Katie Morigi-Eades (PhD Researcher in School Leadership): What Good Leadership Looks Like

In this episode, Claire chats with Katie Morigi-Eades (a fellow parent at her daughter’s nursery) about her new role as a PhD education researcher, specialising in school leadership. They discuss what Katie has done so far and what others in the field believe good leadership in schools looks like.  Katie did not originally want to become a teacher; she wanted to be a musician. Graduating with a degree in music (and being able to play 7 instruments!), Katie went into retail where she soon found that she was enjoying training others so decided to embark upon a career in teaching. Her excellent rendition of ‘Skip to My Lou’ on the piano earned her a job in a Leeds primary school where she taught for 8 years. After management in the school changed and Katie came into some money, she decided it was the perfect time to pursue a Masters in Teaching and Learning but was advised that, due to her talent in that area, she should look into studying Leadership and Management instead. This is the route that Katie chose to follow and she has since taken up her new role as a PHD researcher, a role in which she admits she feels like a bit of an imposter after all her years in teaching! In the podcast, Katie discusses what effective leadership looks like in schools from first-hand experience and what research says about it. Claire and Katie also explore how the two correlate, and how they fit with OFSTED’s vision of what leadership should look like in schools. Katie also gives advice on things you can do to become a better leader at whatever level you are currently working.  KEY TAKEAWAYS • Leadership is about knowing your people, your profession and yourself.Before you can begin to lead other people, you should know yourself and what your values are, as well as having some expertise in the field in which you are leading. It is also necessary to know and understand the people you are leading, and what their strengths and challenges are. • Anyone can be a leader.Being a leader is as much to do with mindset as it is to do with other things. Sometimes, filling a leadership role that has previously been led by someone more experienced/someone who has done the role for a longer time, can feel intimidating but it’s about what you believe you can bring to the role as much as what has gone before. Ask yourself how you can do it, and then do it. • Be a member of a union.As well as the protection that membership of a union can provide, there are also CPD opportunities that are offered at either a free or discounted rate. • Sign up for associations.Many CPD opportunities are offered here too; not just in the form of events but also journal articles, audio recordings etc. • Get on Twitter.Twitter has a wealth of information shared not only by teachers, but also academics and researchers. There are many people sharing things for teachers, middle leaders and senior leaders on Twitter so it is a quick and free way to stay informed about the latest issues and developments in education. • Put yourself out there to find out how to become a better leader.In these times of budget cuts, it is necessary, now more than ever, to be more entrepreneurial in leadership roles and seek out other people who are doing the same as you in order to share good practice.  • You are not alone.Teaching is hard. Sometimes it feels too hard, but you are not alone. There are people who hear you and are trying to get research into the hands of people who can make decisions that will lead to better working conditions for teachers.  BEST MOMENTS “The first lecture I ever went to about leadership…I walked in and after 3 hours I walked out and suddenly thought, ‘This is what it feels like; this is what leadership should be.’” “When you’re in school you know, as a teacher, you think, ‘I’ll just do my job and my boss is my headteacher and I’ll do as I’m told to do,’ and then when you go away and you learn something new and you think, ‘Ooh maybe it wasn’t right.’” “I learned that leadership isn’t just about the person at the top of the school being in charge; I’ve learned that we’re all involved in it and if you want to be a successful leader, you have to understand your people. And that was the biggest thing I ever took away.” “If you look at academies and academy trusts, especially the multiple ones, the really, really big ones, they’ve got this strong leadership team in place. They have done it before. They know how it works. Compare it to a Local Authority school who have had the same headteacher for a long time: they bear a lot of the weight for that school because they feel alone and that’s a dangerous place to be, whereas MATs have got it; they know how to work it just like a business.” “I was a middle leader and I went on an NPQML and what does that teach me? Managing people. It doesn’t teach you how to lead people. You are expected to step up to the role and just go for it with nothing.” “I had to write a research proposal for my PHD… so I’m doing (the official term is) an explanatory, sequential, mixed-methods research… so it’s not active research; I’m not going to go in there and do it. My days of classroom practice have gone… so I will speak to teachers, ask them to do a questionnaire or a small survey – that’s my initial place to be – and then after that, I build on it with observations and talking to them and having conversations with real people in the workplace.” “[OFSTED] have essentially read the manual about… effective leadership… I’ve spoken to headteachers about it and they’ve said, “Yeah – on paper it looks brilliant: it’s exactly what matches to our values as leaders… We’ll have to wait and see won’t we. It’s still a bit of an experimental phase.” “There’s lots of research on school leadership. There’re big players in there like Kenneth Leithwood who’ve come up with 4 ways to do it and then there’re other people who’ve built on that… Professor Paul Miller, who’s my professor at university, and his colleague, Disraeli Hutton, have come up with 8 characteristics… The first one is to shape a vision of success for all. The other ones [are] to create a hospitable climate in the school; cultivate leadership in others; improve instruction in learning; managing people, data and processes and modelling expected behaviours… It’s all things that they have spoken to headteachers about or they’ve researched… and that’s what THEY feel effective leadership is. In schools, when I’ve researched it, without telling them what the characteristics are, they’ve said exactly those things, rather than OFSTED’s idea, which is interesting” “I strongly feel you have to know. As a leader you have to know what goes on. You have to have some level of expertise in there, because otherwise, you are leading blind.” “Every teacher should be a member of a union and if you are not, then you should be, even as leaders. I’m a member of the NAHT Edge which is a middle leader thing and they offer CPD that’s either free or discounted for teachers and for leaders. Go for it. Sign up for everything.” “Get on Twitter because people that I work alongside are big researchers in universities and they all have Twitter. They share their own work; they share other people’s work. That’s a quick way, quick and free way, to get access to something.” “[Leaders] have got a huge amount of things to do, especially with budget cuts and everything. They have to be more entrepreneurial… so work/life balance is tricky because when you go home as a leader, even though you might have done 12 hours in the day at school, you’re still going to be working, because you have to carry everybody else with you, and that’s very, very difficult.”“Second to quality teaching, leadership has the biggest impact on your pupils… Without successful leadership, what can you give to those children? What can you give to your staff? It’s the key to making your school a success.” “Ferrari, the racing team. They had a recent interview with their big team leader and he said, “I couldn’t do it without my staff – we’re all in this together.” And that speaks volumes, doesn’t it? If you’ve got somebody who’s Ferrari saying this, in school it should be the same.” “I’ve got friends who have wanted to be teachers all their lives and [one] left teaching (or her permanent job) to be a supply teacher and she said to me, “I don’t know what else I can do. I want to be a teacher. I’ve wanted to be a teacher for so long but where do I go?” “I’d sit on the M621 and I’d be in floods of tears because of everything that had happened that day. I’d have to process it somehow… and I’d do it again in the morning. I’d cry before I went to school. Do my day. Cry on the way home and it was a repeated pattern for so long.” “If I tell you anything, anything from being a teacher, it’s that I know exactly how you feel, and that’s the gap I want to bridge as a researcher… I’ve been you. I’ve done that job for 8 years. I’ve been in a high-pressured environment in a high-pressure school in a very challenging area where behaviour is a problem. I’ve seen it, I’ve done it, I’ve got the T-shirt. I wear my mental scars – I have them – and my job, the way I see myself, is that gap between what researchers say and what you are saying because I am that person in the middle. We hear you.”  VALUABLE RESOURCES Katie Morigi-Eades:• https://uk.linkedin.com/in/katie-morigi-eades-76a392194 • https://twitter.com/KatieMorigi   Professor Paul Miller and Professor Disraeli Hutton study: https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/how-leadership-influences-student-learning.aspxNAHT Edge: https://www.naht.org.uk/naht-edge/BERA (British Educational Research Association): https://www.bera.ac.uk/BELMAS (British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society): http://www.belmas.org.uk/NPQML (National Professional Qualification for Middle Leadership): https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-professional-qualification-for-middle-leadership-npqmlSimon Sinek - ‘Start with why’ TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA  ABOUT THE HOSTClaire Riley  Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide.  Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend.  The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.