Swimming up the waterfall

One of my current roles within my school is as Principal's Nominee. The responsibilities of this role feel enormous at times, and feel amplified when teachers ask my advice and guidance on assessment issues. Suddenly, I'm seen as the voice of authority on these issues.

As I find my way through this role I have been identifying small changes that I would like to see made in some of our processes (it's not that we're doing things wrong, but I can see ways we can do things better). One of my challenges will be in  managing change in a way that's flexible and achievable for staff.

The Agile Manifesto, introduced at the Mindlab session a couple of weeks back, is easily adaptable to a school situation and with many possible variations. Here's one set:
Individuals and interactions over assessmentEffective teaching over data management Student centred over teacher directedResponding to students over following a scheme
It's about reflective management. The planning process at my school is a bit more of a waterfall, flowing down but not really up (the lavender branches represent points where agility could be built into the current system):



By nature of our profession teachers are problem-solvers. We identify issues, create solutions and implement these ideas. No-one knows better what happens in our classrooms than we do. How often, though, are we truly included in the decision making processes and given the opportunity to provide feedback and instigate changes as initiatives are being introduced? School is full of muda; we often meet because 'it's on the schedule' or have to complete administrative paperwork in order to tick a box.

By compartmentalising our processes we have the opportunity to reflect on what is being done and make changes before progressing to the next step, identifying need and prioritising actions. There are also opportunities to give stakeholders a stronger voice in change. Conversation is important - as a... I need... so that...
As a teacher I want to add more writing opportunities in my class so that I can increase the literacy in my classes
As a Principal's Nominee I need teachers to complete internal moderation before submitting results to NZQA so that the school's assessment is accurate.
As a 2IC I need teachers of junior English to use the common assessment tasks so that I can better compare results between classes and identify areas of need.
Compartmentalising also makes things manageable. At times I feel overwhelmed by the number of tasks I have to do. Trello is quite empowering as a list organiser. I've created separate boards for my roles and have set up 'To do', 'Doing', and  'Done' cards. Suddenly everything seems more manageable and have a sense of accomplishment each time I move a task from one card to the next. I see that this could be a useful tool to use in class -,eg problems to be solved, problems we are solving, problems we have solved

On top of this we could apply the 'improvement kata'"
- Understand the challenge/direction
- Grasp the current condition
- Establish the target condition
- Conduct experiments to get there
Compared to waterfall changes whre the process has established steps to follow - with the risk of ending up where you don't want to be - this kata enables organisations to instead implement small steps and review processes along the way.

In many ways agile leadership is akin to growth mindset. The goal is to get better all the time. As teachers, we should be always finding better ways for our students and our schools.

We shouldn't be swimming up a waterfall.

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