Last September I started out on a course called Developing as a Leader (DAAL). It is a pilot course being run by Scottish Borders Council, West Lothian Council and Moray House. It is exploring Teacher Leadership within schools and how we can begin to enact change within our own department and schools. The course has involved reading, discussion time at Moray House, reflecting writing and assessment.

As we are nearing the end of the course we are in the final stages of writing our learning plans and one of the priorities I gave myself was to establish a professional reading group within school. In the past 9 months I have had to read a wide variety of material – of varying shades of “accessibility”!! Some excellent and some as dry as the Sahara desert!

I took the plunge and sent out the invitational email to all staff to judge the level of interest. Within just a few minutes I already had 4 replies! Imagine my surprise!! By the time I sent the second email, with details of the first meeting date and time and the article we were going to look at I had 22 responses!! I was totally overwhelmed by the positive response and humbled by the fact that so many staff wanted to come and participate in the group with me. (we have a staff of around 56 in total)

We had our first meeting on Thursday lunchtime. Although not all the teachers who had initially replied were able to come (other commitments) about 17 came along. We read and discussed the first half of chapter 7 “Enacting Change” in Fullan and Hargreaves book “Professional Capital – Transforming Teaching in Every School, 2012”. This was a piece I had to read earlier in the year and many of the 10 steps really spoke to me. We had around 40 mins of (largely!!) focused discussion and left with some points for future action. I stressed that the group wasn’t mine – it was everyone’s and all were welcome to bring along literature or topics to look into.

I have already set the date for the second meeting and really hope that this can be the start of some small, but positive changes within the school!