This is disgraceful

Generally speaking I believe that different countries should be allowed to exist with their own laws etc without the west imposing its own value/law/political systems, but sometimes I am reminded why that view is too simplistic. There are the obvious exceptions, Rwanda, Somalia, Darfur etc, but the report below shows a disgraceful side to a country we 'support'

Saudi women to stand trial for driving | World news | The Guardian:

I have no idea what can be done, but surely some persuasion is in order.

'via Blog this'

Terrible conditions - amazing spirit!

Terrible conditions - amazing spirit! Living off the landfill: Indonesia's resident scavengers | World news | The Guardian:

'via Blog this'

Artistic Leadership?

Reflection is never a bad thing. I often criticise myself for being lazy, indecisive, not following through on projects etc (the list is almost endless!), but most of all I have a problem with myself when I am not original or have not at least researched a wide range of possibilities to then decide upon.

Idealistically I want to be an ‘artistic’ leader. An artist, a designer, an innovator, a creator. I want to lead something that is beautiful to the mind of the user. I suppose I tend to be inspired by the likes of Steve Jobs. The extract below is taken from a piece by his former boss/partner via the outstanding Marbury blog.

I remember going into Steve’s house and he had almost no furniture in it. He just had a picture of Einstein, whom he admired greatly, and he had a Tiffany lamp and a chair and a bed. He just didn’t believe in having lots of things around but he was incredibly careful in what he selected. The same thing was true with Apple. Here’s someone who starts with the user experience, who believes that industrial design shouldn’t be compared to what other people were doing with technology products but it should be compared to people were doing with jewellery...

...Sony should have had the iPod but they didn’t — it was Apple. The iPod is a perfect example of Steve’s methodology of starting with the user and looking at the entire end-to-end system. It was always an end-to-end system with Steve. He was not a designer but a great systems thinker. That is something you don’t see with other companies. They tend to focus on their piece and outsource everything else. If you look at the state of the iPod, the supply chain going all the way over to iPod city in China – it is as sophisticated as the design of the product itself. The same standards of perfection are just as challenging for the supply chain as they are for the user design. It is an entirely different way of looking at things...

...What Steve’s brilliance is, is his ability to see something and then understand it and then figure out how to put into the context of his design methodology — everything is design. An anecdotal story, a friend of mine was at meetings at Apple and Microsoft on the same day and this was in the last year, so this was recently. He went into the Apple meeting (he’s a vendor for Apple) and when he went into the meeting at Apple as soon as the designers walked in the room, everyone stopped talking because the designers are the most respected people in the organization. Everyone knows the designers speak for Steve because they have direct reporting to him. It is only at Apple where design reports directly to the CEO.

...Apple is not really a technology company. Apple is really a design company...that’s what makes it different. Look at the stores, at the stairs in the stores. They are made of some special glass that had to be fabricated. And that’s so typical of the way he thinks. Everyone around him knows he beats to a different drummer. He sets standards that are entirely different than any other CEO would set. He’s a minimalist and he is constantly reducing things to their simplest level. It’s not simplistic. It’s simplified. Steve is a systems designer. He simplifies complexity.

As Ian Leslie (the blog author) says,

Most of the world is split into engineers and artists. Artists create or appreciate beautiful things. Engineers make things work. Jobs combined both sensibilities - he saw the whole of the moon.

This of course is what Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google said in condemning the British education system recently in the annual MacTaggart lecture in Edinburgh.

Marbury then links to this speech by Jobs, from which my favourite quote is,

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

How do you do this? How do you marry openness to change and creativity with perfectionist tendencies about standards? The answer seems to be that you design the system and allow the people (the right people) within that system to flourish and succeed. Personally I know I need to develop my artist’s tools and palette of choices. What choices do I make in each given situation? Is it a shade of research, a hint of emotional intelligence, a tint of decisiveness etc? Or is great leadership a blend of all these ‘colour’ choices. What about my tools? Do I have the right canvas? Is it big enough? Is it reciprocal to my choice of paints? Should I be bold and apply strong choices with my palette knife or be more subtle with washes of watercolour?

In the end what I will always aim to do is create the perfect artist’s studio. It will be one with light to offer freedom, ambiance to deliver ethos, materials to give choice and a view to show vision. This way others have the best chance of creating their own picture.

"I like that picture Daddy!"

This is my first post on this platform for a while, but this morning my 5 year old son uttered the words, "I like that picture Daddy!" Nothing strange in that, he loves drawing, painting and generally being creative, but I happened to be looking at Pablo Picasso's 'Mediterranean Landscape'. This piece is not an obvious one to appeal to kids, and it got me thinking what his reaction would be to different styles of painting (and gave me an excuse to spend time looking and talking about art!)

Pablo Picasso's 'Mediterranean Landscape' (see above)


Son: I like the colours, funny walls and that it's sunny.
Dad: I like the light, haphazard nature of cramped building near the coast and the lazy, relaxed atmosphere it suggests.

Trisha Lamoreaux's 'New York Traffic'

Son: Its so busy. I like the yellow cars. Why are the buildings so big?
Dad: I like the intensity of it. It feels busy, out of control and full of life. The taxis dominate the scene, but it is the amount of people squashed onto the pavement that gives it the edge.

Holbein's 'The ambassadors'

Son: What are they doing? I like the funny guitar. They look bored.
Dad: I know the symbolic nature of the work, but it is the farcical nature of them supposedly posing with so much 'stuff' that is interesting. I also like the expressions and the extravagance of the cloak.

Winslow Homer's 'Inside the bar: Cullercoats'

Son: It looks cold and windy. She hasn't even got a coat on (does a little shiver).
Dad: This is local for us and I like the history it evokes of where we live, the strength of the women and the dangerous nature of life and work in the past.

Mondrian's 'Composition in white, blue, yellow and C'

Son: I like that one. It has nice colours and lines. Why did he not colour in the rest of the boxes?
Dad: Not sure why this is my favourite of his compositions. I guess each one must appeal differently to every individual. I like the squeezed nature of the lines on the right and that they don't need colour to make them interesting.

LS Lowry's 'Going to the match'

Son: That's the one on the wall. Are they going to watch my team? Even the doggy is going!
Dad: As a Bolton Wanderers fan I love this. It reminds me of going to Burnden Park as a teenager. You can even see the Burnden Terrace where I used to stand (a few years after the painting!). It also conveys everyone's urgency to get there, with the leaning forward walking style and people coming from all directions.

Monet's 'Sunset in Venice'

Son: Is it on fire? Is it smoke or just misty?
Dad: It creates an atmosphere that is evocative and adds to the image of Venice of romance and mystery. The colours are wonderful and it almost feels like it is from another world.

I feel a regular Sunday morning activity coming on...

Do you tweet? We do!

Do you tweet? We do!

 ‘What are you doing?’ A simple enough question, and one that is the starting point for the social networking/micro blogging site ‘Twitter’.

Twitter allows family, friends, co-workers and organisations to stay connected via mobile texting, instant messages, or on the web. In other words it offers an easy way to stay connected with the people in your life. People can respond with short messages or "tweets" that are under 140 characters to keep their friends, family or anyone interested, updated on their latest interests or everyday happenings. By default, your Twitter profile is public and all your updates can be seen by anyone.

At Hetton School we are beginning to use Twitter as an additional way of communicating with students, parents and anyone with an interest in our school. In answer to the question ‘What are you doing?’ we respond with tweets about upcoming events, news from our work in school, thanks to staff and students or interesting developments. Our tweets have already developed a following with a wide audience including teachers and leaders from other schools, education journalists, Hetton students and people from the local area.

Getting involved couldn’t be easier.

1. 1.      Go to Twitter.com. Click on the "Join the Conversation" button.
2. 2.      Create an Account. Provide your full name, preferred username, password and e-mail address. Remember that the user name is what people will see with an "@" symbol in front of it.
3. 3.      Search for @hettonschool and click the ‘Follow’ button.

Why not check out our conversation and reply with your own thoughts. We monitor replies to exclude any offensive or dangerous comments, but welcome thoughts, ideas, questions and feedback.

Poetry - who knew?

First of all, let me make it clear, I am a Geography teacher - well that is not strictly true. I am a Deputy Head Teacher who occasionally teaches (4 hrs a week), but when I do, it is Geography that I am trained to teach. Despite this I have, like many other teachers, turned my hand to other subjects - mainly History, RE, PHSE etc. Due the fact that I believe we are teachers of children rather than subjects, then I have been happy to do this.

But I digress. My point was that Geography has always been what has rocked my boat, as it were. Well maybe no longer. Since the start of term I have a lesson of English on my timetable – a first in my career. It is with a Year 9 class and the topic I was tasked with delivering – Poetry!!

Now, bearing in mind I was not permitted to do even GCSE English Literature at school (a strange system indeed!), the idea of teaching poetry was daunting to say the least. That combined with the fact that I have never had any interest in poetry myself, could have made it tough going for me and the students. In fact I have always been of the opinion that if someone felt they needed to write a poem - forget it and write either a song or story instead.

At this point in the tale – I have to say I was wrong! Poetry is interesting and has a power in its performance that I had not understood. In researching for my lesson I discovered ‘Def Poetry’ a US network programme showcasing the performance of the spoken word – wow! It blew me away. Unknown ‘stars’ like Gemineye; Taylor Mali; Suheir Hammad; and Oscar Brown Jr delivered their message with such power, emotion and ferocity, that I started telling everyone I knew about it.

All of which leads me to the reason for writing this post – the impact this challenge has had on the way I feel about teaching this once a week lesson. My students had no interest in poetry (not unusual for most 14 yr olds). This meant I had to deliver a similar experience to my ‘conversion’, in order to open them up to the learning. Using some, but not all of the stars I named above (too much swearing for school!), I emphasized the performance aspect and the apparent aggression demonstrated. They got it! They came up to me at break and lunchtime asking whether we would be watching another ‘performance’ next lesson and when would they get their turn to perform their own.

I combined this approach with learning about the links between poetry and rap, reading ‘The Gruffalo’ and writing some auto-biographical prose, and the students stayed interested! These excellent students who have an average reading age of 10 years and had never written a meaningful poem in their life, have now all written at least two original pieces.

In our final lesson of the half term, we set up the room to split into two halves and have a ‘corridor of poetry’ in the middle. The students challenged each other to perform their poems in a stand-off against each other, all to a rousing reception.

It was one of my most proud moments in teaching and made me hungry for more. All this in a lesson I didn’t really want to teach; all this through poetry; all this from a Geography teacher!

Poetry – who knew?

Tenacity, humility and emotional intelligence

The paragraph below is taken from the National College's publication titled, "What’s good about leading schools in challenging circumstances? - Succession planning"

Tenacity, humility and emotional intelligence

Such personal conviction in the rightness of one’s beliefs, tenacity in

advocacy for young people and a resilience to take the pain in standing

by them, was tempered by personal humility:

I haven’t got all the answers.

I project confidence whether I’ve got it or not, but I’m prepared to

admit my mistakes when I get it wrong.

There was the perceived need for high levels of emotional intelligence

to generate trust through building relationships, showing respect for

others, and displaying integrity and honesty:

The quality of relationships is key. Emotional intelligence is paramount:

not just awareness of self but empathy for others.

I think it outlines the importance of leading with emotional intelligence and how it fits in with building relationships within schools.