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I wasn’t expecting to learn anything about leadership from the AFL Grand Final. I’m not really a football person. Even at Grand Final parties, I’m generally watching bits and pieces between conversations and a few party pies. This Grand Final day, I was at home with my husband and thought we’d put the game on while I did something else, probably cleaning the kitchen. What I didn’t expect was to be completely hooked. Somewhere along the way, I decided I was going for Freo. The

Stepping into leadership changes more than your responsibilities. It starts to change how you see yourself. I was speaking to a friend recently who is stepping into a new leadership role, and as we talked, I found myself remembering what it felt like when I was a middle leader stepping into new roles of my own. I realised that some of the things I had thought were my struggles weren’t really mine at all. I think they’re part of what happens as we start to see ourselves differ

Creating greater consistency in teaching does not have to mean making every classroom look the same. This reflection explores how shared clarity, purposeful feedback loops and collaborative structures can strengthen instructional practice while preserving teachers’ professional judgement. It also considers how leaders can build common expectations without allowing consistency to become compliance.

What does the passing of Dolly Parton mean to an educator in Melbourne? I have taken some time to work through that question. I did not want simply to react to the loss of an inspirational woman. I wanted to understand what was driving the outpouring of love and the extraordinary return to her work. Within days, Dolly had become the most streamed artist in the world. For years, Dolly meant country music and the beloved Steel Magnolias to me. Through a friend who adores her, I

Cognitive load theory is often translated into a simple message: make learning easier. But I’m not sure that is quite the goal. I once worked with a school to develop an agreed, sequenced English curriculum. Together, we explored how cognitive load principles could inform its design without becoming another body of theory for already-overwhelmed teachers to absorb and implement individually. Working with the school’s leaders, we designed a process that embedded these principl

A shared plan does not create shared practice but neither does tighter control. Last week, I wrote about the difference between a curriculum plan that exists on paper and one that is genuinely understood and used by teachers. That raised another question for me: how do leaders develop the shared understanding teachers need to make responsive decisions for their students? The goal is not for teaching to look the same in every classroom, nor is it enough for everyone to follow

I know this because I have sat in two very different kinds of curriculum planning meetings over my years in teaching. In one team, someone could look at the planning and say, “I don’t think we can teach all of this well in the time we have.” That comment did not derail the meeting. It started a useful conversation. We talked about what mattered most and what the Victorian Curriculum actually required. We also considered where students might need more time and what we could ac

A few years ago, when I was a middle leader in a school, I lead the school to reboot our language program. We were trying to develop an instructional approach that would work for our students and our context. We built our own knowledge from a range of research and sources, drawing together the ideas that best suited what we were trying to achieve. Then we tried it ourselves. We taught the lessons, invited others in to observe and give us feedback, and piloted what became our

When I was a new leader, I often interpreted silence or disagreement as a sign that I had not explained something well enough. My instinctive response was usually to provide more information or explain the rationale again. I thought that if people understood the thinking behind a decision, they would be more likely to agree with it. With experience, I learnt that I was sometimes missing something much more valuable: feedback. The people around the table could sometimes see th

If coaching changes a teacher’s practice but does not strengthen their professional judgement, what has it really developed? I have often heard several misconceptions about coaching in schools: that it is mainly for struggling teachers, that it is a form of evaluation, that the same approach should work for everyone, that it sits separately from school priorities, or that its impact should be immediate. Although these ideas are different, they share an assumption that can qui

The challenge in school improvement is rarely that schools do not have enough ideas. Most schools have plenty. There are strategic plans, annual implementation plans, data sets, instructional priorities, professional learning agendas, curriculum work, wellbeing work, behaviour work and all the other things that crop up in the school day. The harder question is whether the conditions are in place for any of that work to actually change practice. In many conversations with scho

The start of a new term is not the time to choose seventeen leadership priorities. Even one is enough, if it is chosen carefully and practised consistently. During the school holidays, it is easy to think about the term ahead in broad language: improving learning, strengthening culture, building consistency, supporting staff, lifting outcomes. All of that matters. But once the term begins, school life gets very full very quickly. The urgent work starts crowding out the import

Instructional vision can sound clear in a leadership meeting and still feel vague in a classroom. I think part of the problem is that we sometimes talk about instructional vision as if everyone means the same thing by it. For me, an instructional vision is not just a statement about high expectations, excellence or student growth. It is the shared picture of what good teaching and learning should look like here, for these students, in this school. It should help answer questi

The best school improvement work I’ve seen has never started with a 'program'. It started with leaders making space for professional judgement. Over many years, I have seen schools approach new programs in very different ways. In some places, a program lands as though everything that came before it needs to be swept away. The message may not be intended that way, but that is often how it feels to teachers: what you knew, what you built and what you were doing well is suddenly

One of the quickest ways to limit a team's growth is to answer every question they ask. I’ve been reflecting on curiosity lately, not as a personality trait, but as a leadership choice. It’s easy to think that being a good leader means having the answers and its something that I've noticed many new leaders wrestle with. After all, people come to leaders for certainty, advice and direction. But I’m starting to wonder whether our instinct to solve problems too quickly can actua

We often overestimate the impact of big initiatives and underestimate the power of small improvements repeated over time. Over my years in schools I have spent many hours participating in teaching teams collaborating on the design of a lesson or unit. What always sat with me wasn't the lesson or plans themselves so much, as the quality of the professional conversation taking place around it. As they worked, teachers were discussing where students might struggle, debating the

What if the strongest indicator of a school’s improvement culture isn’t its data wall, strategic plan or professional learning calendar? What if it’s how normal feedback has become? One of the strongest schools I’ve visited wasn’t doing anything particularly flashy. The approach to planning was so routine that in their PLTs teachers had time to look at student work together. Beyond that they dropped into each other’s classrooms. They asked questions about practice, shared wha

How do we know when learning has actually “stuck”? I’ve been reflecting on a deceptively simple question: How do we know when a student has truly learnt something? A student can explain an idea, repeat information, complete a familiar task or succeed within a supported context and that matters. Surface learning builds knowledge and confidence but it isn’t the destination... The real test is transfer: Can students apply their learning in a new context? Adapt it? Connect it? Us

I’ve been rereading Davies’ work in Leading the Strategically Focused School, particularly the difference between strategic focus as a driver of coherence and the kind of compliance that can quietly take over school improvement work. A compliant culture can look productive from the outside. Lesson plans are completed, processes are followed and meetings happen. The 'right' documentation exists but the energy can still be transactional. A learning culture feels different. Ther

I wonder if we sometimes treat explicit teaching as the destination, when it is actually the launchpad. Explicit teaching matters. It builds knowledge, clarity and confidence but the deeper question is: what can students do with what they know? This links to my earlier post in relation to the use of AI in education a couple of weeks ago. Drawing on Fullan’s work on deep learning, the shift is from coverage to transfer. From “I taught it” to “they can use it”. Students may be