Teachers Notebook

Following on from my previous post about the importance of collaboration I came across an interesting quote from time gone by that still rings true ‘Seeing colleagues succeed, or hearing them share their positive experience can raise self-belief’ (Bandura, 1982). Positivity breeds positivity but how do you get the ball rolling and create the spark of positivity?

That spark, once created, needs to be nurtured and encouraged. Following on from my last post, collaboration between experienced teachers in school is key. Collaboration needs a focus that is granular so that those teachers see success. So, starting off small and noticing the small successes was where our spark began.

We have used the ‘Shoutout’ facility on the Steplab platform to highlight where we see success in the classroom. When I first introduced the mechanisms of these shoutouts I made clear that these involve no hierarchy. Any teacher could complete a shoutout for any their member of staff however it must be centred around a teacher and learning strategy that they have seen. As a school we already had a toolkit of T&L principles that we use and are regularly revisited in CPD afterschool sessions and briefings. Once the first shoutouts were completed they were celebrated publicly in briefings. To keep the momentum going after the first term those teachers who completed a shoutout for another member of staff were put into a lottery to win chocolate and what I found is that the small things like things really do count.  Each month the numbers of shoutouts slowly began to increase. There have been 387 shoutouts just this academic year – Set 23 to May 24 which to me is phenomenal. That is 387 moments of recognition for great teaching happening within our school. However there is so much more going on but just for this many to be publicly recognised, it’s brilliant that our staff see it and shoutout about it.

Naturally we get dips, teachers are incredibly busy people and even though it’s a simple system people can easily forget to complete them. Also, I am adamant that I will not QA the comments, I don’t want to dampen any progressive. The comments are genuine snapshots of where great practice has been seen. In the future I plan to discuss with staff what effective positive praise looks like. Does the shoutout highlight the T&L principle that made an impact on pupil outcomes? If so how? But I still want the praise to be genuine and read as how that teacher would speak and never be like a quote from a T&L dictionary.

Whilst there has been initial success, I know I need to keep the momentum going – fanning the fire. Trust in the system is currently there and this must be protected. Thoone et al (2011) found that relationships of trust have a positive effect on teachers practice and that trust isn’t just between senior leaders and teaching staff but there needs to be trust between teaching colleagues too. When staff receive a shoutout from a colleague with no line management connection, that means so much. It really doesn’t take much to bring a smile to someone. I asked recently in a staff briefing ‘How do you feel when you receive a shoutout?’ and replies included ‘Proud’, ‘I feel like I’m doing something right’. This shows how something so small can really have a positive impact on staff morale. A recent study showed that only 25% of teachers strongly agree with the statement ‘In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work’ (Gallup 2023). And whilst there are many studies supporting the use of praise in the classroom, how often do we consider the impact of praise between teaching colleagues?

Yes, we have bought into the platform which has the shoutout facility already set up and ready to use but is there another mechanism for this positively to be created? How do other schools highlight great practice?

This is just my experience of how I’m trying to cultivate the positivity currently. I will be interested to look back at this snapshot of time in the future to see where this all goes. Can we keep up the momentum? Will it evolve into something else? Where could it all go south? Staff feedback will be part of where we go next with this because if things change and it no longer has that positive impact we have to change our course. See you in the future grey-haired Adelle I’m interested to hear what you will have to say.

Interesting reads:

Teachers’ professional collaboration and trust relationships: An inferential social network analysis of teacher teams (Kolleck, Schuster & Grasel, 2021)

How to Improve Teaching Practices: The Role of Teacher Motivation, Organizational Factors, and Leadership Practices (Thoonen et al, 2011)