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The task of leading a team is a complex one. Just like the classroom you have to know who is in front of you , what their needs are and how to accomplish nits and bolts task whilst creating time and space for what is important. The urgent should not remove the important in many instances... its a line ball judgement call sometimes. All of you have seen the need to create more structure, greater clarity of purpose and time to focus on the important... like some action research, teaming and the sharing of experience, curriculum review and development and discussion on what good teaching and learning looks like, feels like... smells like...

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Much of my time is orientating staff and getting them up and running

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The leadership workshops were great in creating a context and getting me started but it feels like events have out stripped the training. There's a lot of 'tyranny of the urgent' which takes away from the ability to build on what I learned from the training.

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After going through the leadership workshops and attending the middle managers workshop in May- I have put a lot more emphasis on how to run the department meetings with a clear goal and focus.

Now that we almost have access to our budgets, it would be worth updating to include something about managing budgets/finance.

Leaders/Heads should be offering or running department PD sessions- this is something I am keen to do on a monthly basis next semester

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It's far more about team dynamics than I thought.
I thought there would be far more about logistics and task organisation.

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For Chinese department, sometimes we work across primary and secondary departments. Basically our role including holding professional development sessions (Chinese Department PD), doing teachers' appraisal, administrative management and plan/organise school Chinese language and culture events. April and Jesscia shared the work sometimes across. For example, Jessica will do class observation for a Primary Chinese teacher, as I am focused on CAL. Also we have team leaders respectively based on their teaching profession for CFL and CAL, who work even more closely with teachers on planning and teaching strategies.

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Hasn't really changed.
Still doing much the same.
Using a model which was set up by the previous HOD which allocates responsibility and the team are all comfortable with it.

Got a new maths support network up and running. This will be a source of contention in the future as it is massively confusing and doesn't meet the needs of the students in lower secondary (or their parents who don't understand it either) in my opinion. The kids like it which is good. Team is working to make it work. I am working make sure that we have a consistent approach as currently it is very much an individual teacher experience.

Role is mostly about team dynamics and fire fighting.

Collaborative planning.

We are working on making the IB Internal Explorations better.

Not gotten much done on the Habits of Mind as team often gets bogged down with trying to work out the syllabus.  Although we accept it I don't think we are using it.

Started sharing good practice.

Possibly spent too much time supporting one member of staff.

Finding consensus on matters of philosophy.

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-More emphasis on reflecting on practice and leadership (and with members of team)
-Attempt to make staff department meetings have an element of professional development and 'transformative' aspects, rather than a 'to-do' list.
-Undergoing more processes of 'norming' expectations for assessment and teaching practice across the English department
- Trying to offer more of a 'supporting' role in terms of instructional leadership (HoD as instructional leaders)
- Habits of mind- thinking about how to also impress on teachers that we should also teach positive character traits.
- There is more clarity now on the expectations of what department meetings should entail.
- In terms of practice, I find it is much easier to implement these new procedures this year, as team works well together, rapport has already been built.
-Oftentimes, many tasks that need to be accomplished (events, reports, parent communicaton, etc. etc. etc.) can detract from time being able to work on team building and professional development as a team. What might be helpful is if some time is devoted to team-based work during PD day led by department heads.

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-One of the changes in our department has been the larger focus on curriculum development and collaborating as a team.
- I have tried to move away from purely a management approach and allow individuals in the department to take control of events - for example each staff member was given responsibilities for Christmas concerts.
- With team during meetings, we have focused on sticking to agendas which has allowed for more constructive time. The team has worked to stay on task during meeting times.
- The level of commitment from ECE through to year 13 means that there are many events / activities that need to be lead throughout the school year. To do this effectively the amount of teaching time needs to be looked at for HOD PA.
- With my team we are trying to engage the Instrumental program into our department - however there is still not a clear enough connection between the departments.
- The PA team has worked very collaboratively together.

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- One of the things that we need to put reflective practice into the role. For example, we need to come up with guidelines to reflect on our role.
- Another thing we need to do is to is to put into our role about implementing the school wide initiatives such as "Habits of Mind".
- developing reflective practice in staff
- developing professional development in our departments.
- engaging in meetings that are productive and purposeful
- creating budgets that are purposeful
- integrating the curriculum with the new initiatives such as "Habits of Mind", the Philosophy and Objectives along with reflective practice
- engaging in action research in the department and in the classroom
-assisting the department in creating goals that are purposeful
- Michael Ianini's workshops have really gave me clarity on what to do in the department and how to approach the HOD. Every HOD should know the stages of success that we discussed in the workshops.
- The main issue throughout the school year has been that busyness in doing things on a daily basis usually supersedes any kind of goals that we really have. Focusing on the Norms and the goals have been difficult because usually other things get in the way.
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Hodders, consider the changes we have made in our thinking and practice so far this year... how has your job changed. Lets try and capture the change in emphasis...

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Hodders, consider the changes we have made in our thinking and practice so far this year... how has your job changed. Lets try and capture the change in emphasis...