Good day
I hope that Term 2 has been a positive time of student and staff learning and growth in your organisation. In this ACEL West Australia newsletter, I am reflecting on the process of changing habits, and sharing some updates of branch events past and future. I hope to see you at some of these events.
Changing Habits
For the next ACEL WA Book Club meeting in the July School holidays, we will be discussing the book “Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones” by James Clear. I am about halfway through reading the book and enjoying it tremendously. It is an easy read, full of practical strategies, on the topic of the psychology of habit change. The premise of the book is that small, incremental or “atomic” changes can have a powerful impact on forming and maintaining new habits and on breaking bad habits. James Clear emphasises that small habits, when compounded over time, can lead to significant results. He argues that improving by just 1% each day will lead to a 37% improvement over a year.
James Clear outlines the process of habit formation using his “Four Laws of Behaviour Change”:
- Cue: Make it obvious.
- Craving: Make it attractive.
- Response: Make it easy.
- Reward: Make it satisfying.
Inversely, to break bad habits he advocates four reverse rules:
- Cue: Make it invisible.
- Craving: Make it unattractive.
- Response: Make it difficult.
- Reward: Make it unsatisfying.
For each of these laws the author proposes a series of practical strategies to build better habits and break unhelpful ones.
As I am reading, I am constantly reflecting on how the messages from the book could apply to our roles as educators and leaders. For example, the strategies discussed in the book can apply to the teaching of complex capabilities to students, such as critical and creative thinking, collaboration skills or resilience. Developing complex capabilities does not happen overnight – it takes regular practice, often over many years. We want young people to not only be capable of applying these complex skills (a capability is something you can do), but for these capabilities to become habits (something you can do and choose to do – regularly). The strategies in the book are providing me with many new insights to how we can make such complex capabilities obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying to students.
I am realising the strategies exemplified in the book can also be applied to our tasks as educational leaders, for example leading school improvement, managing culture change or developing deep staff capabilities in teaching and learning. In all these tasks there are many aspects of behavioural change that can benefit from establishing strong new habits or unlearning redundant habits. When reading the author’s suggested techniques for strengthening habit formation, I found myself reflecting on how I can cultivate habits that support organisational culture, such as holding brief, daily check-ins with staff focused on our desired cultural norms or regularly celebrating small successes within the school community. The author’s ideas around the habit loop made me reflect on how we can help staff to recognise cues (e.g., weekly staff meetings) and rewards (e.g., improved school performance) to create and maintain productive habits like regular data analysis sessions. With regards to environmental design, I am pondering how we can design school spaces that promote a positive school culture. When it comes to the suggested strategies of implementation intentions and habit stacking, I am thinking how we can set clear intentions for desirable leadership practices (e.g., “I will visit two classrooms each morning to observe teaching”) and stack these habits onto existing routines (e.g., combining classroom visits with morning announcements).
The onus is now on me to make a habit of putting these strategies into action.
Update on past events
During this term we have held a successful blended-delivery Hot Topic on the Challenges and Opportunities of Leading in Regional Contexts with four leaders sharing their experiences. Thank you to Brad Evans (Principal at Georgina Molloy Anglican School), Franca Dillon (Principal at Bunbury Primary School), Keith Nicholas (Principal at John Paul College in Kalgoorlie) and Vince Bellini (Principal at Our Lady of Mercy College in Australind) for sharing your insights. ACEL WA Branch Executive member Dr Ray Boyd who MC-ed the event reflected: “A common thread was the importance that relationships and developing an understanding of place played in their leadership. The relationships that these well-respected leaders spoke about, extended well beyond the confines of the school’s grounds. In metropolitan settings, most teachers and leaders don’t live in their local communities, so there is a clear line of separation between work life and social life. Listening to these leaders it was very apparent that this is not the case in regional, rural and remote settings. In these contexts, school leaders (and teachers) become integral members of the local community, living, socialising, and raising their own families.”
We also hosted a highly successful workshop, led by Dr Selena Fisk, on Leading Data-Informed Change. Selena shared some of her non-negotiables around data:
- Be student-centred – it is about the humans.
- Be data informed, not data driven.
- Measure and celebrate progress not only achievement.
- Triangulate, triangulate, triangulate. (All data sets have noise and won’t work for some kids on some days, therefore aim to collect multiple data sources (both quantitative and qualitative) around the same issue.
Future Events
On the 5th of June we will be hosting our Term 2 Leading Innovation in Education Network where four teams of presenters will share with us how they have led improvement, innovation and change in their respective contexts. Speakers for the event are:
- John Burke, Principal, Bob Hawke College
- Shannon Armitage, Director of Senior School (Teaching and Learning), & Nic Keskinidis, Head of Futures, All Saints College
- Rachael Lehr, Associate Principal & Ray Boyd, Principal, Dayton Primary School
- Andrew Gammon, Principal, St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, Donnybrook
The Leading Innovation Network events are free, but please book your spot or find more information here.
Educational Leadership Book Club. Every term we choose a book to read and then get together to engage in conversations around the book. We meet in Perth (with an optional Zoom link) during the school holidays and a group meets in the South West towards the end of teach term to discuss the same book. The book we are currently reading is “Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones” by James Clear. We will discuss it in Perth on Thursday the 4th of July from 10am – 12pm. Anyone is welcome to attend book club and feel free to bring along other members from your leadership team or aspiring leaders. Just order yourself a copy of the book, read part (or all) of the book before we meet (or listen to an e-book or author podcast) and join us for some collegial conversation on the day. Book Club is a free event, but please register here so that we know numbers for catering.
I hope you remain thriving towards the end of the Term, and I look forward to seeing you at future ACEL WA events.
Mathilda Joubert
ACEL WA Branch President