Working Together – the creation of a learning space
INTERVIEW | Alison
Wood, Assistant Director Educational Programs,
Randwick College, TAFE NSW Sydney Institute
Everyone volunteered because they belonged to it and they were part of it. They knew where it had grown from, they owned it and knew it was theirs.
Happier, more knowledgeable and connected staff do have an impact on their students.There’s no question.
Bringing people together
When I arrived at Sydney Institute to take up my appointment as Assistant
Director Educational Programs in July 2001 there had been a major restructure.
The group I was to manage were tired of new managers, having experienced
five different managers in a short time. As a new and green manager, I was
not particularly welcomed and disharmony and tension were running high for
a whole series of reasons.
One of the first things I discovered was there were so many people who worked in the same building who didn’t know each others’ names! Over the years the teaching sections had become physically dislocated throughout the building. There was not enough communication of any sort – educationally, socially or the sharing of ideas. To facilitate interaction and collaboration, one of the first things I needed to do was to reorganise the offices and bring subject groups and sections physically together.
Working together collaboratively
At the same time a program called VET Managers of
the Future was running. Two Head Teachers attending this program identified
that something needed to be done to improve the lack of communication in
our building and they suggested a project as a way of bringing people together.
This was a fantastic suggestion, and I took it on board and worked with the two Head Teachers on their idea. While Brian MacLauchlan, the SEO and I provided the resources, we got together a small team to work out how we could manage the program so that it could be maintained and made sustainable without a budget. The project was something designed to bring together the people in our building. It wasn’t a top-down thing. The result was that we ran a Working Together learning space for four years.
Using our knowledge and expertise to build a community of practice
With Working Together, we realised two key things:
Firstly, amongst the staff in the building we had a vast array of knowledge and expertise. When I looked at the possibilities there were tons of opportunities for learning from one another. The program was based on volunteerism – a thing Australians do very well.
The second and really critical thing was that we were attempting to build a social and educational community - a community of practice. Community is built from within - where we could choose local expertise over external experts coming in but any experts who did come in, came in as volunteers.
How did we go about it?
We ran the program every fortnight. To ensure the maximum number of staff
would be available to attend the learning space, we asked sections to avoid
scheduling classes on Tuesday afternoons from 1-3pm. People came in their
incidental time and part-timers chose to come if they wanted to – they
weren’t paid but they got free training and a chance to network with
their peers.
We never had a problem finding presenters to fill the fortnightly spots, thanks to teachers willing to share experiences from conferences or projects such as Institute Initiatives, LearnScope and Reframing the Future. At the Senior Staff Meeting we’d brainstorm and organise the program a semester in advance. We also had a suggestions box, not that many people made suggestions but the issue was that they did have a voice and could make suggestions.
We did run with everything that people suggested and we also found that people would make requests. If they missed training they would request a repeat or if we did something at a beginner's level, like using digital cameras to support learning, people would request the follow-up advanced level. One offering (How to use Outlook) was so popular we ran it eight times!
Working together to achieve our aims
Staff were fantastic! Many people volunteered their
time and expertise. People got involved in the program because they wanted
to. They belonged to it and they were part of it: they owned it and knew
it was theirs!
Brian MacLauchlan ran the lion’s share of technical training. We covered policies, like the Suggestions and Complaints Policy and the Student Discipline Policy; the counsellors covered managing challenging behaviour in the classroom; Peta Smith a teacher/consultant for students with psychiatric disabilities covered how to manage students with mental illness and how to manage that issue in the classroom.
On the community of practice side we ran forums to share what people were working on in their Reframing the Future and LearnScope projects. We did have some experts come in – Pam Peelgrane presented on the Schofield Report and Professor Gordon Stanley spoke about the Board of Studies.
Growing our skill base
The organisation of the program was taken care of
by a series of willing Executive Assistants. In fact, two Executive Assistants
subsequently left to pursue careers in Events Management. Our flyers got
better and better as the years passed. We ran evaluations of all the sessions.
In order to make sure that we recorded the effort our staff were putting
in to the sessions, we always kept an attendance list which we passed on
to Organisational Learning & Development.
Positive impact of Working Together on students
Happier, more knowledgeable and connected staff do have an impact on their students. There’s no question. The regular professional development in a range of areas was extremely beneficial for teachers as it provided the opportunity to learn new skills locally. Teachers shared their ideas in a community of practice about ways of making their own classrooms more vibrant, more inclusive and more fun. It was all about up-skilling.
Working Together Outcomes
There was definitely an increase in communications
with one another in the building. Apart from the professional development
opportunities, a lot of networking was taking place because we also organised
social events together every couple of months. We planned attendances at
the Christmas Party and over the four years the numbers went from 17 to 50
to 80 to 130. The same increase occurred for our Melbourne Cup afternoons.
As a result of the Working Together initiatives, there is no doubt in my mind that it was a much more positive place to work, not just at the head teacher level but also at the teaching level. I felt there was more camaraderie, a lot more meetings in corridors, informal coffee chats, sharing of what was going on. People felt more like they belonged to our teaching community. I really loved the chance it gave me to network, learn from and share with my colleagues.
The intangible things are the things that really counted and that’s why the program was set up in the first place. It was about learning together and building community. It was about culture; about really shifting the culture.
Also see
Ardyce leads in leadership! INTERVIEW | eZine November 2006
EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP | Research & Exemplars