Blogging, morale and other assorted niggles

This is the first time I have blogged since last August for the simple reason that it is something that could be so important to my teaching as a reflective practitioner but that has to be moved to the bottom of the list so only seems to happen in the holidays. I am aware that there is a quote somewhere about time and there being no such thing as not enough so on the blogging side of things, I must make more effort to make time. But the issue of time and workload is so very now. I have been on twitter for the first time in ages today and read interesting articles about teacher morale and some excellent posts by Geoff Barton, Doug Belshaw and Mark Clarkson on the issue of staff morale, workload pressures and the perception of teaching from outsiders. And I agree with everything they say. But I feel as though somewhere along the line we are missing a trick. We have the power and ability within our schools to make staff feel good. We have the ability to thank our colleagues for all that they do, school leaders have a responsibility to evaluate the requests they make of staff and decide whether we need to make our 22 lesson a week teachers jump through hoops to tick boxes, we have the power to control how our teachers feel every time they step through the door of a classroom, or the school itself. I am fortunate to work with an exceptional middle leader who I think is a good example of someone who keeps morale high in her faculty. She asks staff to do only that which has to be done, she goes into battle on initiatives that she feels are unfair, she listens to staff who say 'I can't and finds ways to enable them so that they can. She is not a soft touch, far from it, she is an outstanding teacher and an outstanding leader (as certified by an Ofsted inspector) and as a result the people in my school that work with her are a happy group of people. We can't change the way the outside world perceives us. We can't stop the government and Ofsted wanting to judge us. But in our school, in our own classroom we can strive to make sure that we value one another and take responsibility for morale. Headteachers need to be brave enough to challenge tick box exercises that make no difference. Ofsted want to see high standards of attainment, strong learning and teaching, good behaviour and excellent leadership. They want students to make progress and actually I am okay with all of those things. But how schools achieve that is up to them and I think we need to take a more autonomous approach to how we run our schools. We need to value every teacher and appreciate the contribution that they make. We need to use positive language with one another. We need to work to find shortcuts that will support our staff without compromising our students. And sometimes we need to be brave enough to say no to things that will destroy morale without having any benefit to learning. Please don't think I am saying it is easy or that the approaches being taken by those in power are in some way meaningless - I am not saying that at all. I just think that low staff morale stems from a feeling of stress and stress is the result of feeling that you are not capable of doing that which is asked of you - a lack of control. Therefore the first step to improving morale has to be with what we can control and that is in how we work with and support one another - headteachers and leadership teams have more power on this issue than any one but it can start with any of us.