Once upon a time there were three English teachers. They worked hard, cared for their students and their colleagues and over time were grateful to receive promotions. But they never stopped reading stories.
In leadership positions, they were asked to make judgements of their colleagues and of teachers and leaders in other schools. Quality assurance is important, they thought. There’s no harm in that.
But they began to feel uncomfortable. As they had never stopped reading stories, they would hear and see stories in a school that were being ignored. Trying to capture why a school was working or not working shouldn’t be the job of an outsider. Surely the school held many stories within it. If those stories could be told and heard and pondered, wasn’t that the way for the school to know itself better and become better?
The power of knowing and telling your story has been recognised in industry for decades. The marketing world has always known it. It was how Stephen Denning transformed knowledge sharing in the World Bank. Kendall Haven and Tony Sinanis have written on the power of story for school leadership and learning. Baroness Susan Greenfield’s latest book, ‘Mind Change’ proposes that the ability to shape and to make sense of story can help to maintain our human capacity to reason with empathy in this technological age.
School review – that involves deep self-evaluation, not just external judgement – is notoriously difficult. How do you know when your fish-tank is getting murky, if you’re swimming in it day to day? (with thanks to Sue Roffey for the metaphor) It’s hard – but equally, you don’t want to wait until someone tells you it needs a clean!
Our approach to school review supports schools to know and tell their own story, for two main reasons:
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Where leaders are able to articulate a deep and complex story we think there is more coherence, clarity, alignment of values and expectations, as story is the primary form by which human experience is made meaningful.
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When members of a school community are asked to share their stories, it heightens their awareness of their histories, their values and their investment in their schools.