Trusting Your Instincts
By Andy McHugh
How do you begin the new year? Do you roll out new initiatives? Do you just do what you’ve always done? Or is there a third way?
January is a strange time of year for teachers. There’s a renewed sense of vigour, having spent two weeks at home with family and friends. But, when stepping back into the school building there’s often a hesitancy over what to do next. A lot of things will have worked last term. But when things failed to work as you wanted them to, was this a sign that you should revolutionise your approach, or should you just stick to your guns, knowing that it will come good in the end?
My advice to myself, every year, is this: trust your instincts. You already know what you should do. Sometimes we just need to admit it and do what we might otherwise put off. This can be for any number of reasons, but it usually comes down to something that we can sense without even looking at the data. At the end of December, some things might have felt as though they weren’t working as well as they could. So let’s start there.
If a strategy isn’t working because it is unrealistic, then address that. Ploughing on regardless, kicking the can down the road, while wasting your precious, non-renewable time, only causes harm. Having an ideology that underpins your school’s values and its approach to teaching and learning, behaviour management, CPD is a good thing. It brings sense and purpose to all that you do – what Simon Sinek calls the ‘Why’ of the organisation. But the ideology should be informed by the practicality of the idea, not the other way around.
A phrase that often springs to mind, from someone who mentored me early in my career, is “teach the students in front of you, not the ones you wish were in front of you”. It reminds me that we often need to adapt our approach, despite our earlier interpretation of our ideology and be more responsive to individual needs than we would otherwise be, in the name of ‘consistency’.
Sometimes it isn’t the personnel, but the timeframe within which targets are set and demands on time are made. Creating an entirely new set of curriculum materials for a topic is extremely time-consuming. Time needs to be factored in for reflection and editing, to ensure that what was created actually meets the needs of the curriculum intent.
Multiply this by several topics, subjects or year-groups and you will soon find that you need three or four years to do a job that you’ve been assigned one or two years to complete. This isn’t sustainable. Take time to reassess how long you reasonably need, in order to only need to do the job once. Communicate that to those who need to understand that and who can support you, then work to that schedule.
Alternatively, if a strategy isn’t working because you don’t truly believe in it, or care enough about it to prioritise its success, then address that. Why is it that you don’t value it enough? Is it because it isn’t valuable at all? Do you have other, more worthy priorities, competing for your time and effort? Or is it that the value of it isn’t fully understood? These aren’t just questions for Senior Leadership Teams, they’re questions for all staff and can be useful points to explore in coaching conversations.
Lastly, if you think a student needs an intervention, then intervene. This is as true for our youngest students learning to read and count as it is for our oldest ones studying for GCSEs and A Levels. Intervention isn’t just something we do in order to meet an arbitrary data target. We do it to support our students to fulfil their potential so that they can flourish. Interventions that wait until later in the year have a greater evidence base, but this is used too often as the reason for putting it all off. By doing so you undermine the effectiveness of any intervention put in place, as you limit the time you can spend with that student.
Remember, nobody will thank you for putting it off. Intervene early and apply the 80/20 principle – focus first on ways you can make large gains quickly.
Now, over to you. Examine those instincts. What will you focus on this week? This month? This term? Make it specific, base it on something you know you really ought to do and then, if it works, do more of it.
Happy New Year!
You can read more articles by Andy McHugh here.
