Celebrating success gives us stories to tell. We remember the successful students and importantly students remember them too. It's important that we talk about those students though, otherwise the tales will quickly become irrelevant. How to do this is important and plays a role in the culture of our classroom and who we want to be.
The success stories of others should always be book ended by what current students can do. This student achieved this grade and if they can do it, so can you. Another student produced this piece of work and this excellence is our minimum.
To achieve this though we must start by celebrating current success. That gives us the start of our story that we can tell in years to come. Future posts will consider the evidence we may need to have to add weight to the story but the next few posts will be about celebrating the success now to give us those stories later. It has to be a long term plan.
During my teacher training I was told by a year 10 student that the best way to get a commendation from a teacher was to be really badly behaved for the first half of the lesson, strike some sort of deal with the teacher and then be good for the second half. It’s hard to pretend, even a decade later, that there aren’t times that this student's plan wouldn’t work. There is something inevitable about the good eggs falling behind with the amount of praise and reward they receive. School‘s are, rightly in my opinion, moving away from detailed written feedback in books. However, this was probably the best channel we had for communicating with the top students the quality of their work. With that lost, we need new channels.
So how do the the senior leadership team celebrate success and learn the stories that will shape the culture?
Firstly, it is important that they create opportunities for success. They will not learn without engaging and students will only engage if they have ways of doing so. Leaders can't rely on stories past down to them and need to have their own that they can tell with the enthusiasm that comes with seeing first hand.
Secondly, there needs to be consistency in the way students achievements are rewarded. Systems take time to build and even though the excitement of receiving a head teachers award will develop a natural life cycle it is crucial that students understand the system and what it is they are working towards. If the life cycle feels as though it is coming to an end it needs to be extended, repackaged or re-branded rather than torn up and cast aside. It will take time for it to embed itself in the culture of the school and become part of the way the school operates.
Finally, the rewards need to be part of the school life. Yes, it is nice to surprise students with an award but students shouldn't arrive to collect a certificate not knowing why they are collecting it. If there is not a ladder for students to climb as they try to achieve and rather, it is single and exceptional action that is being rewarded, the student needs to have been told by their teacher why they have been nominated. It shouldn't be up to the senior leader to read off a piece of paper why they are there, to the surprise of the student.
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