Leading a Creative School

Learning about Lasting School Change

Ethel Sanders

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136729195
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Introducing creativity to the classroom is a concern for teachers, governments and future employers around the world, and there has been a drive to make experiences at school more exciting, relevant, challenging and dynamic for all young people, ensuring they leave education able to contribute to the global creative economy.

Leading a Creative School shows that school leaders are central in any change process, and offers suggestions and models of practice for a whole school change towards creative practice. Providing an accessible overview of key issues and debates surrounding different methods of creative change, practical activities, and stimulus material for to help teachers, this book will explain how to:

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• reflect on why change is important for your school

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• motivate your teaching staff;

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• create the conditions for a whole school change;

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• develop practical strategies to make changes long lasting;

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• and assess and monitor changes taking place.

Providing case studies and examples of school change from leading practitioners throughout, this book is an invaluable guide for all those involved in school leadership, management and change.

CHAPTER
1
	It can Only Happen on a Thursday
	Judy Berry

Editor’s Introduction

The overarching theme of this case study is: transformation through working with artists to create opportunities for active and creative learning. Within that broad theme the particular aspects of the development are:

• Pedagogy underpinned by values and knowledge of the children.
• Creating flexibility to respond to unexpected opportunities.
• Risk taking in resisting orthodoxy.
• Importance of reflection and evaluation.
• Working with artists.
• Funding.
• Creating the conditions for sustainable whole school change.

The case study illustrates how Rufford Infant and Nursery School addressed the need for children, particularly boys, to pursue more active ways of learning. It describes how, knowing their children well, staff responded to an opportunity that arose for incorporating more active ways of learning into the curriculum, and shows the way that change was implemented within the constraints faced by all schools.

It is a good example of how having a loosely framed vision for the school based on understanding the children and meeting their needs, allows for the flexibility to respond quickly to opportunities. This would seem to be contrary to the leadership orthodoxy that promotes a clearly defined vision for the school underpinned by tightly constructed improvement plans with detailed actions linked to long- and short-term time scales.

The case study addresses the issues of personalised learning, managing time and funding constraints, the juxtaposition of artistic expertise and pedagogy, and the status of artists within the school. Rufford’s story of change has been written by the headteacher of Rufford Infant and Nursery School, Judy Berry, and describes how the work of artists has been embedded in the school curriculum as an integral part of creative whole school sustained change.

Rufford Infant and Nursery School

Rufford Infant and Nursery School is smaller than average with just six classroom bases and a separate nursery. But it is semi open-planned so we have a big central area that links all the classrooms and where children from all classes can do activities together. All our classes are fully vertically grouped and children stay with the same class teacher for up to three years as a result. Although the playgrounds are well equipped with large grassed areas, space indoors is at a premium. When people visit us, they say school has a lovely feel to it. It is friendly and homely.

Up until the 1970s there had been lots of industrial work for people to do in Bulwell because there were coal mines, a pottery and lots of dye works on the river which supported the lace trade of Nottingham. All that has gone now and some families are in their third generation of unemployment. Our school, therefore, serves an area designated one of high social deprivation and most of our families live in council or privately rented accommodation. Our school has strong community links though, and many of the staff, including me, live within the school’s catchment area.

I’ve been in post as head for twenty years and our staffing is stable. Up until recently most of our children came from white British families with a number of children coming from the Traveller community. In the last couple of years, though, children have arrived from Poland and we have a much higher percentage of children from black or dual heritage backgrounds than before. A high proportion of the children have developmental delay when they first come to our nursery and our school prides itself on the inclusion of children with exceptional and complex special educational needs and its work with Traveller families.

A Catalyst for Change

It was because of Christopher that we began our journey of full-blown whole school creative change. Christopher was a young lad who, though bright, really struggled to conform. Although the National Curriculum has always enabled schools to develop it creatively, it hasn’t always felt that way. For many boys, the sitting-down curriculum just is not conducive to their particular style of learning. We have bright boys who need to be active. They are quite capable of achieving a high level of attainment in assessments at the age of 7 but, later, are at risk of being excluded because of their perceived deviant learning styles. What a waste! Christopher was likely to become one of these. However, a professional dancer from London had come to do some workshops in our school. We’d never had a professional dancer in our school previously and watching Christopher concentrate, respond to and work with the dancer was awe-inspiring. This was it! This was what was needed.

It was fortuitous that a flyer came across my table just days later inviting schools to participate in a scheme that would give us opportunities for working with creative practitioners. It was even more fortuitous that I actually read it. This was exactly what we were looking for.

Working within Constraints

Having identified a solution to a problem, Judy was able to recognise a good opportunity when it was presented. She was able to respond quickly to this, demonstrating a flexibility of approach in implementing action.

Some people suggest that having a tightly defined vision, and a detailed action plan to underpin it, inhibits the inclination to take up opportunities that arise unexpectedly. Do you think that this is the case? If not, why not?

What constraints have you encountered that have inhibited action you would like to have taken? How might these have been overcome?

It can Only Happen on a Thursday

‘It can only happen on a Thursday!’ I was reminded, recently, that I uttered these words some six years ago as we set out on our journey with our creative partners. I can look back and laugh but, as far as I was concerned, Thursday was the only time we had available to devote to working with creative practitioners. It wasn’t a laughing matter at the time, though, because of the pressure on us from all sides. Already ours was a school that was regarded as a little quirky. No, actually, I think we were regarded as just plain off-the-wall; a school I felt wasn’t really understood by anyone other than an inspection team perhaps. After all, we were a small school serving an area of high social deprivation and we had to face all that such a classification brings with it in terms of expectations and educational standards.

We had chosen to be fully vertically grouped with 4-, 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds spread evenly across all our infant classes. This at a time when the National Curriculum presented us with targeted blocks of work we could, or should, be doing at certain points in the year with specific age groups. There were many schools that did, and still do, look askance at us and wonder how we could possibly plan for such a wide range of pupil ages and still come up with the goods. Quite simply, we never stopped using a thematic approach to children’s learning and work within the Programmes of Study and those sections of the National Curriculum we feel to be appropriate.

Then there was the personalised learning issue. Even within a horizontally grouped class, children’s learning needs are likely to be very wide. I don’t see how all children’s needs can be met if personalised learning does not constitute the core of every single child’s education. We had been consulting with children on their learning targets for many years, even when it was not fashionable to do so. We had invented fortnightly PILL (Personal Independent Lifelong Learning) days where children determine their own learning targets. We ask them what they would like to learn or what they would like to teach someone else to do. The class plans together so that practicalities are considered in working out how they are going to organise their day to achieve their goal.

Our school has double the national average of children with high level special educational needs and the spectrum of their particular needs is vast. We have Traveller children who are with us for just part of any given year. So personalised learning was something that could never be left out of our equation.

All of this was frequently deemed very risky by those whose role it was, and is, to ensure high educational standards – well, standards in Maths and English, shall we say. I lost count of the number of times I was advised not to lose sight of the standards issue. So you can imagine the reaction I received when I ventured to say we were going down the creative learning line now on top of everything else perilous we were deemed to be doing. I asked that I be left alone to get on with it. On the one hand, I was very annoyed because that is exactly what happened. There was very little interest in what we were doing except at national level and there still isn’t, but that is alright because we have had autonomy and I am very grateful for that.

Risk Taking

Judy writes about actions that others may deem to be risky, e.g. vertically grouping children in classes in the context of teaching a curriculum that assumes a horizontal age-based organisation and setting aside days for personalised learning.

Do you agree with Judy that this was risky action? If so, why?

Are there risks associated with the way you would ideally like to address a particular school issue? If so, how could they be made acceptable and worth taking?

That doesn’t mean I was cavalier. In reality, I was quaking in my boots. There is only so much you can take from people saying that an increase in creative learning will result in a reduction in educational standards. I knew in my heart of hearts that wasn’t true but, until you have proved it to be otherwise, you find yourself on a pretty sticky wicket when trying to convince others that doing the ‘fluffy stuff’ might actually enhance standards rather than detract from them. So Thursday it was. That was the only time I dared make available to working with arts practitioners.

Before long I had two creative advisers allocated to my school and the meetings began – just with me at the outset. They were meetings which lasted three hours and my mind was spinning at the end of each but I was very motivated and excited. However, not being quite the risk taker that others might imagine me to be, we began a tentative three-month identity sculpture project in one class and … only on a Thursday morning.

We had a sculptor in residence with the class teacher and teaching assistants acting as facilitators and support people. Having the teachers and teaching assistants working alongside arts practitioners, for each and every session, is a system we have continued to this day. The afternoons were spent in evaluating the morning’s work. Those of us in education know how rare it is to be given permission to take many hours in evaluating one lesson but how good it is when that level of evaluation can take place.

The project went well so it was decided to extend it to a second class with the first class mentoring the second. Again the afternoons were spent in evaluation. Ours is only a small school and it is semi open-planned so it is pretty obvious when something different is happening in the school. Children in the other classes started to question what was happening and, indeed, an element of jealousy was creeping in – not least among the staff.

Not Only on a Thursday

I met up with my two creative advisers and we decided the time was right to extend the arts work to the other infant classes. I will never forget that meeting. I had no idea what I wanted but, whatever it was, it needed to be for everyone. It was agreed the school would come off timetable for a WHOLE WEEK! The two creative advisers sat in my room continuously on their mobile phones booking a range of people to work in our school all week – from story tellers, to dancers, to musicians, to actors, to visual artists.

I told my staff that, for the week, I would need no curriculum plans, that we were putting ourselves in the hands of the artists. I can remember one teacher coming close to hysteria knowing that her weekend would not have to be spent devising plans for the following week. What I did ask was that staff spent a lot of time talking with the arts practitioners and undertaking evaluations. Maintaining rigorous evaluations has been the highest of priorities in our years of whole school change because I knew that, if the world was to be convinced that creative arts and creative learning are central to children’s learning, then we would need to prove it. Ensuring rigorous written evaluations was one way we could ascertain that proof.

Evaluation

Judy states that ‘maintaining rigorous evaluations has been the highest of priorities in our years of whole school change’.

Why do you think that Judy places such importance on evaluations? Do you agree with her? What is evaluated in your school? Who does the evaluating and how does it influence practice?

At the end of the week, our school had changed. Staff were well motivated, they’d had a great time and the children had worked their socks off and had a great time too. The children had completed more academic work than if they had their normal lessons and had contributed to the evaluations.

As a staff we decided that, from then on, all infant classes should have input from an arts practitioner but, in order to do this, we needed to establish which practitioners and how often. At the time our creative partnership dealt with all the funding so I didn’t need to worry about that. We decided to employ two artists – a male dancer and a male visual artist. The choice was deliberate. Many of our children find relationships with adults quite difficult and particularly relationshi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Series Introduction
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. It Can Only Happen on a Thursday
• 2. Circles of Influence: A Democratic Whole School Alternative to a School Council
• 3. Change as an Evolutionary Process
• 4. Dance as Key to Full and Effective Student Engagement and Driver of Whole School Change
• 5. ‘If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done, You Will Always Get What You’ve Always Got’
• 6. ‘Making It Yours’
• 7. Staff Development: Ideas and Resources for Groups and Individuals
• Index