A School Built On Ethos

In A School Built on Ethos: Ideas, assemblies and hard-won wisdom, James Handscombe explores how schooling is more than gaining qualifications, how learning is more than exams, and how academic success comes more readily to those who have grasped this idea. Harris Westminster Sixth Form has had enormous success in providing an academic education for students of all socio-economic backgrounds. This success is grounded in the development of a scholarly ethos that guides students and staff into successful habits - driven by a clear vision for the community and communicated through everything that the school says and does. In this book, founding principal James Handscombe takes readers through the school's development and illustrates its journey by sharing a selection of the assemblies that have underpinned and elucidated its ethos. In doing so he offers guidance on how such a staple of school life can be used to shape a community, and shares transferable lessons on how assemblies can be planned and delivered effectively. Furthermore, James discusses the challenges the school faced during its creation and offers an improved understanding of how academic and scholarly learning can be delivered and developed in a school - whether it be newly formed or already established. He also asks the fundamental question of how schools can encourage and enable disadvantaged young people to aspire to and engage in academic enquiry. Suitable for both established and aspiring school leaders, especially those who are thinking about the kind of school they would like to run and how they can shape it.

Written by Armando Di-Finizio, A Head Full of Ethos: A holistic guide to developing and sustaining a positive school culture is a head teacher's insightful account of how to go about developing a shared vision and blending it into a school's culture and day-to-day running.When one or more aspects of a school's running or curriculum breaks down, all too often the leadership team will jump from one idea to another in a bid to remedy the problem. This, however, can lead to blurred vision and possible confusion. Leaders may then wonder why the remedies aren't working and are likely to scramble for more, hopefully better, ideas.Armando Di-Finizio, however, believes that the key to success lies in the school's ethos and in the daily manifestation of its underpinning principles.In A Head Full of Ethos, Armando weaves his experiences and the lessons he's learned from three decades of successful school leadership into an engaging illustration of the principles which have supported him in his varied settings. In so doing, he explores the key elements that contribute to nurturing a positive school ethos and cultivating a healthy teaching and learning environment.The book examines the many interconnected cogs of a sustainable ethos - an ethos which will become the driving force in inspiring the school's students to flourish and its staff to grow professionally. In turn, it empowers school leaders at all levels with the means to take more ownership of what they do, and imbues them with more courage in relation to their convictions and decision-making.Suitable for middle and senior leaders in all school settings.

Educational books can help teachers engage in quality CPD (Continuing/Continuous Professional Development), but how do we find the time to read the latest literature? And if we have the time, how do we know what to choose or what we should do with what we read? Born from a real-life book club, The Edu-Book Club helps teachers and school leaders to navigate the wealth of evidence-based CPD by bringing together key publications on teaching, assessment, and curriculum. It shows how the ideas and research presented in these publications can be translated into everyday classroom practice, to help teachers and school leaders develop and inform these practices for their own professional and classroom development. Drawing on a diverse range of books and including practical advice on how to set up and run a book club, each book club session covers: The rationale for choosing that title An interview with the author with accompanying visual notes A summary of the key ideas Key takeaways and implications for classroom practice With an accompanying website featuring the video interviews and additional resources, accessible at https://glt-alwayslearning.co.uk/posts/glt-friends-book-club-edu-book-club, this will be a valuable resource for teachers and school leaders at all stages of their careers.

This isn’t your average book about pastoral care – it is a no-nonsense exploration of the knowledge base that excellent pastoral practitioners, be they aspiring, new, or experienced, need to excel in their roles. Written for teaching and non-teaching pastoral leaders alike, this book combines theory, evidence, and research with best practice and on-the-job experience to help you on the way to becoming the very best pastoral leader that you can be. It is written for pastoral leaders by a current pastoral leader, reflecting the reality of our roles – the extraordinary pressures and challenges that we face, sometimes in just getting through the day.

Spanning the comprehensive perspective of self, school and system, this tour-de-force is both well-informed and uplifting whilst at the same time being full of practical advice and guidance, rooted in the author's front-line role leading a school. Tom Rees's depth of thinking and knowledge of leadership, and his ability to translate that into both a structure and tone that will be relevant to leaders in schools today, will resonate with leaders at levels. The book is brilliantly supplemented with the thoughts and views of colleagues spanning the whole educational spectrum, including: Sir David Carter, Clare Sealy, Daisy Christodoulou, MAT CEOs, Julia Kedwards, Stephen Tierney and Andrew Morrish, plus his very own actual dad!

Paul Bambrick-Santoyo (Managing Director of Uncommon Schools) shows leaders how they can raise their schools to greatness by following a core set of principles. These seven principles, or "levers," allow for consistent, transformational, and replicable growth. With intentional focus on these areas, leaders will leverage much more learning from the same amount of time investment. Fundamentally, each of these seven levers answers the core questions of school leadership: What should an effective leader do, and how and when should they do it. Aimed at all levels of school leadership, the book is for any principal, superintendent, or educator who wants to be a transformational leader. The book includes 30 video clips of top-tier leaders in action. These videos bring great schools to you, and support a deeper understanding of both the components of success and how it looks as a whole. There are also many helpful rubrics, extensive professional development tools, calendars, and templates. Explores the core principles of effective leadership Author's charter school, North Star Academy in Newark, New Jersey, received the highest possible award given by the U.S. Department of Education; the National Blue Ribbon Print version includes an instructive DVD with 30 video clips to show how it looks in real life. E-book customers: please note that details on how to access the content from the DVD may be found in the e-book Table of Contents. Please see the section: "How to Access DVD Contents" Bambrick-Santoyo has trained more than 1,800 school leaders nationwide in his work at Uncommon Schools and is a recognized expert on transforming schools to achieve extraordinary results.

This volume explores the implications of different approaches to helping student teachers to learn from practising teachers. It puts particular emphasis on an approach based on research into that expertise and designed to give student teachers access to it.