyone ready to embody the change they seek in the educational sphere, this episode serves as both a guide and a testament to the power of dedicated, thoughtful leadership in creating a lasting impact.

To view our Professional Learning Offerings visit:
https://www.nswppa.org.au/professional-learning




Drew:

Hello and welcome to season two of the Principal Learning Podcast. If you're a principal or educational leader looking to a hand to your skills, this is a place for you, so let's get into it. Let's embark on this learning journey together. So in this episode is the first of a three-part series with Rob Stone, who is one of the original creators, designers and facilitators of the New South Wales Primary Principles Association's Part of Leadership Program. Rob is also a facilitator of the Art of Leadership Learning Class.

Drew:

This podcast is the first of a three-part series with Rob Stones. We have to learn properly, structure our own casting in a serious way, as it allows us to determine the vast amount of knowledge and wisdom that it shares in our conversation. In this first episode we discuss broad spectrum of this youth also education and how the Art of Leadership Program is so critical in developing your leadership skills. Our second podcast will be guided through the practical aspects of the Art of Leadership Program and how to implement your leadership every day as a leader. Our third podcast will be discussing Rob's publications that have all come as a result of the Art of Leadership's teachings. It's a privilege to listen to Rob's insights and I hope you gain some very valuable practical tips and suggestions, as I put you, in your leadership journey.

Drew:

So enjoy Rob Stone's Rob Stone's welcome. Great to thank you for being available and talking to us about. Really we're going to be going into several directions. Firstly is to talk about your professional learning journey and what led you to where you are today and what inspires you to continue to work in educational leadership.

Rob :

Well, I suppose my learning journey was important. At the start of my career I got an early leadership position and was much good at it, got better, became pretty much the sort of leader who tried to do what people wanted to do and what people loved him and the hierarchy taught him to do and plotted on like that and then went to Bamagur for my first principal shift. So Bamagur was then the northern low school on the top of the tip of the Cape York Peninsula, very isolated, 100 and something kids, so very small secondary school. I had 100 and something kids when I first went there. 20 kids come to school the first morning. The rest they do what they were doing fishing and exploring the bush and riding wild horses and all sorts of things.

Rob :

So straight away I was no longer in the little bubble where in a mainstream community the parents chased the kids to school. I had to do something different Very early on. Teachers who had been there for a while which is not many because Bamagur turned over very quickly, but teachers who had been there for a while shared well, they will come to school if they think it's worthwhile. So what are we doing to attract them to school In a way that was seminal to everything that drove my leadership since then. For me, since then, leadership has always been about what are we doing to provide the best and most attractive service for the students of our school, for the kids, for the children?

Drew:

So how did you go with that that you've placed in this isolated area? You're very green and you underplayed it, but you even said I wasn't much good at it. So I think that maybe an understatement, but where was your mind in terms of thinking there?

Rob :

Well, obviously at the time I thought I was doing okay and so that's a retrospective judgment that I wasn't much good at it. I mean, I was obviously doing well enough to get a job as a principal. I'll be right on the extremes of the state, so I wasn't at the top of anybody's list. But I took some books with me and one of the books I took to read because I knew I'd have some time has spilt glasses. Schools without failure, as I was talking about to my staff is how do we turn this into a school where there's no failure? And will the kids come to school if they feel successful? And the answer to the last was yes, the kids will come to school if they think they're being successful. And could we turn Emega High School there into that school? Well, we tried.

Rob :

My predecessor had made some steps. There's a huge. There's right next to the school was a farm that had been long, long I don't think it was ever successful long long overgrown by bush. But he started off. He had the idea that if we cleared the farm we could do a lot of useful learning that people could use on site in the north of Peninsular. So I continued that initiative and started to look for all sorts of other reasons.

Rob :

We did an array of things we did. We turned our art program around so that a lot of the traditional artifacts so it's a carving community, basically most of the traditional artifacts are carved we used all the mediums that we could to allow the kids to do great traditional artifacts in a non-traditional way. We found that lots of students and their parents really enjoyed that. We did lots and lots of tweaks and very much we worked on the relationship between students and teachers and so the way as to how much the community actually氣 it was how much, how much the community was doing that the students, my principles as a local citizen that don't think we would be processing this at our ownlam and using documentation to contact and look at how much of this distributed, what we citizens might need, because yeah absolutely so.

Rob :

Glassa had three key messages, okay. The first was develop good relationships with the students. The second is being non-coercive. If you bully the kids, they won't come to school or they won't do well. And the third thing is still, have clear boundaries. So the schools got boundaries. If the kids think the school doesn't have boundaries or the class teacher doesn't have boundaries, then nothing productive will happen, so that the process is not I am the authority figure and I'll bully you to get what I want, but the process is I'm someone who's developing a good relationship with you. You can trust me. But there are boundaries to this relationship. But in this classroom, okay, and we're going to stick with it of you and I and I can promise you that I'll. You know, he picked up the unconditional positive regard piece and if we show us unconditional positive regard, then the students will test us. But then, after they've tested us for a while, they'll figure out that we do really care about them, so they'll work with us. So that was Glasses pretty clear messaging schools without failure, as it has been through all of the books about education that he's written.

Rob :

So we tried to do that and it was fun. You know we did things with the kids. You know, the teachers were playing volleyball after school and all the kids, heaps of kids, would come and join in and it would be really nice to see kids come back from the holidays. You know, if they'd straightaway come and give the teachers a hug, you know, and say I'm glad to be back, and so on. So it was a nice atmosphere to be in.

Rob :

But it was isolated and there were some things you couldn't control. So if there was a funeral or a tombstone opening, so after a funeral they make the tombstone and then they open the tombstone so that it's like the opening of a public building, so both those things are holidays. Okay, funeral is a holiday, tombstone opening is a holiday. If there's a tombstone opening in a distant community or out on one of the islands, all the families go. So all of a sudden we go back to 10 kids at school again. You just have to live with the rhythms of that. Then when they're back, they come to school and we do some good work.

Drew:

Yeah.

Rob :

Yeah, that's right. But I guess the purpose of that long story is to say like it's changing what you can control and what you can't control.

Rob :

Yeah, Taking the boxes for leading a school. I'm now someone who works with his staff to try and provide the best possible service for the student community that we serve. So I took that into my other principalships and it's very much a part of the workshop programs that I teach and the executive coaching I do the traditional ways of doing things, running everything as if it's a hierarchy that Los Tills, the deputies want to do and the deputies tell the teachers what to do and everybody kind of rubs along even if nobody's terribly happy about it. It's never going to work with my way of thinking about leadership. So when I'm running a leadership workshop I have to present it as a way of connecting so strongly with your teaching staff and understanding you kids and your teachers so well that we're influencing them, we're getting the best out of them.

Drew:

Yeah, so it's really understanding your context and relating that knowledge you have into that context, importantly underpin by classes, theories and also, but more importantly, is ensuring there's trust and connection prior to any learning taking, a high quality learning taking place.

Rob :

Yes, because whatever you read in the area of education and interpersonal relationships, you get the same message. Glass is not the only internal control psychology theorists. There are heaps and heaps of others Edward DC and his organization, the self-determination theoryorg and go to his website. He's. Glass wasn't a researcher, but DC's researched all this stuff.

Rob :

Now, what's the effect of coercion on kids? What's the effect of rewards on kids? What's the effect of threatening to kids? What's the effect of good relationships with young people? And the theoretical framework on which his work is based is very strong now, and in the art of leadership, for example, we gather all of that through the theoretical framework to try to convince leaders who attend the art of leadership that their main job is to connect with everybody in their community. Now we take that further in the art of leadership masterclass because it's called I think we call it something like vibrant leadership for connected communities. It's about taking that even further and making sure that everybody's connected, not just with each other, but with the key ideas that the school is operating on, so that nobody's asking at any time why we're doing this. They know what we're doing.

Drew:

Well, you did go. We will go to the art of leadership, Rob, with the work that you have established and there's a history with the New South Wales Primary Principles Association. I believe you can correct me if I'm wrong here. There are over 61 programs held since 2013. The art of leadership. So, for a program such a long, rich history, are you able to share some of the success stories or outcomes that have resulted from your teaching?

Rob :

Well, I think that it's practical. I mean there's theory underpinning everything in it, but there's a lot of skill building and a lot of ways of thinking practically about as a principal, what do you do with people, how do you bring them all together? Because, understandably, systems you know an education system. We didn't teach in the private Catholic system, but I have done some programs there and it's the same. They have a system and the system tells them to do things and the system is about schooling, not necessarily about education. I'm not critical of it. It couldn't possibly be different from how it is.

Rob :

The only thing that can make a difference is leaders in the school. But they can make a difference because they can shift. They can either use their position power horticratically to make things happen, or they can use their inspiration and personal influence to persuade people to go along with them and to adopt the measures that they advocate for. The difference is engagement and commitment. You can have a school staff who are strongly engaged with the purpose of the school, who absolutely understand the purpose of what they're all trying to do together. You can have a group of people who learn together, who are willing to dig in together to the details and learn from each other. Some teachers have extraordinary success with a class or a group of students. Other people want to know what they're doing. You can set up that context or you can set up the context where everybody just has to plot through the curriculum, do their best with their own class and where Every now and again there are a lot of changes of direction because something has changed out hiding the school in the context, or they've got a new instruction from the Department of Education or something.

Rob :

So I mean, inevitably schools are going to get new instruction from the Department of Education, but because systems really want what schools want, which is the kids to do well and the teachers to be engaged and committed, you just have to tweak whatever the message is and still keep doing the same thing.

Rob :

In all my career, nobody ever told me, rob, you're getting too much enthusiasm and commitment from your teachers or your teachers Teachers have got too good a relationship with the students. That's not going to happen. Those things are supported but they can't be imposed from the outside. So the bureaucracy, if you like, does its best to think about what might improve things, but because they're not in the school, they can't do it. So neither people in the school can do it. So we try to get that message across fairly strongly in the art of leadership and it's gratifying that quite a few experienced principals have said to Judy or I after the six days of the art of leadership you know I've been a principal for a long time Ten years, sometimes 20 years and now I suddenly understand what my job really is and that's gratifying to hear that kind of thing.

Drew:

It's that light bulb moment and as a participant myself, I can attest to that changing light bulb things that do come through the course. It's that reflection of practice but giving the time to actually explore and delve into and it's a real key to the success of the work, of the structure, of having a phase one and then having a consolidation of the phase two. Yeah, yeah, it's remarkable in terms of just it's our key. I would say well, it is, it's our crown jewel to the professional learning suite. So you alluded to the masterclass. You're able to, without giving too much away, you're able to give us an insight of what participants who are considering the masterclass would be, would be signing up for or you'd be exploring.

Rob :

So what happens in the masterclass is, first of all, everybody's already done the art of leadership, but they come with imperfectly remembered knowledge Inevitably, because you know we shove them. You know people say that wrong thing with the art of leadership. It seems six days, so it's stretching out, but there's so much. So they come, and the first part of it is an opportunity for us to work on clarifying some of the ideas that came through the art of leadership and deepening their understanding of them. And then what goes on from there is to delve more deeply into some of the themes of the art of leadership, particularly the relationships. So how do you? And coaching, how do you use this coaching model, not just one to one, but with your whole staff? How do you use an understanding of how groups work together to change the culture and ethos of your school? And this is much less, only a three day program, so it's pretty fast. But we make sure that there's enough discussion and exchanging ideas so that, just as in the original art of leadership, people learn as much from the discussions with each other as they do from the physical endeavors, and it culminates in some quite profound self-reflective activities, whether or not I go to do to create what I want.

Rob :

What does it say? Because it's so easy in life to think I have a picture out here, a dream out here, of what I want to create Okay, and I'm going to do my best to get other people to help me create it. And what's central is that you only achieve that dream if you change. Okay, I used to be called transformational leadership. These days that's not a popular word, but it's a good way of understanding it. If you want something to be different, you have to be different. You have to persuade your teachers to be different, and then, when you're different, you know as a candy. You said, we must become the change we want to see in the world, and I think that's absolutely the case.

Drew:

You are the change. Yes, you are the change In terms of in your opinion and it is an opinion question there are so many changing trends in educational leadership. For our current leaders who are aspiring, what words of advice would you give or for participants to, or people listening to, even potentially, should I say, avoid?

Rob :

Well, look out for people selling magic bullets, because there are not. You know, what we do is not a magic bullet. What we've tried to work on is presenting people with well researched, well grounded information that all입니다 is supported by the psychology of internal control, knowing that the only thing people can change is what they can directly influence. Mostly that's just themselves. So what we've got? This really clear understanding of how people work and have children work, and we build on that some really quite substantial ideas that have proven by research to work. And then if a leader rounds their work in that, then they're likely to be successful. But because you know, I often talk about the political cycle, you know politicians won't change today, not in three years time, and making change in a school does take some years. So there are always people wanting to produce magic bullets, so the politicians grab hold of it. So maybe we could do that. So think about how the language wars have gone over the years. You know the new fad came in and everybody followed the new fad.

Rob :

They took years to figure out. The new fad didn't give enough structural understanding of language to leave them well sure of what would be effective. And then you know, structure literacy is at the moment making a comeback. But the truth is, all these things work when they're, when you, and what's central is that you only achieve that dream if you change if you're a principal or educational leader looking to enhance your skills, this is a place for you.

Drew:

This season, we'll be showcasing a wide range of professional learning experiences designed with your success in mind. We'll continue to focus on the values of wellbeing, leadership, growth, as well as optimising school operations. Curious to learn more about our offerings? You'll find our full catalogue on our website at wwwnissapwalesppaorgau forward slash catalogue. Or you can easily book your next professional learning experience at wwwnissapwppaorgau forward slash. Professional dash learning, dash calendar, dash bookings. If you or your network is interested in further professional learning through the New South Wales Primary Principles Association, reach out to me directly at wwwnissapwppaorgau. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

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Drew Janetzki

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