Episode 226: Building trust and creating a culture of improvement — The impact of Professional Learning Communities

Adam Gifford

Time for another School of School podcast. Robin, how are you this morning? Well, it's my morning anyway. No, it's not, it's my afternoon. It's 4.30, flipping heck. I don't know what's happened today. It's your morning. I'm stealing your morning. How are you?

Robin Potter

It's my morning. Stop stealing my morning from me. I'm well. Thanks, Adam.

Adam Gifford

Well, that's excellent. Two people who it's definitely not morning for, Neil and Rosie from St. Bridget's on the World. What a pleasure to have you here for an episode of the School to School podcast. For those of you who have not, those people out there that haven't met you, would you mind just sort of giving us a bit of an introduction about you, perhaps a little bit about St. Bridget's, and then I've got a couple of questions that I know, having spoken to you previously, that I'd really like to ask you. But in the first instance, if you wouldn't mind just letting the listeners know.

Who you are?

Neil And Rosie

Hi, my name is Nila Ferv. I'm the head teacher of some Bridgets and have been head teacher for the last 15 years. I previously have worked in London in a London schools and really enjoyed that. But I've moved up with my family to Northwest and enjoy currently living in the world and being head teacher of some Bridgets. Hi, and I.

Rosie Ross, I'm Math Subject Lead and Assistant Head at St. Bridget's. I've been here for about six years, always taught across the North West, definitely my happy place in St. Bridget's now.

Robin Potter

Ha ha ha!

Adam Gifford

I like that. like that. Listen, something that we do know is that you've got a long history with Masno Problems, that you have been very orchestrated in how you have set it up to the benefit of yourselves personally, I'm sure, that your staff, your children, your community. And one of the things just picking up on that word community that I know you've spoken about briefly previously and I know is a real positive aspect of St Bridges.

is professional learning communities. And I know that it's something that you've really focused on in terms of developing. But I just wondered maybe to start with telling us sort of what is a professional community and at the very least, what does that look like in some bridges? And then possibly just talking is how did you get to a point where you felt that it was having an impact on teaching and learning in the school?

Neil And Rosie

Yeah, and I think it was really from sort of thinking a little bit about sort of Rose and Shine's principles and you know what effective teaching learning is and prior to sort of having sort of like sort of conversation with Rosie about how do we build a professional learning community, we didn't even know what that name meant to us.

Previously we'd monitor through, I would go into a lesson, I would sit there for about an hour and the teacher would roll out one of their special lessons, saved, blow it off from the sideboard, get the special resources that aren't to be touched for a whole year because Mr. Lefebvre's coming in and he needs to see one of their jazz hands lessons.

Adam Gifford

Well, what do you

Yeah.

Neil And Rosie

And I was just like, yeah, that's not really. And it provided a lot of stress. And I wasn't giving like that. I could give some feedback, but actually it wasn't very useful. And then we started talking about, know, well, if what happens if, you know, one of your colleagues went in, is that less friendly? Because I don't want teachers fainting. I don't want jazz hands. I just want really good teaching. And that's what we were sort of like thinking about. And Rosa and I, we came across

sort of some different articles and some different people. And there was this one head teacher said, I don't really do observations anymore. And we were like, okay, well, how's that work then? Because that sounds like a good idea. Because quite frankly, my staff don't like lesson observations. And to be honest, they're not much use to me either. I want something that's useful. So we then sort of started talking about what that meant. And really, at its essence, it means

How do we talk about maths in meaningful ways? So how do we talk about maths in the staff room and in formal situations? How do we formalize it in our own?

staff meetings after school. What other things do we need to add to that triangulation to understand what good maths teaching is like? Part of that strategy was introducing other colleagues. We're fortunate we're in a two-form entry school. We were able to go, okay, the teacher in the other class can come and observe that. But prior to that, Rosie would go in.

And it was like, well, if we're asking you to do this, let's see if we can demonstrate this. So Rosie would go in and she would do some aspects of demonstration. The class teacher would join in. There'd be some interplay and conversation in the lesson. I think we'll go this way. We'll do this. And so actually then it became a really useful and tangible in the moment thing. You when we're talking about how do we help children, particularly in reception, we're talking about intervening in the moment.

Neil And Rosie

Well, as adults, we need that too. It's really helpful to have a coach. I do a lot of telescope teaching and I don't wait after the lesson. I do it in the moment. I'm saying, right, this is how you need this. And so that's how we thought the professional learning community should start. So Rosie demonstrated some of that, class teachers bought into that. And then we had staff who would then go and collaborate. We give them time.

to plan a lesson together, unpick, find the bare pits, sorry, where the problems are of the lesson, unpick those for the class, work out how that was different in one class compared to the other because even though we think we've got two relatively mixed and same classes, it's always fractionally different. And they would have that type of conversation. They deliver the same lesson twice. And we found that

The learning that came from that was tremendous. I as a teacher, you if you ever teach the same lesson, try and teach the same lesson twice, it always ends up slightly different and you always learn something, always learn something new. And we felt that is the way that we would try and sort of develop our own learning community. On top of that, we had moments where to keep that conversation going, we'd say, OK, in our briefing for 10 minutes.

Can you bring some workbooks for children who working at high levels? Let's see what journaling looks like there. So again, what we then were doing was building, we're taking down any barriers or worries of I'm going to be judged. No, this is not, we're all good teachers, but we're trying to improve. And that professional learning community was for us about generating a culture of improvement without.

having that worry that maybe something is going slightly wrong because we're also hoping that it would be, know, Rosie would be spoken to, I would be spoken to. When we first started, we found some of these lessons, you know, would take us down a half because children were finding it difficult with resources and things like that. So slowly that got refined, but we spoke about it. So it wasn't hidden. Neil, I need more time. I'm not quite up to this. And that conversation.

Neil And Rosie

was really helpful in building our learning culture and our professional learning community too.

whether you want.

Adam Gifford

I'd love you too, Rosie. I'd love you too. Jump in.

Neil And Rosie

I for us it was taking that DeFore model, know the Richard DeFore model really that we looked at and I think it was about, I mean those three words are so important aren't they, so professional from the point of view we look at each other, you're a professional.

I'm a professional and I respect your professionalism. I'm not here to judge you. I'm here to work alongside you as a respected professional. Let's work on this together. The learning side of it, well actually we're all learning. I've been teaching nearly 30 years, but my goodness, I learned so much from my colleagues still and there's so much more to learn. And I think that's really exciting. It's not just about building up your younger colleagues who obviously, you you're new ones, you want to build into the profession, but actually.

We want people still, you know, 30 years in the classroom, enjoying the job, being excited by it and seeing new opportunities. So think that's really important. And the community aspect, you know, we're building those relationships, those professional relationships between each other so that, you know, at that moment...

Robin Potter

Yeah.

Neil And Rosie

when we're in the classroom working together, it's not, you know, you're the math subject lead or you're the this or you're the ECT. No, we learn this together and we're looking at this maths lesson together. We're picking it together and we're learning together. How can we best, best provide this opportunity for the children? And it's really exciting. You know, having a culture in your school where that's allowed to happen is so, because that doesn't happen, you know, just overnight. It's thinking about how do we build that?

that culture, you know, how do we find the time for it? We've had to be really inventive. Sometimes we've had to have Neil in the hall doing epically long assemblies so we can carve some time, you know, to work with each other because, you know, there is a cost implication otherwise. There is time implication. So you have to be a little bit clever with how you do it. But I'd say we're at a place now as a school.

Adam Gifford

Yeah, of course.

Neil And Rosie

where we've got, you know, we have our doors open when we're teaching. We don't worry about people coming in and out of our lessons because, you know, we're enjoying it. It's exciting talking about our teaching. And the lovely thing is it's moved into other areas of the curriculum now. So coaching isn't just a maths thing anymore. You know, we're talking about all aspects of learning. Would we have done that if we hadn't been on this maths no problem journey? I don't think so. I think that was the key thing for us.

Robin Potter

Mm-hmm.

Robin Potter

Mmm.

And we've heard that from other people on the podcast, other leaders in schools who say that, that it's it's spilled over into all different aspects of their community, their community's culture. And I think that's such a wonderful thing to hear that your math journey has turned into your blank journey, you know? So that's a positive. And I was also thinking about when you're talking about this, how important the culture

is amongst the teachers and amongst the school, then we're also talking about the children. And so over this 10-year journey...

Just like there are light bulb moments, I think, for teachers, there probably, you must see this in the classrooms where there are these light bulb moments for the children. And I just wondered if you can think of anything, any particular moment where you went, okay, this is working. This is so, you know, this is, children are getting it.

Neil And Rosie

Thank

Neil And Rosie

I think I witnessed one when Rosie was teaching some of our year six and she was working with a group that found some of the learning difficult. Classically, I was sat there and I could see what she was trying to get at. Old school would have been teacher jumps in and gives the answer, but Rosie resisted.

and resisted and slowly you could see it dawn upon the children's face that you kept on prompting, asking questions. Look at your journal, what do you think? And I was literally biting my hand going, it's there. And then suddenly this child just jumped up and clicked. And I think it's having the confidence to wait it out and to know that the children will get there. And that's part of the culture as well.

Robin Potter

You

Ha!

Neil And Rosie

actually, know, head teachers just walked in and was observing something just by accident more than anything. But having that confidence to go, no, I'm not giving this straight answer. This child has to reach this for themselves. This is how we build independent learners. This is how we build resilience. And it was it was just a beautiful moment because I was literally wanting to answer the question. But Rosie wouldn't let me and gave me the daggers and said, don't

Robin Potter

Heh.

Neil And Rosie

don't you dare intervene in this moment. So yeah that was a good bit for me. Yeah I think it is. I think it's when it's those moments for children I think it's the laughter that we now have because it's not it's not a problem making a mistake but I think we have a lot of laughter in our maths lessons sometimes because what I find that there's quite a few moments now where children will start telling you something and then they get thinking out like no

is that but then I thought that but then but they'll tell me their mistakes now and I think that for me has been lovely because who in the past would ever put their hands up and say well I thought it was this but then I realized I've done this wrong gosh that never happened but that happens now and that's beautiful you know because that's part of maths isn't it you know trial and things going wrong and then sort of re relocating yourself on the journey

Robin Potter

Hmm.

Adam Gifford

think one of the things, just going back to the professional learning community that I find amazing in schools, people from the outside that maybe know schools from their children or relatives are just going to school, maybe don't realize that it's actually easy to get quite isolated. Like when we teach, you can close the door and there's this sort of assumption that just by turning up each day, and if you repeat that for 10 years, you'll just immediately be an expert teacher sort of at the end of 10 years or any given number of years.

And sometimes you can go for a very long time, but you've never ever seen anyone else teach. Like the last time you see someone teach was when you were a student and you were sort of sitting in on the lessons of the person that you were assigned to at that point. So one of the things to make it work, and what my question is, is I think that you've got to have trust, right? They've really got to trust you.

It's that sort of set up, isn't it? We want you, we're going to take away the lesson observations, the high accountability. like you're saying, I'm sure we're all aware of that lesson that's a bit like a busker. You bring out your number one banger and you're all right. How did you develop the trust so people realized actually to break that point, I think it was that point of developing the trust and then realizing how powerful it is?

when you can talk to your mates and see them teach and go, well, I'm now learning a phenomenal amount about my profession that perhaps after we closed the door, we didn't get that. what did you sort of, did you have very clear ideas about how you develop that?

Neil And Rosie

Not a clue, not a clue. I just knew that there had to be a better way.

Adam Gifford

Ha ha, brilliant.

Neil And Rosie

I didn't need teachers feeling that the job is hard enough and I didn't need teachers feeling that insane pressure to produce something which wasn't run of the mill. wanted teachers to be the turn up and move children on and move learning on in a way that was productive rather than, know, actually, you know, I'm going to close the door. There's that classic example. Yeah, I've been teaching for 10 years. No, you've done one year

ten times and that's what we were trying to avoid. We're trying to make sure that staff are thoughtful and supported about developing their own teaching. And don't get me wrong, I would say within the first year, I reckon we probably had about 60 % of our staff that really were moving towards a mastery approach and then gradually over time, more and more people bought into it and got more used to it and more familiar with it.

and that was because we were relentless in how we wanted this to be. We had these conversations and slowly you start picking stuff up. So however you learn, you either, you you hear it and you you take it on board straight away or you're a bit reticent and say, well, I'm going to do a little bit of my way and I'll take on a bit of this. And then slowly, because we just didn't relent, everyone started coming on board and going, yes, actually I get this now.

is now part of my routine, this is how I want it to be and I think making that decision and keeping on going back to it, no I'm not coming to your class to do a high stakes observation.

and meaning it and sort of going into classes and saying well you know how can I help what's what's going on here tell me about this. Suddenly staff will go actually he actually meant it he's not coming in I've got no I've got no note board here I'm not coming in to give you a massive evaluation I'm just really interested in what the learning is about tell me about this because actually you've been studying this more than me and I think that takes time

Neil And Rosie

regardless of how kind and nice you are, until people actually see it and it's actioned and it's actioned once and twice, then people go, okay, actually, he secretly does mean this. He's not just mad and pretending, he really wants this to happen.

Robin Potter

Ha ha.

Neil And Rosie

think as a subject lead as well and you're building that trust, I think start with yourself. Be really clear, make sure that you know what it is that you're wanting to say. Start with yourself, make sure you've really got that clear idea of what this might look like. So for me, was, you're doing all of the training because that was essential and talking with other leads and things like that. But then start with yourself, open up your classroom first and let people see you do it. Go into their classrooms as a subject.

lead and teach their children because people sometimes don't believe you as well. They're like, you can do it with your children. Have you tried it with my, you know, year ones? You're like, yeah, well, I'm going to go and try it with your year ones. And also as a subject lead, don't be scared to, you know, have failures yourself. did, you know, I had a TRG because when I do some work for the maths hub, I had a teacher research group and I had to stop the lesson. I was like, okay, we're going to stop this because actually we need to do something else here. And that was really powerful for the

Robin Potter

Yeah.

Robin Potter

Hmm.

Neil And Rosie

easy to use the class teacher because it's like yeah it's okay it's okay to stop this in the middle of something because the learning is not going the way I want to do it so I think my advice for subject leads would be always start with yourself put your money where your mouth is be prepared to go into people's rooms build that professional trust because you're prepared to do it and then people will be happy to work alongside you because you've put yourself out there

Adam Gifford

Yeah, and I think one thing just picking up on it that has cropped up a number of times and we've done another podcast episode and it's happened there as well. Conversations keep coming up and I think in this case it's professional conversations and I think that again, I'm always staggered when I say this out loud, but it's kind of like how many times I go back, I've been teaching a chunk of time like you guys, how many times

that we used to talk about teaching. Like if I bumped into people in the staff room, there was a lot of really good just conversation. What did you get up to on the weekends? You have a nice time, I know you get, know, so-and-so was doing this and all that sort of stuff. But just really digging into the craft, you know, like the professional elements, but likewise for your children.

And I guess if we want to expect our children to be considered and like you saying Rosie, that a child can turn around and say, well, do you know what? I was thinking this, but I was going a bit in the wrong direction. And actually it's this. think that, and it's something else that you said as well, modeling it, like putting your money where your mouth is. So if you want really good, rich dialogue that's professional and focused and it has an intent.

You can't, I don't think you can do it unless everyone buys in and then it's a bit of a goes both ways, I suppose. So I guess maintaining those conversations, I don't know, maybe it becomes part of your culture. I don't know, I'll throw it back to you, you know, like that is something that's hugely powerful. But maintaining, was something that you said in another podcast, maintaining the conversation. And I wonder how often you have to attend to it what you have to do to nurture that.

Neil And Rosie

Yeah.

Neil And Rosie

And I think there's different points in the year. You sort of create systems yourself. when we've done sort of maths insights assessments, one of the things Rosie will do is have a look at some of that data, try and understand it, and then have conversations with staff about where does this sit with your understanding where the class is. So systems like that, it's actually revisiting journaling after, it's no point talking about journaling.

Three or four weeks into term, but generally about sort of eight weeks into term We'll start having a look at journaling just to see you know If there's been any sort of really interesting things that come up from journaling and so again that that then gets everyone just sort of thinking about those things we then will have professional development Rosie might say you actually want to talk about a little bit about this and so we'll plan that in so every term at least once or twice There are formal occasions

where we will be thinking about maths in a more serious way and then that's littered in between times with other things that we're discussing, healthy conversations and it was really interesting the other day we had five schools come round to have a look at how we teaching maths as part of our collaboration. I sat down, I'd been chaperoning these teachers all around and trying to get them into year six and then year one, your reception and all those bits and

I'd been busy so I decided I was going to sit in the staff room and have a coffee. Four teachers came in and went, right, how did it go? What did they find interesting? And they were all really interested. They weren't threatened. They were like, did they enjoy that? Was that useful to them? And that was really, really enlightening to me. I was just sitting there having a coffee, leave me alone. I've been working hard. But the staff were like, they were like, you know, what would they find? I said they commented that actually year one vocabulary was phenomenal.

Adam Gifford

Hahaha.

Robin Potter

Ha ha ha.

Neil And Rosie

They were really interested and noted how progression, particularly in journaling, was really good, how year six really were precious about their journaling and how it was really sort of identified their learning. And they were like, that's good. Yeah, that's... And then they all poodle off, but they were really concerned. And it wasn't like, do they think they're any good? They weren't bothered about that. They know we're good. It was about what did they notice? What did they like? And I thought that was most interesting.

Robin Potter

Robin Potter

Yeah.

Neil And Rosie

thing and the other part for me you know it's modeling as a subject leader, it's modeling as a leader, maybe that's what I should have said at the beginning, it's like I meant what I said you know we're not going to do observations and I stuck to that and

When I spoke to staff, said, actually, I've got five heads who really want a rinsed in maths. They want to come and have a look next week. Now, in the past, if I had given staff about like six weeks notice, some of them would still fall off the chairs. I to have worked out maybe when they were going to be ill during that week. But.

Robin Potter

You

Neil And Rosie

You know, I told them the week before and literally it was water off a duck's back. They're like, yeah, that's fine. So, you know, there's always a small appraisal. You know, don't get me wrong. You know, there's a little bit of nervousness and anxious to get stuff right. And you're dealing with children and sometimes things happen. And we did have a couple of things happen on that day for certain. So we didn't necessarily go to that class at that moment because it was a little bit interesting. But.

Adam Gifford

sure. Yeah.

Neil And Rosie

On the whole, we just went around to all the classes and it was just a very fluid, very natural thing. And that was a proud moment for my staff and us because that is us just teaching maths.