TL as Leader and Facilitating Change Within a School – Conversations with Colleagues
I have been lucky this year in my first appointment as a TL to have opportunities to network with other colleagues initiated through my school’s professional development activities and through my own networking initiatives.
My school forms part of a network of five local schools and we have joint professional development days where groups are formed based on KLA and we can collaborate and share resources amongst our respective faculties.
My school hosted the first conference for the year so I was tasked with organising and running the faculty time and group focus for the five TLs. We are in a unique position as a TL to be the only individual in the school in our job position – which has the downside of being a much smaller group to work with, however, the advantage is that there is a greater ability to go into more depth in our discussion and collaboration time.
One interesting aspect of the local school network my school is part of, is that the four other schools are very different from mine. In no particular order, I will give a brief overview of the schools, whilst maintaining my anonymity.
Two schools are co-educational local public high schools, with about 1100 – 1400 students, with similar figures of about 60% students from a language background other than English (LBOTE) and about 5% identify as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. One of these schools will run a Gifted and Talented class for the first time in 2024.
The third school is also a co-educational public high school and has similar enrolment figures to the two previous schools with slightly lower percentages of LBOTE and First Nations students. This school is unique as it is a creative and performing arts high school where potential students audition to earn a place in this program. According to the strategic improvement plan, this school also utilises project based learning as a school wide pedagogical approach.
The final school is a much smaller coeducational public high school with about half the student population of the other schools, at about 510 students, 86% of whom come from non-English speaking backgrounds. This school has an Intensive English Centre and a support unit for students with disabilities and/or autism.
My school is a coeducational public high school with about 800 students. It is fully academically selective and about 17% of students have an EAL/D background, at the highest level – consolidating. There are currently no students who identify as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. The students particularly excel in the domains of maths and science.
With this contextual information, we can see that the schools are all quite different and although there is some overlap, they cater to different groups of students. This has posed a challenge for me when it comes to collaborating with the respective TLs from each of these schools as I think about what I can bring to the table that will benefit the other schools and their cohorts and vice-versa.
When I think about the kinds of resources each library will buy for their students, the kinds of programs and supports offered from the library and even the budgets each school receives, they all seem vastly different – which has made me somewhat reluctant to become enthusiastic about the school network days – the staff I have spoken to and worked with so far at these inter-school network meetings have been lovely so far – I just haven’t been sure how to approach the collaborative aspect in a way that would be most beneficial to each school and their library.
I think that so far in undertaking this unit of study ETL504: Teacher Librarian as Leader, I have been thinking about my potential leadership role as one of leadership solely within my school. When I have engaged in other networking or other professional development opportunities outside of the school, it has been with the intention of helping my school.
When I did host the four other TLs at my school for the joint professional development day, unfortunately, only one school’s TL could attend. Fortunately, this did allow the two of us to work together on a much closer level and discuss things in greater detail. We had a great discussion about the TLs leadership role in the school and about how we are in the unique position to lead from the middle. As a more recent student of CSU, I was able to share my learning about this subject. I expressed my frustration about how I have all these fantastic ideas for working with faculties across my school to transform the school’s literacy and reading cultures and how there have been hiccups along the way and some staff are reluctant to engage with these ideas. The TL was able to give me great insight into our leadership role that I feel wasn’t covered in my studies in ETL504.
She explained that these changes often happen much slower than I had been naively expecting/hoping. In her experience, meaningful change in a school culture and pedagogical approaches happens across about seven years or so. This was much longer than I was expecting, however, when I reflected more on it later, it made a lot of sense. I think that when I had been researching change processes and leadership models I didn’t get an accurate picture of the timing these changes take on such a huge scale as a whole school. I think I also came into the job so excited to make a difference I began to get frustrated and disheartened that it wasn’t all happening immediately like I expected. I think that has been one of the great things about working as a TL for the first time this year. It is one thing to learn about a concept theoretically; it is another thing completely to see it play out in practice.
She also gave me some great advice for working with other teachers; some staff will be really receptive to working with you and your ideas and others will not be as much. Work closely with the faculty or two that are on board and then go from there. This has been fantastic advice and I’ve focused on building those relationships in the school with faculties who are on board and can see the value in the initiatives I am advocating for. Slowly other staff and faculties have and will continue to come around.
It is not until I reflect on these interschool network meetings now (and probably also having had a year’s worth of TL experience) that I’ve stopped to think about how the leadership role of the TL can be applied across and with other schools.
I think that will be a big takeaway for me and a lesson to inform my future practice for the upcoming year and into the future – I’ve already made huge gains transforming my own school culture and leading change from the middle in the domains of literacy as a whole school priority and in particular, digital literacy and AI’s future in education. I think next year and into the immediate future, I can think more and learn more about my leadership opportunities and practices as a TL across my local school network.