Will we need support to bring InterLEAD Connector™ to our school/centre?

It depends… are you looking for a quick fix to your current appraisal system? Or are you looking for a vehicle that drives systemic change and impacts on the culture of your workplace?

If you seek a ‘quick fix’ you and your teachers will require one day’s professional development. It provides background and professional learning on how to navigate the system. However, it is unlikely you will shift culture, beliefs or behaviours in a single day. Psychological safety could change but it would take many years and even then you would have to know how to lead change and communicate key messages at the right times.

If you are seeking to:

  • Make an unmistakable impact on professional reflection, inquiry and journaling;
  • Support teachers to be self-directed in their learning;
  • Develop teachers’ ability to self-assess who set challenging goals and engage in intelligent failure;
  • Raise the quality of teaching as inquiry;
  • Strengthen a culture of teacher accountability and professionalism;
  • Develop a culture in which honest critique is welcomed and encouraged;
  • See teachers confidently lead open and honest conversations on their teaching practice.

…you might wish to work with us in a sequenced and tailored approach to getting the full potential from InterLEAD Connector™.

If you seek the types of changes outlined above teachers and leaders need to acquire new knowledge and skills and think in new ways. This can easily be provided through an on-going professional learning programme. Experience informs us development and implementation in each school is rarely the same. Each school/centre is unique with different focus areas, developmental initiatives, varied states of preparedness and different staff sizes. Those leaders in the past who have committed to realising the full potential of InterLEAD Connector™ have consistently fed-back to us the long term value of sitting down with us to map out their school’s developmental pathway.

The success of any system depends on the people using it; InterLEAD Connector™ is no different. The freighter ship Rena provides a useful analogy. It was a very good system designed to transport freight before it ran aground on Astrolabe reef not because of any fault with the system itself but because of human failings. Teachers and leaders can undermine the potential InterLEAD Connector™ offers without acquiring new thinking, skills and practices.

InterLEAD Connector™ is a system and can be thought of in the same way as we think of ships. Leaders are increasingly realising how they, their teachers and ultimately their students/children can benefit most from the system when users possess crucial knowledge and skills. The question becomes – would you as teacher want to become part of a self-appraisal process when you don’t know how it works and don’t have the skills to make it work and when those around you might not have those attributes either?

Feedback we are receiving from leaders and teachers using InterLEAD Connector™ is extremely positive. Because the Connector is unlike any system encountered before the novelty factor alone is very powerful. In talking to people however many teachers and leaders are realising they are missing valuable opportunities to make profound differences to the culture of their school/centre, to teaching practice and learning opportunities in classrooms/learning environments because users are not in possession of all the necessary knowledge facts and have not had opportunities to develop key skills allowing them to tap into the full potential the Connector offers. Indeed, those schools/centres who drop the system after a year or two are consistently those places whose leaders neglected to provide enough professional learning for their staff. Real organisational culture shift is taking place in those schools/centres where leaders understand their people need support.