Brian's Blog

As I think about my educational leadership journey so far, I'm transported back to my days as a gymnast. It is perfect timing with the world championship being held in Antwerp Belgium in the past week with Australia’s Women's team coming 9th and qualifying for the Olympics and our Men's team showing a series of strong routines. For me when I was competing, the apparatus I most enjoyed training on was parallel bars and floor, while rings and pommel were much lower on my list of favourites. Like my path through education, gymnastics demanded strength, precision, and unwavering confidence. My career has been a collection of professional accomplishments with the spectre of imposter syndrome and is much like the gymnastic routine I used to perform with moments of self-doubt that lurked. As I pen this post, it is written from the perspective of someone who has not yet made it and battles with the challenge of feeling out of their depth. It is also written acknowledging the challe...

Over the past term, there have been some questions that I have been pondering related to leadership and teaching in education. They are questions of purpose and motivation. While I have not got clear answers of all, some have helped me develop more clarity and direction with those I am working with as they speak to my philosophy of teaching and reasons for being a teacher. My challenge is to prompt others to revisit what drives them to work with students and lead within educational settings. What are we really trying to accomplish? What are the things we need to be doing in this season? What are the things we need to let go of which are holding us back? Why are we trying to accomplish this alone? Who else are we bringing along on the journey and empowering with the vision? Are we creating a collaborative culture? Is what we are trying to achieve simple or are we making it too complicated? If we are constantly exhausted, are we doing more than what is expected or are we pushing too hard...

Over the last four years, my intentional focus has been the completion of my Masters of Educational Leadership whilst not dropping the ball on either my teaching career or my family life. Now to do this, it has not been easy and slack had to be taken up in other areas of my life. One of these areas that has been affected is my regular reflections I previously made on my blog. This happened because my cognitive load was being diverted into productive academic study rather than systematic reflection. Don't hear me wrong, the reflections I did throughout my course were benefital and job appropriate, though they were a requirement rather than coming from personal searching and an inquisitive nature.  If you are like me and have found it hard to really get into 2020 because of the devastating fires happening around me in Australia or because of a myriad of other reasons, choose to do something that will help you reflect. This could be camping, walking, spending ...

With 2018 closing and the early days of 2019 on us, I wanted to pen down some thoughts on my journey recently. Coined by one of my colleague I could normally be described as an educational dreamer. An optimist who sees the positive in the educational landscape as well as the trends on the horizon. However; while there were many professional achievements, I found this year one of the most challenging in my career. For so many years, I have been challenged by those around me and the research to push myself to embed the highest quality pedagogies and learning experiences I could, although, this changed in 2018. During this time, one of my esteemed colleagues said to me "you need to step back from pushing so hard and let others catch up. You work so hard at supporting people at the shoulder, yet they need to discover and do it themselves". It was suggest that this would allow me the time I needed to complete my higher levels of teacher accreditation showing my proficiency aga...

                        It is just a little under two weeks since the Google Certified Innovators Sydney 2017 cohort graduated. In this time I have had pockets of time to reflect and gather my thoughts about the program and how it has affected my project. When I set out I had the plan to create a personalised learning pathway that would engage students in meaningful learning. Though the desired goal has not changed the academy, coaches and peer's have challenged me to think of ways to bring this to pass and obstacles to look out for. They have encouraged the mindset of "thinking big but starting small" by being critical friends. Colleagues and team mates I can constantly come back to and think tank with. This shared experience has broadened my perspective and connection to a world of educators who are making a real difference in the lives of their learning communities. During the academy, we had the time and space to l...

In today’s interdependent and rapidly changing world, numerous challenges threaten our ability to create sustainable and principled societies. True leadership requires a compelling vision, the ability to inspire and hold close both the moral and ethical values interwoven into our lives (Greenfield & Ribbins, 1993). Current literature (Ehrich, Harris, Klenowski, Smeed & Spina, 2015) identifies the heightened awareness of the ethical dimensions of educational leadership in a context of increasing performance driven accountability. The key challenges involve tensions between opposite value positions (Cranston, Ehrich, & Kimber, 2006) where leaders need to navigate the shades of grey, for example, common good versus individual rights; care versus rules; loyalty versus justice; and long-term versus short-term perspectives. ( Duignan, 2006).  The opposing value positions above, identify complexities leaders have when considering the perspective nuances of the situ...

"Change is the essence of life: be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become" - Reinhold Neibuhr  Over Christmas, I was asked by friends what the New Year had in store for me as a professional? My response was considered; however, vague. Unlike other years where my role and direction was very clear, this year was totally different. This year is one where major changes are about to happen for my team and I. It is a time where many of our practices formed over years of working in  silo's  were going to be torn down as we move into a new facility designed for team teaching with a minimum of 5 teachers and over 100 students. This change will force countless amounts of unknown practical transformations along with major pedagogical shifts in us individually as professionals by removing our ability to hide our professional practice behind walls away from each other.  While this could be seen as a scary step, I fi...