Karlie Gray

I’ve come to realise that in teaching, it isn’t so much what you’re teaching, how you’re teaching it or, sometimes, it isn’t even about the learning. It’s always about people. About the child 1st&you. Your warmth, your values, your you to them ✨ The rest will come if you #HWB1st

🙏🏻 Today my 6 year olds came home and told me their most memorable&best part of their day was that the teacher wrote their friend’s birthday on the board… “Happy Birthday V”🎈(*and left it on ALL day*)… 😍 And you know, this is my most favourite kind of learning #Connection

Why "communication" and "persuasion" are insufficient approaches to change across an organisation or system. Communication campaigns can build awareness, but they rarely change behaviour at scale. Persuasion works well when our audience is already open to change. But when we lead any significant change effort, we work across the full spectrum: people who proactively advocate for change, those who passively accept it, and those who actively resist it. For a large portion of that population, even the most sophisticated argument will not shift their position. We change through our relationships. I've learnt greatly from @Digitaltonto (link at the bottom of this piece). Decades of social science research shows we're profoundly shaped by the people around us: our colleagues, peers and professional community. This influence extends not just to our immediate connections but three degrees out: to their networks and the networks beyond. When researchers have studied people who made major shifts in their thinking (e.g., leaving long-held beliefs, changing deeply ingrained ways of working), they consistently find that change followed a shift in their social environment, not exposure to a better argument. People did not think their way into new behaviour. They were drawn into it by those around them. This has profound implications for how we lead change. The real levers are not in our communications strategy. They're in our social architecture. Five things we can do as leaders of change to build our social architecture: 1) Find the people who are already moving: People who already believe in what we are trying to do and are quietly making it happen. Find them and connect them to each other. We are not creating energy for change — we are locating it. 2) Create the conditions for peer-to-peer spread: People adopt new ways of working when they see colleagues they respect doing things differently. Prioritise proximity over broadcast. Small group conversations, site visits, and shared learning across teams carry more influence than organisation-wide communications. 3) Make progress visible at the local level: Transformation does not announce itself top-down and cascade neatly through an organisation. It spreads when people can see it working nearby, in their context, for people like them. Celebrate local progress loudly and often. 4) Connect people to the difference their work makes. Creating regular opportunities for people to hear from, or spend time with, those they ultimately serve is one of the most underused and most powerful tools we have as leaders of change. 5) Put our energy where it will travel furthest. Build on the readiness that exists, make it visible, and let success do the persuading that arguments could not. None of this makes effective change communication redundant. People need clarity, honesty and a coherent narrative about where we are heading. But that is the scaffolding, not the structure. Change travels through people, through trust, through the invisible threads that connect one person's conviction to anothers. See: @greg-satell/why-the-urge-to-persuade-can-undermine-your-idea-for-change-8f2c55a8e930" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">medium.com/@greg-satell/w….

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Wow, what a risk it will be to our young people ensuring we have phone free schools… 👉🏻 Chatting over ‘Tracking’ 👉🏻 Appreciating over ‘App-ing’ 👉🏻Looking up and forward over looking down! 🙏🏻

Carol Ann Tomlinson’s work in action … Environment Content Process Product … and chunking it this way allows us to really think about how to practically apply it to meet learner needs 🌟 Intentional design 🙏🏻

A compelling article by @DTWillingham on 'Do Today's Kids Have Reduced Attention Spans?' Well, yes and no - it is a complex question... "It’s not that students can’t pay attention, but rather that they more readily choose not to." aft.org/ae/spring2026/…

🤝 Creating inclusive ELC environments starts with the right support. This page brings together guidance and resources to support children with additional support needs. 🔗 ow.ly/nshT50YIG7o

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In case you missed it, this is the UNESCO guide for ensuring inclusion and equity in education. Essential reading! share.google/1WWHbRXILHcMsV…

Mr Burton my history teacher circa 1999-2004. On lucky days we forgot about primary&secondary sources and he’d tell us hundreds of world stories, many of which at the time I thought he knew of because he was there. We were all captivated… unplanned and the most memorable ✨

My morning reflection as a teacher and a parent 🌅 Let’s purposefully create MORE spaces for LESS digital in their learning and see what happens…. 🫶🏻

You know what I think the most important thing above all else in our school communities just now… Belonging, no matter ❤️ You’re welcome, you always have a space here, you belong.

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🤔 Why do we sometimes turn simple ideas into complicated problems….? 💡 Maybe clarity isn’t the challenge—letting go of complexity is. 👇🏻 Still think the most we’ve to learn is from our youngest folk 🙌🏻

The @UofGCfTE Innovative Pedagogies Hub is excited to host this second webinar with the knowledgeable Deirdre Grogan. Looking forward to hearing fresh insights into play and discovering new ways it can support, motivate and challenge our young people! Still time to sign up 🙌🏻

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Love this ‘Thinking out Loud’ about enquiry 🤩 👇🏻 It’s great to see this so explicit, and to know the more we think, look deeper and explore further… we can improve our learning and of course, our children and young people 🙌🏻

@Mr_Steenson @UofGCfTE @kate_wall98 Love this way of being really explicit and showing that enquiry thinking ‘out loud’ …. how you can tweak what your focusing on to make it more meaningful for you and your children 🤩

A key part of practitioner enquiry is taking time to refine and define your focus. Clear questions help you move from a broad idea to an enquiry that can genuinely improve learning in your classroom. @UofGCfTE @kate_wall98

🌍 Want to support equity work in your school, cluster or LA? Join our online session on 18 March, 4 to 4:50pm to learn how you could deliver Scotland’s new national equity programme. All resources provided. 👉 Sign up: ow.ly/vjut50YtonC

YES 🙌🏻 I think about this almost every day with young readers. The importance of daily reading, for all, does not escape me!!! ❤️