The principal creating great learners, fabulous citizens and distinctive school culture.

In building a strong school culture, there are many overlapping and cohesive actions that a principal needs to consider. But it all begins with connections, core beliefs, behaviours and effective communication.

Transcript

Loretta  00:03

You're listening to Loretta Piazza experienced school principal, mentor, and coach, and together we're talking out of school. You will hear from leaders who have lived and breathed so many experiences, good and bad, agonized over decisions, and have tossed and turned through countless sleepless nights. These are the people who will help you stay ahead of the game.  

We all know about the importance of developing a strong school culture. Our culture is the sum total of the language we use, the way people treat each other, and how people think. Sound familiar? It should because principals work on these three things every day. In this episode, I talked to Adam Voigt from Real Schools. Much of Adam's work is in the area of restorative practices, but integral to that work, is culture. The important question that we investigate is how do principals build a culture that supports and accommodates the needs of all stakeholders.  Hello, Adam, thank you for joining me in talking out of school. Tell us about yourself, your background, and what actually led you to where you are today.

Adam  01:26

I began a really long time ago. You know, I I'm probably... a lot of people sometimes think that I sort of must have had a really early calling to education and to teaching and I didn't, I basically enrolled in a teaching degree because the university down the road offered it, I didn't need to move out of home, I could walk down there and it was all going to be pretty casual. And it was probably not until I took my first teaching job, which was in the Northern Territory and a remote Aboriginal community. I'm six foot four, and a pretty ample bloke, but I walked in as the preschool and prep teacher and had had an incredible year. And that's when the education bug bit me. I came back to Victoria got myself involved in teaching in a variety of different settings. secondary primary special. And before I knew I found myself back in the NT in school leadership, and did my two principalships in the in the NT as well in Darwin, and, and it was up there about 10 years ago, we founded Real Schools, and that's all about trying to take all of the lessons learned across that journey around successful school culture, leadership, school transformation, around trying to help teachers and leaders be at their very best in the stuff that matters most to them. And we built a really a really fantastic company out of that, that I'm incredibly proud of today.

Loretta  02:53

Good for you. It's interesting that you mentioned that you you help schools focus on those things that matter most. What does matter most?

Adam  03:06

I actually think it's funny because there's an overlap here between what staff what students and sorry, what's our teachers and school leaders think is important, but also what parents think is important. And there's been a lot that's changed in schools over the last, say, 30 to 50 years. But one thing hasn't, and that is that parents still send their kids to school, for two key reasons. One is that they want them to get a really great education, they want them to be great learners. And they also are hoping that we'll work with them to turn them into fabulous citizens. And I think that's also when you ask a teacher or school leader, why they why do they do this? What's your deep purpose for this? It'll be about building great learners and kids who get off on a fabulous trajectory in life. So there's overlap there, between what our parents want from the school and what we want to do in the school, we just need to actually get really explicit and clear about how we work on that overlap, how we prioritize it, and how we let some of the other things that we kind of have tricked ourselves into thinking are important. get done with the least possible effort and time.

Loretta  04:11

Yeah, I think talk to any principal, and they'll tell you that there is this huge workload, and it's just work, work work. And a lot of it is busy work because there is enormous amounts of accountability, there's occ health and safety, you have to manage your finances. So it's really about watching your back constantly. And then, on the other hand, you know, you want to develop a school culture, you want to develop curriculum and, you know, really, really high levels of efficacy amongst your staff, and principals are worn out. So where do they start?

Adam  04:54

Yeah, I think that the starting point for me is about identifying your scope, identifying what it is that you want to improve. Stanford University did a really interesting study a few years back where they effectively looked at a handful of Western countries, and they kind of stoppedwatched principals. And they said, let's find out what they're spending their time on. And there were very a couple of alarming things that came out of it. One is that they're spending 1/64 of their time talking to teachers, about students, which represents a very small percentage of what they're spending on the load. And I get that there's a lot of compliance around that. But we have conversations with principals about what's your scope, what are some of the habits that could be installed in your work, if we were able to kind of think a little differently, if we were able to kind of speak a little differently, if we were able to take some of the things that are costing us an inordinate amount of time and do them more quickly? What could you find room for that would increase the amount of time that you're actually working on purpose, working on helping teachers generate awesome learners, and helping to create a culture where young people are kinda where the odds are tilted in the favor of them becoming really successful citizens? And what we find when we have those conversations with principals is there is scope. We can't remove all of the administrative compliances that they have. But there's opportunity for us to move the needle, if we're prepared to say, Okay, I'll embrace that opportunity.

Loretta  06:25

Okay, I'm a principal and I reach out to you, Adam, help me. What's the first thing you're going to talk to me about?

Adam  06:34

The first thing we're going to talk to you about is your school. So one of the things that we think has been very counterproductive to schools, improving their culture, has been what I call sort of just hypothetical constructs that someone in an education department or in a department of a department or someone in a university Think Tank, or even in a business like mine, has come up with a hypothetical, which is that if we build their schools will buy it and use it. And that makes an assumption that all schools have incredibly similar needs, and they don't. So they have different, they have different aspirations. And so what we do first is find out where the greatest opposite where that what the greatest needs are, what the hopes and aspirations of the school are. And also, what's the the area that they want to have as a starting point, we speak chiefly to perhaps getting the school leadership aligned in how what is the culture that we're looking for? And how are we contributing to that, as leaders, sometimes we get a lot of schools come to us because the conduct of their students or the behavior of their students has become a challenge. And what we need to do is to build the capacity of their staff to be successful, their staff is successful. And as I mentioned before, that the odds tilting happens, where we just tilt, the odds in the favor of your being more successful more often, I think that's something that we don't talk about enough in education is the role of luck. You know, we just, you can't guarantee you can be brilliant, and the kids can still record on you. So what we do is talk about how can we forget that we don't, we're not, we're not worried about outcomes, because the flip of that, of course, is you can be pretty ordinary sometimes and get away with it. So we just say what a great practices what a great language was great architecture look like in the classroom that tilts the odds in favor of being successful, don't worry about the outcome. And then the third thing that a lot of schools come to us wanting to know is what's that cultural approach that we could adopt. And we say that, we say that a culture is a collective noun, for behavior. And the behaviors are contributed by your three key stakeholder groups, your staff, your students, and your parenting care community. And successful schools identify that there are behaviors that we encourage we love that do that more often. That's an ex school behavior. And there are behaviors in your culture that you tolerate, that you rather didn't exist in your culture, the game is not to reduce the tolerated behaviors down to nothing. They're several hundred young people in your schools whose brains aren't finished, you're in trouble.

Loretta  09:06

That's beautiful way of putting it.

Adam  09:08

The game is to have a repeatable, well understood explicit methodology for moving behaviors from the tolerate pile to the encouraged pile. And if everyone can be clear on that methodology, then we really can reduce a lot of stress and improve a lot of effect in a school. And our approach to restorative practices that we call out a 2.0 is commonly adopted by our partner schools, and they get some awesome results out of it.

Loretta  09:35

How do you get though that common understanding or the agreement on what practices we want to encourage and what we want to discourage? How do you do that?

Adam  09:46

Yeah, so the first thing that we talk about is language. So we talked about in the school that particularly when you're trying to impact culture, then this is something that goes to some of the research around culture not only around school culture, but around any culture, whether it's a community culture or family culture, or national culture or tribal culture, the most significant driver of that culture is the language that's used. So we've kind of fallen in schools for trying to improve culture by building a behavior matrix or a set of rules. But the truth is, you can't change culture unless you change language. And we there's a fundamental building block of that speak to what we call Effective Language, which is not effective, but effective, which means use the language of feeling. So it's a really simple point. We say for instance, if you see a student that drops a piece of rubbish in the school, my old default is the same as most people's which is, Hey, pick that up. In a restorative model, what we do is we say, it disappoints me to see you do that. SWhy don't yoy whack it in the bin? And the word that most people hear most loudly in that sentence is disappointed, because it enacts both your neocortex, which is your language center and your limbic system, which is your emotional center in your brain, deep learning happens. One benefit we get is that we slightly tilt the odds in the favor of that kid picking up the rubbish, to we provide that kid with knowledge with information that they are better equipped to be able to navigate that social system, whether it's a playground or a classroom, again, in the future, it seems so ridiculously small. But there are in a school game millions of opportunities for us to be able to first be able to use that language. And that's how we build empathic young people not because empathy is lovely, and feels nice, it's because it teaches young people how they can successfully navigate a social system. So we start with language, we talk about conduct, which is about how we approach conflict and wrongdoing. And we talk about classroom architecture, how do we do the teaching and learning? How do we actually impact the architecture of our classrooms. And then we talk a little bit about mindset as well, some of the things that we tricked ourselves to believe are true about schools that aren't serving us competitive systems versus collaborative systems. We talk about how that's a problem. We talked about how, when I mentioned before luck. And now we have set over the outcome, which means if some lesson doesn't go well, when we're blaming ourselves, Well, maybe you just got unlucky that day. So reflect on process rather than outcome is some of the things that we encourage teachers to do. And so they're the kinds of conversations we would have,

Loretta  12:17

I wanted to look at our schools, full of teachers who, for various reasons, have, you know, a multitude of different capacities and aspirations and efficacy and so on. How do you look, I think working on kids is almost, you know, a lot easier than working with some staff. So how do you get staff on board? So I walk into a school. I'm a brand new principal, I've got 50 staff. How do I get them on board and get the same or get that consistent language happening?

Adam  12:57

Two bits that I think that if we address we can create that environment. Number one is that we have to create an environment for people that where it's safe to admit that there are practices we're deploying that aren't working for us. So for instance, in our training, and we, we get a lot of schools ring up, say can you do a PD day for us? And the answer's no, we only work in partnership with schools. And that's how they get their professional learning, which means we get to kind of because we work with schools for three years, we get to take our time. And the first part is about creating an environment where it's okay to say that there is some stuff I've done that's not up to scratch. And that means that in our training, we share, we share an enormous amount of stories about times that we've screwed up just times that we've gotten it wrong, and that we need to make it safe for people to kind of get it wrong. Learn from it. And then believe that learning from it, once you've learned it from it, it's just a funny story. There's no shame attached to getting it wrong as a teacher. So that's really important is to create an environment where people can actually say, alright, you know, some of what I've been doing, it's my life's not easy in the classroom at the moment, I'd like a better way. All right, cool. The second thing we need to do is to create an environment where people genuinely reflect. And my suggestion is that most teachers that don't meet reflect poorly. So we reflect for judgment. So if we even like the end of the day, so how did I teach will either decide we were good or bad, and then we drive off and nothing changes. So the point of reflection is not judgment. The point of reflection is adjustment. What's one thing you're gonna do? So we teach teachers a really simple frame that they can use to reflect you got to have a mirror if you're going to reflect, which is really an old truism about great teachers and that is that the best teachers we all remember a firm and fair we talk about what does it look like to get that balance right? And can we say we're gonna get in the car at the end of the day? And if I'm going to reflect on the teaching, where was I? Was I over firm, lay over fair? So I under perhaps in one of those, what would I do? tomorrow to improve my practice. And if we can make that tiny adjustment, we kind of get to thank and congratulate ourselves. And we just get better and better and better. So for teachers whose capacity is low, maybe they're new to profession. It's not about being as good as somebody who's been doing it for 30 years. It's just about constant, relentless micro changes, that they can feel good about. If you can create that environment, people grow, and teachers grow, if we can, if we can help them to kind of lose that. That obsession with their old practice must be right, and we have to defend it. And if we can help people to learn how to reflect and make changes, we will get better.

Loretta  15:38

I think it's interesting. You mentioned earlier about professional development that you won't do one off professional development days. And look, I understand your rationale for for not wanting to do that. But fundamentally, what is your belief around how people learn?

Adam  16:02

So I think that people learn when they're engaged. And I think that there are enormous books written on engagement of both student and adult learners. I don't definition of engagements rather shorter. And that is that engagement is a young person, in terms of students, but in any person really, who is listening, speaking, thinking or doing. Now, I don't think that most professional learning provokes all four of those activities. So we in our right, we run our professional learning as part of a partnership. But the other parts of that partnership are things like we work in classrooms with teachers, because you can't eliminate the doing part. And that pays respect to them trying to implement new practices in a genuine context. We work with the leaders of the school to build an implementation plan, so that they're fully supported with all the resources they need for people to keep revisiting this, we work with the parents and run and parent engagement sessions, so that they're not kind of going well, this isn't what I grew up with, I've got a problem with that I expect something different, we make sure that they're clear that this is how we do the great teacher and learn Teaching and Learning bit. And this is how we do that citizen building bit you expect of us, let's not argue about the other stuff. This is the stuff we need to get on the on the same page with so we create the conditions where people can be more successful in that regard around the stuff like I mentioned, that's really important too. And we get some fabulous results and some anecdotal stuff of teachers who've stayed in the in the profession because of the work that we've done with them. And I don't think you can get those results from just running a PD day that people enjoy. Yeah, I think most principals can remember a time that they've run a PD day that everybody loved. But five weeks later, Nothing's different in their school.

Loretta  17:48

Well, not even five weeks, five minutes later, you know, people walk out the door. You know, the whole point about that is that it's got to impact on your teaching, there's got to be changed some some good change. So I think probably every principal in the state would agree with you about the effect. 

Adam  18:07

I think we have to take, we have to take a bent for for implementation, rather than applause. So that's important

Loretta  18:18

In terms of perhaps less experienced principals who are just learning about the job, and just trying to try to get comfortable and get through each day, and be a good principal. What sort of things should they be concentrating on?

Adam  18:38

Yeah, it's a tricky one. I'm actually writing about that at the moment. But yeah, that feeling that you get when, even when you first become a principal, I the only other time I can equate it to is becoming a parent. And in that, I think that, you know, I remember that when the both the first two times that my kids were put in my arms, it was like, wow, like, they gave me a human. I'm unqualified, I'm unready for this. And the only other time I can remember feeling that way was in my first principalship. And walking and going, Wow, they gave me a school.

Loretta  19:16

Don't regret it.

Adam  19:17

Yeah, you do this fear, the genuine fear and apprehension attached to that. And I think what we do when we're nervous is we look for a plan. Yeah, I think that my mother and pointing out that the most common trigger of anxiety and people is the absence of a plan. We all, for instance, teach poorly, I'm sorry, sleep poorly, if we're not ready for the next day of work if we're not planned. So we look for a plan from other people and we'll look at other schools and what they're doing and other principals and what they're doing. And I think what we have to find the bravery to do is to empower new principals to not just look to replicate what other people have been doing for 1020 years, but to say, have a mind where they go But what is it that I've been entrusted to lead? What are the special skills and most principals find themselves in the position basically, because they're amazing teachers. And so that's the stuff that that I need to now impart to other people. So how can I not be in professional conversations about students with my teachers only 1/64 of the time, because that's why I was putting, you know, how can I bring that to the forefront? And I think for me, those three pieces that I spoke about before about language, it first of all to know is a principle is that you're a leader of language, the way people speak drives your culture, of conduct. I'm a leader of the way people treat each other in the school. And then mindset, I'm a leader of the way people think, when they're in this current context, I think if we can say that they're the three biggest indicators of success for a new principal, and then we need to provide them permission and freedom to work on those things.

Loretta  21:00

Okay, what's your experience with parents?

Adam  21:04

We've all loved what we do. And it's fascinating that, you know, we do a lot of telling to parents, but if we actually ask, and I mentioned before, those that there's overlap between what parents want and what we want to do, in schools, it's there's a really big overlap to work on, we actually when we run our parent engagement sessions, there's a slide that we bring up on the screen that has just number one, and number two, and there's no other text, and we just say there are so so many things that parents could hold a school accountable to. But if you're only allowed to, what would they be, and every single parent group that we work with comes back with, we want the school to be really good at education, and we want the school to be held to help us build decent kids, you know, the citizen building piece. And so if schools can communicate incredibly heavily about those two things, they position themselves for parents, as experts in those two things, and the truth about expertise and when education, we don't talk about our expert expertise anywhere near enough, our teachers and our school leaders are amazing. And nobody knows. And partly, it's because we don't communicate it. We write newsletters about kids that one student of the week and some excursion that happened. But we don't write newsletters about how NAPLAN results in year five went up by 20%. Here's how we did it. Bullying reports in our school have dropped by 30%. Here's how we did it. So we need to communicate our expertise more regularly, if we want to be trusted. And if we can gear that around, we're going to be experts at teaching and learning and citizen building, then parents come on board. And so it's exciting to be able to resource schools to do that.

Loretta  22:54

You know, it's unfortunate, just listen, listening to a few teachers at different schools, where they're actually quite fearful of parents, because they've had a few bad experiences. And now, when a parent approaches the first thing, first thing they think about is Oh, my god, is this parent here to complain about something? It's such a shame, because if you can relax and just take them for, for what they are and who they are, you realize that most times they don't want to complain, they just want to say hi, and how has little Johnny gone today.

Adam  23:30

It's fascinating when I was actually talking to in one of our partner schools, a new profession teacher, she's been teaching just for a couple of years. So she started basically as the pandemic began. And what she found was that there was a lot this is a phenomena that happens a fair bit in schools these days is that parents kind of can be more aggressive towards neophyte new profession, graduate teachers. And so she had a bit of that, but then she found that it got better when remote learning happened, because parents got to see what she was doing more regularly when she's actually with the kids. But then it all the old habits came back when the students went back. And so we talked about what is it that they, you know, how do we address that? How do we get how do we get her expertise in front of these parents again, now that they know that they just sort of pushing the kids through the school and leaving, and only hearing stories from what the kids tell them when they get home. So she now spends one minute a week. So it's a really low investment, with a high return on as the students leave on a Friday, she picks up her phone and records a video of herself as the students file out behind her. And she's the agreement is no longer than 60 seconds, but she spends 30 seconds talking about what they did in terms of teaching and learning that week, and 30 seconds what they did in terms of building great citizens. So she'll talk a little bit about multiplying fractions. And she'll talk a little bit about kindness being the focus of the week, and she'll point out Matthew, You were really fabulous at that. Can you You should have a chat with your parents that you'll encourage the parents to talk to them about what the kids were learning and how they were growing during the week, which is fantastic. I hope you have a great weekend parents, it turns a video off the kit that she sends that to the parents of her class. They get it before the kids are even in the car, or before they walk through the front door. And their parent, her parents understand that. They get to see her expertise every week for only 60 seconds. Her estimate to me, is that parental complaints since she started the videos have dropped by about 70 or 80%.

Loretta  25:32

What a fantastic idea.

Adam  25:35

I'll take them for one minute a week. Yep,

Loretta  25:39

Absolutely. It's, it's a bit like getting the kids to pack up two minutes earlier, at the end of each day. Just bring them together. Okay, they've got their bags on their backs, and they're ready to shoot out the door. But just to say, what's one good thing that happened today? What's one thing that I learned, rather than focusing on the negative because then when they jump in the car, mum, guess what? Johnny threw the chair at Miss so and so today. So it's changing the perception from the negative to the positive. So what a good thing. That is fabulous. You know, those sorts of stories are absolutely gold. And they're the sort of stories that we need to be sharing.

Adam  26:27

We do. And I think that because when I speak to you, when I speak to a roomful of teachers, I often say, Does anyone here think that we have spent a lot of time in schools over the last 20 years doing really big projects that change things just a little bit? And everyone says, Yeah, we do, as well, what if we just flipped that? What if we said, From now on, we just do little things that have the potential to have a really big impact. And it's a completely different bribe to invite people into, but it's where people get reward for effort. Let's, let's do that.

Loretta  27:00

And I guess every time you go into a school and talk to teachers and talk to principals and kids, you learn something new as well. Would I be right?

Adam  27:09

We do. Yeah, we have three kind of identity pieces we've done a lot of work on because if you want to work with the school for three years, you have to think about how do we show up. So we have three L's where we're leaders, we take the work really seriously with each of our schools, and we want to be there when it's hard. And we want to be there when they're celebrating. We're learners in that we think every single school, we work with dozens and dozens now all around Australia, we think all of them will teach us something, and they do. And then the third L is that will offers. So we we want to take the work seriously. But we want to do it with a ridiculous grin on our face, and invite some of them the joy and the comedy back into education.

Loretta  27:53

Hasn't that been lacking.

Adam  27:55

Yeah, I think we could all I think we could do with more smiles in schools.

Loretta  28:00

So what does the future hold for Adam Voigt, and Real Schools? Any big projects?

Adam  28:09

Yeah, we're really ambitious. We have as our what what are we up to is we're trying to get school culture to the top of every school, your school input into the top of that schools improvement agenda, and we want it actually at the top of Australia's school improvement agenda. To do that, we need to work with more and more schools and create more and more great stories and more and more great evidence that this is something that people really value. And we're growing incredibly quickly at the moment. So that's given me plenty to do, which is good fun. So that's what keeping Adam void busy. But one of the things that we're really mindful of is not trying to sort of spread ourselves too thin. We know what we can help schools with, and it's this school culture partnership approach. And that's what we're, that's what we're looking to scale. We, anybody who's an expert facilitator of those partnerships at real schools is always a form of principle. So you'll have someone that schools can know that they'll have someone who has been a successful teacher, but has led and implemented this from that big scary chair where you feel like you've been handed a newborn. And our schools really value having a confidant like that. And we were hell bent that over the next decade, we're going to help as many Australian schools as we possibly can.

Loretta  29:25

Well, I must say, I encourage everyone who's listening today to jump onto your website, Real Schools, because I absolutely loved reading your blog and all the stories in there. So that would certainly keep people well entertained for a number of hours. So I highly recommend reading your blog. So Adam, I've just got to say thank you very much. Your insights are phenomenal and look, I just love that philosophy. And one thing that stands out that you know your stuff, and you're really passionate about it, but I just love this and notion that you're not in the, or you're not in this for the money that, you know, you won't do one off PDs, the idea is that you want to work with schools to build that trust, to build that relationship, because then you'll know that, you know, there's that partnership will enable you to learn more, and for the schools to learn more as well. So I think that's a real credit to you. But I love watching you on the Project. I think you're, I just love your matter of fact, your sensible approach, and sometimes I think they're looking for, you know, an edge but you give them a down to earth, not just down to earth, but you give them such a practical perspective. And it's almost like saying, pull your head in. It's going to be okay, don't stress and I just I love that. So, thanks very much, Adam. I wish you all the best. Thanks for your time. And thanks for your insights.

Adam  31:01

No worries, Loretta. Thanks. Sorry, I don't think my head's gonna get out of the office now but thank you invited me along.

Loretta  31:10

Thanks for listening to this latest episode of talking out of school, where we cover topics and dilemmas associated with the ups and downs and even the downright curious of the school leaders job. Want to know more? Then visit me at shaping leaders.com.au But for now, here's to staying ahead of the game.