The success of the individual is partly dependent on the environment. What can the ICT leader do to maximise the success of each member of the team?
This article looks at 10 actions that can help to ensure the success of each individual of the team, and therefore greatly enhance the prospects of success for the whole team. After all, any team is only as good as its weakest member, ultimately.
Action 1: Create a "staff pack"
The staff pack, which may not be an entirely physical entity at all, consists of the following:
A user id and password for the school network
It is ludicrous to expect a new member of staff to wait any time at all for his or her own user details. They should be on the system from the moment after they have been appointed.
A quick-start guide to using the school's computer systems
This refers to issues like navigating the system, how it is organised and so on. Do different age groups see different screens? What is different between this system and what the teacher has become used to at home or in their previous school? In other words, do not assume that finding their way around the system will be easy for them.
A staff guide to the school's educational technology
What's available in the school? How can the teacher book a computer room? Where can they go to print a document from their laptop? Who do they go to in order to borrow a digital camera, and how much notice do they have to give? How do they get training? How do they get assistance if something goes wrong? How can they get someone to help during a lesson? No doubt you can think of several more questions a new teacher might have, and an established one may need reminding of.
Departmental handbook
What is the procedure if a child breaks the rules? What's the syllabus being taught? Who is responsible for what within the team?
Other relevant documentation
This may include a more detailed scheme of work, examples of students' work at different grades, the relevant portion of the last school inspection report, the school's equal opportunities policy.
Action 2: Be available
"My door is always open."
I have to say that in my experience, the only people who have said that to me are those who are never available in any meaningful sense. To be available, you need to take positive actions, like these:
Action 2a: Set up regular and frequent departmental meetings
See the February 2008 edition of Practical ICT for an article on effective team meetings.
Action 2b: Have set times when you will be available
For example, you could designate Lesson 2 on Tuesday as the one where you will be in your office or classroom, doing marking or paperwork, but available to talk to about non-urgent matters. Well, it could be about urgent matters too, but the point I'm making is that you don't want to be saying to some distraught person who turned up 1 minute late, "See me in a week's time"!
This sort of "drop-in surgery" can be tremendously useful for dealing with issues like clarifying aspects of the scheme of work, discussing a student's progress or even just a friendly general chat. Anything that helps you and your team gel together better is to be welcomed as a good thing.
Clearly, you may need to negotiate with the powers-that-be to have your Tuesday lesson protected so you don't end up covering for absent teachers during that time.
Action 2c: Encourage easy mingling
I've touched on this in Action 2b. An advertising campaign by British Telecom had the tag line, "It's good to talk" -- and it is! Any opportunity to come together casually is good.
Note that I am not talking about going to the pub each lunchtime and visiting each other's houses at weekends. I'm referring to the following sorts of things:
- An informal area set aside for your department's use, although "real estate" in any school is likely to be at a premium, making the possibility of this unlikely.
- A coffee machine and tin of biscuits is a pretty good second best though!
- An atmosphere of mutual trust that means members of the team are happy for others to wander into their lessons.
- An area set aside for storing books and software -- a kind of departmental library.
- Setting formal meeting times such that colleagues have enough time to grab a cup of coffee and talk to each other informally before the meeting starts.
- A departmental lunch every Friday, in the pub perhaps.
- A departmental meal once a term.
Action 3: Share goals and responsibilities
Fine words, but how do you achieve such goals in practice? Try the following:
Action 3a: Know what the expected standards are
Not simply the standards as described in the syllabus or in government edicts, but what they actually look like. How will you all know when a student is a particular grade? Provide opportunities to get this information across to your team. (Suggestions will be given in another article.)
Action 3b: Know where students are in terms of their achievements and standards
Once you know what you're all aiming for, you need to know where your students are in order to work out how much, and what, needs to be done to close the gap, or to maintain progress.I'm referring here to whole groups rather than individual students. In other words, what's the general standard in your subject, or the standard in different groups (whether in terms of teaching groups, gender or other criterion)?
However, it will be necessary to know each student individually too, so you need to find ways of making sure that staff know how to (a) know that and (b) share the information with the student in a way that helps them understand what they need to do in order to improve.
Action 3c: Provide opportunities to discuss pupils' work and grades
You need to decide, as a department, what a grade C or Grade A piece of work looks like. So "moderation" meetings can be quite useful -- indeed, essential -- in coming to a common understanding across the team.
Action 3d: Provide opportunities to lead an activity
For example, why not designate every 4th departmental meeting as a "special", and ask each member of your team to take turns in organising it? I'll be looking at ideas for "special departmental meetings" in another article. Or ask each team member to run a staff training activity.
Action 3e: Provide opportunities to take on more responsibility
You could ask each member of the team to take responsibility for one unit in the scheme of work, for example.
Action 3f: Provide opportunities for professional development
Make sure that the department as a whole is a learning department. This can be partly achieved by making certain there are lots of opportunities for professional development. Suggestions will be given in a separate article.
Conclusion
By creating a team of strong individuals, you create a strong team. The interesting thing I have found is that if you have a strong team member and a weak one, when you help to make the latter stronger, the effectiveness of the team increases exponentially. In other words, a doubling of the number of strong team members seems to more than double the strength of the team. Something to think about.
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