In the Fourth Century, Aristotle wrote in the Nicomachean Ethics that, “One swallow does not a summer make, nor one day.” Swallows, common throughout the Northern Hemisphere, are annual visitors who are eagerly awaited, and for many are the first signs of approaching summer. Aristotle used the comparison to remind his readers that a single moment of joy does not assure happiness for a lifetime, which is only achieved from virtuous living. My ‘swallows’ nevertheless are the wonderful, sometimes breathtaking moments or ideas which enrich my work in Adhyayan with schools. They are necessary to collect and recount, in the hope that we can arrive at the Indian Summer of consistent “good” practice in schools.
It’s 2019 and I’m in Mumbai, leafing through my back catalogue of Adhyayan school review notes, searching for ‘swallows’, examples of wonderful practice to share in a meeting with our associate assessors. While all of us are experienced teaching leaders, either still leading our own schools or working as consultants to support other leaders on their school improvement journey, we persistently create opportunities for learning from each other. I wanted to weave into the meeting some ‘great’ examples of school life, to illuminate how capturing and sharing great stories of practice can catalyse the understanding of what to look for.
As an assessor, it is rare that I leave any school without taking away a vivid memory of ‘goodness’ across the whole school community. I share these vignettes because they were as breathtaking for me to witness as an assessor as they are challenging for the school to scale across all its students and teachers.
So while you read these examples of swallows from each domain in our diagnostic, taken from school reviews between 2012 and 2019, ask yourself, how far is my school or network on the journey to a ‘good’ summer? How can I grow my school so that it is filled daily with flights of swallows in an unending Indian summer?
Teaching and Learning: The classroom is a place where students enjoy learning.
A seven-year-old skips down the stairs at the end of breaktime, singing as he goes, “I’m going to my class now, I’m going to my class now,” with a smile as broad as the stairs he is going down.
– What can you do to enable all students to feel positively about their classroom experience on a daily basis?
Leadership & Management: Staff and students understand the systems for putting across their points of view.
6 students have spent the week in the review team as internal assessors. They are sharing their experience with over 200 teachers about what it was like to observe classes, do book looks, talk with stakeholders and take learning walks around the school. The teachers listening love it. And there isn’t a trace of fear in the students’ voices. Four days earlier, when the internal assessor team was getting to know each other and their Adhyayan counterparts and agreeing how they were going to be with each other, one of the students, ten years old, said, “We are all equal here.” Everyone present, teachers, parents, and support staff, had raised their thumbs in the air in agreement.
– What can you do to encourage student voice across all your students?
The Child: Students say they feel safe and secure at school.
I stand at the school gate watching the day begin. The security guard has a broad smile and is greeting students, some by name. His demeanour defined his role in ensuring children’s safety and wellbeing far more accurately than his uniform or his job description. While he is employed to ensure the school’s security, his view of his role was much more visceral. For him, it is about making every student feel welcome and each parent confident their child is in safe hands.
– What can you do to enable all your staff to make students feel safe and secure?
The Curriculum: Students who show talent in numeracy receive work that extends their mathematical horizons.
Inside an anonymous white-walled classroom, I come across a Maths teacher and a student who was ahead of the curve. The teacher had tasked him to demonstrate the solution to a challenging problem on the board. He pulled himself off his chair with reluctance, but within moments was in the zone, chalk-surfing the board at top speed until he was halted by his teacher. “Hey, I don’t want any of your magic! You have to show them the working out!” The dialogue that then took place between the boy and his peers, moderated by their teacher, expanded the understanding and engagement of the other students (and I stayed much longer than I needed to).
– What would convince your teachers to enable more peer learning in their classrooms?
Teaching and Learning: The classroom has strong displays of students’ work that the teacher clearly values and keeps up to date.
The corridor is wide and open on one side. On the inside wall is a really large display board. Ranged around it, sitting on the floor, is a class of pre-primary students. Their teacher is standing at the board. It is the first lesson in a unit about the seasons. In her hand, the teacher has cut out paper bubbles that will soon be pinned to the board by the students, capturing key words and concepts they already know. On speaking with the teacher later, I discover that this display will grow across the board as the lesson continues, mapping their learning journey.
– How do you enable your display boards to talk about what students are studying and enquiring?
Leadership & Management: Leaders work alongside teachers to guide and model good practice and to monitor performance.
In the stillness of a late summer afternoon, a school leader sits on a bench alongside her young teacher in the shade. Their talk is about the lesson she has just witnessed. The teacher listens intently, there is a moment of stillness and then the questions emerge that will help her take the next step to increased student engagement.
– How regularly does every teacher get appreciation, feedback, support and guidance?
The Child: Students understand how to shape the rules of the school.
I am in conversation with a bright standard 10 student who has been tasked to take me round his school. He talks confidently with me about his school’s Student Parliament, and how its voice impacts the culture and even the rules of the school. When I asked him about his role, he turned to me, straight-faced, and said, “I have the most important role in the parliament.” He smiled at my quizzical look and said, “I am a citizen.”
– How empowered does every student feel about shaping the life of the school?
Community & Partnership: Parents are welcomed into the school by the principal and staff.
The event is a parent social evening with music. Their much-loved school leader, a priest, is on the dance floor, his white robe swirling around his legs as he joins the masses of parents dancing the “Dandiya”. While his performance spread virally on social media, his impact on his school community is much more long-lasting.
– How often do parents enjoy their visits to the school?
The Child: Around the school there is evidence of happy and smiling students.
I am in the remotest reaches of Arunachal Pradesh. The school is on a hill, surrounded by jungle. I am talking with the headmaster in the playground when he gestures to a student to join us. Long before he reaches, I can see that he is immersed in mud from head to toe, and still gently dripping. When asked to explain his condition, he tells how he and his friends constructed a mud slide onto which they had been swallow-diving. His teeth shine through the patina of mud as he gleefully recounts how much fun he has had. The gentle persuasion of his headmaster, convincing him to stop, speaks volumes about the quality of their relationship.
– How much good, clean, fun do students have every day?
Over the past 14 years, the goal of our Adhyayan collaborative school reviews, working with thousands of school stakeholders, has been to discover ‘what good looks like’. Our job is to support school leaders to transform the culture of their school communities from the appearance of ‘swallows’ to the onset of ‘summer’. These single pieces of evidence that I have collected on school reviews do not in themselves become evidence of a school’s goodness. A great moment morphs into ‘goodness’ when its essence is a tangible presence throughout the school, across each class, over the year. Not just the practice of a single inspirational lesson, section or stakeholder. When it is not just the security guard, but all members of the school community who commit to an agreed approach to welcome each other at the gate, the door to the classroom or the entrance to the field, ‘goodness’ is systemic. If you witness warm, rich relationships between all members of the school community inside the classroom and around the school and not just at random moments and between some people, then you know that relationships in this school are ‘good’.
Can I leave you with a request as a school leader or teacher? Identify one practice in your school which is tangible across every class, throughout the school and over a calendar year. And then ask yourself, when you are doing a book look, a learning walk, a classroom observation, or a conversation with a stakeholder, were you able to find strong evidence of ‘goodness’ in at least three of them?
Swallows don’t signify summer but gosh they give us the confidence and aspiration to make it to the season.
