Transcript Invitational Leadership

Extended Schools Provision
& Invitational Education
A Symbiotic Relationship
Extended Schools
A greater role in the community
 The government wants all schools to offer
an extended range of services by 2010 that
will benefit the everyone in the school
community, especially the vulnerable.
 Professor Alan Dyson has said,
“This is a wonderful opportunity to rethink
what schools are about and how they work
and how they link in with everything else we
want to happen for children, families and
communities.”
Extended Schools
schools, families,
communities
-working together
 “My vision is to establish a network of
Extended Schools across Northern Ireland
supporting the raising of school standards,
fostering the health, well being and social
inclusion of children and young people and
the regeneration and transformation of local
communities…..”
 Maria Eagle MP Minister for Education
Benefits of an Extended
School for all pupils
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improved learning and achievement
increased motivation and self-esteem
improved access to specialist support
increased positive attitude towards learning
enhanced opportunities to learn new skills
and talents
 improved health and well-being
for school. families and communities.
Good Teaching
 Good teaching is not just a matter of being
efficient, developing competence, mastering
technique and possessing the right kind of
knowledge. Good teaching, also involves
emotional work. It is infused with desire,
pleasure, mission, creativity, challenge and
joy. Good teaching is a profoundly emotional
activity.
 Andy Hargreaves, Changing Teachers, Changing
Times,1995
Reflection
 The challenge in Invitational Education is to
consider how ‘invitational’ we are as
individuals both personally and
professionally.
 We can extend this challenge to consider as
pupils leave our schools, do all leave as
confident learners?
Let me introduce you to
Invitational Education
 It is a theory of practice for communicating
caring and appropriate messages intended
to summon forth the realisation of human
potential as well as identifying and
challenging those forces in schools which
would defeat and destroy potential.
Four Basic Elements
underpin Invitational
Education
 Respect
 Trust
 Optimism
 Intentionality
By centering itself on four basic elements
Invitational Education offers a guiding model
and a language of transformation.
Levels of Intentionality
(in behaviour, language, signs &
places )
Intentionally Disinviting
Unintentionally Disinviting
Unintentionally Inviting
Intentionally Inviting
5 Basic Assumptions
 1. People are able, valuable, and responsible and should
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be treated accordingly.
2. Education should be a co-operative, collaborative
activity.
3. People possess untapped potential in all areas of
worthwhile human endeavour.
4. Process is as important as product.
5. Human potential can best be realised by creating and
maintaining places, policies, processes and programmes
specifically designed to invite development, and by people
who are intentionally inviting of themselves and others,
personally and professionally.
Why do we need an
Invitational Approach?
 There is a growing awareness that education is not about
normal distributions, standardised test scores , labelling
and grouping of students, relentless and ruthless
competition and certainly not about being “number 1”. The
revolution is underway because growing numbers of
people realise that education is about inviting every single
person who enters a school to realise his or her relatively
boundless potential in all areas of human endeavour. It is
concerned with more than grades, attendance and
academic achievement. It is concerned with the process of
becoming a decent and productive human being.
William Watson Purkey
Symbiotic Relationship
 For those of you already involved in creating
community within an ‘Extended Schools
framework,’ the ‘Invitational Approach’ I
have briefly outlined, may provide an
interesting leadership model for you to
consider.
An Example of Being Invitational
(To the Melbourne street community, the homeless and those with
drug and alcohol dependencies)
 Choir of Hard Knocks
Choir of Hard Knocks
 This group of around 50 homeless and
disadvantaged men and women, have come
together under the leadership of Founding
Choir Director Jonathon Welch, former
Opera Australia Principal.
First Rehearsal
 In this first clip we will hear the story of how
the choir was developed and gain a sense
of its impact on the lives of participating
members. In the first rehearsal the ground
rules are posted on the flip chart.
 Turn up on time
 Turn up clean or sober
 Respect
 Zero Agro
 HAVE FUN
Activity
 Consider your response to this first clip
individually,
 In threes,
 And finally in groups of 5-6
 What are the significant issues emerging for
you in relation to being ‘invitational?’
Implications of
Invitational Education
 Ideally, the factors of people, places,
policies, programmes and processes should
be so intentionally inviting as to create an
environment in which every person is
cordially summoned to develop intellectually,
socially, physically and spiritually.
Starfish Activity
The starfish is able to apply steady and continuous pressure from a
number of points to overwhelm the oyster and is a suitable analogy
for a strategy for school improvement.
Second Clip
 Individual Stories
Invitational Contract
(Reflection Activity)
Being personally inviting
with oneself
Being personally inviting
with others
Being professionally
inviting with oneself
Being professionally
inviting with others
A basic tenet of IE suggests where any of the dimensions is missing, the
school will begin to misfire like an auto with a bad spark-plug
Melbourne Town Hall
Final Clip
 For a few minutes, please consider your
response to this third and closing sequence.
 Allan Crabbe describes the experience of
being a choir member, to be,
 “Just like a family.” To be Invitational in
school or community is as simple and as
complex as that.