I started my career as a Chemistry teacher at Abingdon School, learning much about the dynamics of busy day schools, followed by a move to Rutland as Head of Chemistry, and then Science, at Uppingham School. Teaching and tutoring in a co-educational boarding school taught me how academic challenge and pastoral care must co-exist, and the centrality of trusting working relationships between pupils and staff.
I am committed to fostering a joyful attitude towards learning, helping pupils to be open-minded and optimistic in their academic journey, and staff to embrace professional learning opportunities. Since joining Oakham as Deputy Head Academic in January 2020, I am proud to have helped colleagues adapt to the challenges of synchronous and asynchronous online learning, new assessment and reporting protocols and innovative curriculum evolution; all opportunities to improve pupil learning experiences. These changes have been supported by new structures of leadership, teamwork and communication.
Promoting a successful and profitable integration of digital strategy in schools
Developing an empowering culture to foster change and growth
Aligning digital strategies with educational goals
Learn how embracing new digital and face-to-face modes of collaboration, taking inspiration from high-performing teams outside of education, can enable novel and impactful approaches to teamwork in schools.
I will share how Scrum, an Agile methodology famous in the world of software development and engineering, was embraced and deployed to good effect in a challenging period of change. By employing Kanban methodology via the Trello platform, we enabled middle leaders to positively influence these changes in a new and empowering way.
We will then consider how this led to new structures of senior and middle leadership teams of teams; an innovative strategy that has created new opportunities for professional development of teachers, promoted two-way communication, increased interdisciplinary collaboration via the Mural and Padlet platforms, and enhanced levels of teacher support.
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