Cameron Tarrant retweetledi
We draw our Science of Learning UK Trip to close. What an amazing (and full) week. Highlights included meeting @P_A_Kirschner, visiting @Ambition_Inst and Michaela Community School, but everything was really a highlight.
I provide some reflections below…
I have summed the trip up in three words that I will take back to the Catalyst team…
Consistency, Precision & Clarity
We are well placed in our early journey within Catalyst, a long way to go, but affirming.
We have strong foundations through Catalyst, which has been reinforced on this trip.
- What we teach and how we teach matters
- The teacher is the most important learner
- Importance of teacher presence and authority
- Curriculum - lever of sustaining change
- Knowledge is power - You inquire, create and explore, from a place of knowledge
- Gaining attentional control is critical in order for students to learn - students learn what they attend to
- Well placed within Catalyst now after considerable training, to build upon the last three years for coaching, walk thrus and low stake observations and feedback to occur more often
- Responsive leadership - critical role of the leader
- Importance of culture, setting the conditions
- Structures and Standards - working together for longer term sustainability
- Iterations, what we now know that we didn’t know before, what we do now we didn’t do before
- Quality first wave teaching focus
- Don’t lower expectations - maintain the standard but have the wrap around supports for all children to succeed
- Routines and structures set up all students for success
- Calm and orderly environment - routines and structures provide space for students to reach full potential
- Raise the bar with student responses and attend to oracy
- Maximum effort pays off - set the tone
A few quotes/statements that stand out for me.
- Habits build character
- Keep getting better
- Work high, Be kind, Aim high
- I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.
At the start of the trip, I was looking at potential enablers to help us moving from implementation to embedding and sustaining Catalyst long term.
- onboarding - keep the standard - detail matters
- Still more to learn (external expertise balanced with internal capability/capacity)
- low stakes peer observations can be powerful for continuous culture of feedback
- Curriculum - scaffold for sustainability
- At all levels, what are we de-implementing to provide the space needed for continued change (eg structures and processes)
- be clear on design principles of Professional development to ensure impact
- Continue to leverage the ‘systemness’ to fed continued iterations and momentum (others don’t have that, we are fortunate)
- Anchor in the evidence base - keep coming back to what is most important
- Ground up (teachers) help to continue to drive this change (teacher to teacher)
- Monitoring and accountability
I appreciate the opportunity and privilege to have been able to attend this learning experience. (2 claps for you all who we visited on 2….1,2 👏🏻👏🏻 - part of gratitude time at family lunches in the Secondary schools we visited).
Thank you @Rossefox and @tony_bracken for allowing my attendance and @ceacg and @KnowledgeScty #Catalyst
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