Facilitating my first ITP

This week I will be involved in facilitating my first Improving Teacher Programme (ITP). I recieved the facilitation training for both the ITP and Outstanding Teacher Programme (OTP) back in July.

I will be blogging about my experience of facilitating the programme. This will give me the essential opportunity to reflect on the programme and my facilitation of it. But I believe it will also provide food for thought for anyone involved in staff development but not necessarily this particular programme.

As a teacher who is in his eigth year of his career the chance to facilitate this sort of programme has come along at a good time. I have given several staff training sessions at my school over the years and I currently have responsibility for ensuring the smooth running of our TLC programme. I also deliver a day on the history PGCE at York University. Recently I have been involved in school to school work.

Despite that I believe the chance to facilitate this ITP is a step up. It is a programme that runs over six weeks and as such offers the chance to invest in the staff involved in. A way that one off training does not.

As I prepare for the first session the following themes are in my mind.

Facilitating not leading - the answers are in the room

One of the main things that struck me about the facilitator programme was that this is not a course where I will be asked to stand at the front and tell folk how to be good teachers.

This really pleased me as this programme is about providing the opportunity for staff to develop not telling them what to do.

Six or so years ago I heard Dylan William talk about staff development. He said that just telling teachers what to do doesn't work. In the same way that just telling students what to do doesn't work. If we just tell students what is good a small minority will get it but the vast majority of us require some support to get there.

Developing from this the answers and the ideas are in the room. We are not expected, or indeed allowed, to provide them. This has got to be a massive positive for the programme. 

It seems to me that this programme is about creating the opportunities for staff to develop and excell. If I can manage to do that then I will have been successful.

Not affirming

One of the big challenges for me personally is the rule that, as facilitators, we are not allowed to affirm the comments or work of those on the programme. My standard response as a teacher to a well thought out response is to say something like "I really like that. Have you thought about....?" However the organisers do not want this type of affirmation as they believe that those on the programme should do things for their own affirmation and not affirmation from the 'teacher'.

I found this really hard on the facilitator training. Through this I realised the importance and central role of praise to my own pedagogy. 

This obviously, links with the previous point of the answers being in the room and it is something I will have to work on throughout my role as a facilitator to ensure that those on the programme get the most from it.

It's a programme not a course

The ITP is not a course. This might sound like a bit of semantics naming it a programme instead but the point is to develop the theme that the progress will be both made by and come from those taking the programme. It's not down to me or anyone else.

This is something that sits well with me. As a teacher I've always tried to get that little bit better. I've always been open to trying new stuff to see if it works. I think this (very common) attitude has massively helped my personal development. 

The aim of the programme is to help those taking it to develop in this way.

Check back later to see how the first session has gone.

What makes a good staff training environment?

On Monday 3rd September I was asked to go and speak to staff at another school. Several staff members had witnessed the Teacher Learning Communities (TLC) that we have at Rossett (our vehicle for staff training and development) and were preparing to adopt a similar approach. I had already been and spoken to the new TLC leaders and this visit was to speak to the whole school staff.

The aim of this was not to simply explain what we do at Rossett with relation to staff training and development but was to try and get the whole staff to think about what it is that makes a successful training environment. The staff had KWL grids to fill in but I emphasised at the beginning that the 'learning' element of the grid could come from themselves and others on their tables rather than just from me. It wasn't going to be much use to them if they just heard 30 minutes of 'what works for us' I believed that it would be much more useful for them to establish 'what will work for them'.

Throughout the session the aim was to also showcase some simple straightforward activities that could instantly be used in any classroom.

This was only a short 30 minute 'presentation' and the central activity revolved around the staff completing a card sorting activity:

The initial aim was for them to establish 6 essential components of good staff training. They could then put the other six in a column of 'ideals' or, as some of them did, they could remove some of the suggestions altogether.

The secondary aim was for the staff to get into discussions about what makes good training. They were sat in tables that would form their TLC groupings for the year to come and the aim was to feedback to their new TLC leader some ideas that were essential for their staff development.

Throughout the session the staff filled in their KWL grids beginning by showing what they knew already about TLC and developing to show what they had learnt. I thought that this approach was particularly useful as there was different levels of understanding and knowledge at the start of the session and in order for me to attempt to show some personalised progress this tool worked well. 

At the end of the session I asked the staff to share what they had learnt on a central grid in the middle of the table. The grid was split into sections. One was to be used to show what they had learnt from me. The other, more important part, was to show what they had learnt from each other.

Reflections

+ Ensuring that the training occurs in a supportive, non-judgemental environment was highlighted by  every group.

+ The importance of, and opportunity to, collaborate was also something that featured very highly in most groups.

+ Virtually every group placed 'Linked to Performance Management' as the least important and some groups found that it was actually counter productive.

It seemed that this kind of activity worked well at the start of the year. It provided a base for discussion about what is important when delivering staff training. Arguably all the points are very valid but this activity gave the TLC leaders clear insight into what their groups would most value. Whatever the vehicle for staff training it seemed to me to be a worthwhile activity to begin a year with and to allow staff to think about what is important for them.

I also believe it is a good activity for groups of students who are looking to deepen understanding of a particular topic. At GCSE for example, I could see an activity with 12 causes of American Involvement in Vietnam being used in a similar way.