Impact: Emerging Leaders Program - Impact Case Study

Bastow Institute of Educational Leadership Impact Case Study

Impact: Emerging Leaders Program

Supporting student voice and leadership

Participant: Warren Dawson

Assistant Team Leader, Nelson Park School

Completing Bastow’s Impact: Emerging Leaders program gave Warren Dawson of Geelong’s Nelson Park School the confidence and impetus he needed to become an agent for positive change within his school.

staff-to-student ratio, with around 110 teaching and nonteaching staff supporting almost 390 students across a junior and a senior campus.

Warren is now putting what he learned into practice to support a collegiate, high-performance culture among his colleagues and achieve a stronger student voice.

A valuable take-out for Warren was learning not just what he wanted to achieve for his school, but how to actually go about making it happen. The program instilled a better understanding of the theory behind affecting positive change, and how to plan and execute a change process.

This has helped him implement ideas and strategies more seamlessly within his team and with improved stakeholder participation.

After initially working in nursing and community services, Warren decided to pursue a career in education. He’d been teaching at Nelson Park School for almost four years when he applied to do the Impact program.

‘I’d had a growing interest in leadership for a long time,’ Warren explains. ‘I particularly wanted to learn how to motivate people and generate high performing teams. So when I read about Bastow’s Impact program, I knew it was the right course for me.

‘The program re-focused and re-energised my mind and brought everything back into perspective,’ he says. ‘It reminded me that there’s a whole other world out there, and it really got me thinking about how I could help bring about positive change in my school.’

Nelson Park is a Prep to Year 12 special school for students who have mild intellectual disabilities. Because of its specialised focus, the school has a relatively high

Bastow | Impact: Emerging leaders program

At the time he enrolled in the Impact program, Warren was teaching in the school’s senior campus (Years 10, 11 and 12) and decided to focus his change project on improving leadership opportunities for senior students.

Soon after completing the 12-month program, Warren was given his first leadership opportunity. At the start of 2015 he relocated to the junior campus as assistant team leader for Years 3 and 4. In 2016, he moved year levels again, to become assistant team leader for Years 1 and 2.

Each time he moved was an opportunity to apply what he learned to motivate and improve collegiality within these teams.

‘For anybody who wants to become a leader and wants to do it really well, this Bastow program is absolutely the best thing to do,’ Warren says. ‘In the past I’d wondered whether I have the skills to become a good leader. Since finishing the Impact program, I recognise that I do have what it takes. And I’m also much more adept at helping senior colleagues to plan for and lead change and make sure it’s effective change.’

Self-discovery strengthens relationships As he progressed through the Impact program, including completing a DiSC personality profile and an emotional intelligence assessment, Warren experienced an invaluable process of self-discovery.

‘By far the most positive impact for me was how the program gave me a stronger understanding of myself as a colleague and leader,’ he says. ‘It’s important to be fully aware of what strengths and weaknesses one brings to the team and to be mindful of how they can impact on the team dynamic, both positively and negatively.

‘For example, I’d tended to be quite gung-ho and forthright in my attitude before – always with good intentions of opening up dialogue – and hadn’t realised the impact my confident manner could have on other people who operated differently to me,’ he explains.

‘By far the most positive impact for me was how the program gave me a stronger understanding of myself as a colleague and leader.’

Pictured: Marg Corlette and Warren Dawson

The program also taught Warren how to better understand the personality traits of other team members and adjust his own style to manage those relationships more effectively.

He now feels ‘much more equipped to deal with all sorts of people – and that leads to much better outcomes’.

Becoming a more mature leader

Nelson Park School’s enrolments have doubled in recent years. The resulting pressure this places on staff increases the need for collegiate, high-functioning teams and a workplace culture of open communication and trust.

Demonstrating inclusive, collaborative and accountable leadership within his team is Warren’s way of supporting this high-performance culture.

‘Warren’s very mature for a relatively young person as it is, but his maturity went to another level after doing the Bastow program, particularly in regard to managing people,’ Marg says. ‘He had a really tricky year last year, changing campuses and year levels and working with an entirely new team. He went from teaching young adults to teaching children, as well as helping lead a large early years work team, and he coped very well.’

The Impact program gave him the opportunity to meet emerging and established leaders from other schools and learn from their experiences. ‘Hearing from others who’d already been working in and leading teams provided me with a valuable insight into the complexities of managing staff interactions, meeting curriculum outcomes, working toward the strategic plans of a school, and managing the politics of working in a school environment,’ he explains.

‘The program really focused on how to lead change to create a highly effective and high performing school,’ he says. ‘If you’ve got staff who aren’t all on board, well you can preach to them until you’re blue in the face and that won’t necessarily mean everyone’s pulling their weight or working as one team. Building trust and maintaining open communication are essential.’

Marg Corlette has known Warren for several years, dating back to the days before he became a teacher and was a support worker in her classes at Nelson Park.

‘Not many of us like change,’ says Marg. ‘I saw Warren being very patient and understanding when people came to him stressed about how to do this or that in the new reporting system. In the whole year, I never saw him lose his temper, get frustrated or be short with anyone.’

Increasing engagement with parents

Marg was particularly impressed with how Warren engaged all members of the team in planning discussions and sought to strengthen collaboration.

Warren also initiated several events during 2015 to attract parents to the school, including parent-teacher information nights, Father’s Day activities, a family picnic and an Easter parade.

‘As teachers, a big part of our job is about getting on with other staff members and our work teams to make sure we collectively deliver the best outcomes for our students,’ she explains. ‘So we need to be very patient and flexible with each other as well as with our students, and that’s what Warren is so good at doing.

‘Because we’re a special school, most of our students travel here by bus and some take as long as two hours to get here,’ Marg explains. ‘So it can be tricky getting their parents to come to the school and be more involved in their child’s learning.

‘He’s very approachable and good at giving people opportunities to express how they feel,’ she says. ‘He persists with managing challenging collegiate relationships and working to find common ground and a shared approach to student learning.’

Marg observed Warren actively supporting improvements to planning, teaching and reporting practices by providing clarity for the team around the reasons for the changes.

His leadership was particularly evident during the transition

Bastow | Impact: Emerging leaders program

to using a new electronic assessment and reporting system. Doing the Impact program gave Warren the confidence to volunteer to support a senior colleague with implementing the system, including training and supporting staff in its use.

‘Warren was really determined to improve how we engaged with parents; he even called people directly if we didn’t hear back from them,’ she says. ‘The events were really successful, with lots of parents turning up. The parents loved it and the kids loved seeing their parents here.’

‘As teachers, a big part of our job is about getting on with other staff members and our work teams to make sure we collectively deliver the best outcomes for our students.’ Marg Corlette

Pictured: Warren with students

‘We already had an SRC, but there was no solid framework for it. I saw it as a real opportunity to build leadership skills in these young people and give them something to aspire to .’ Pictured: Coaching team

Bastow | Impact: Emerging leaders program

Pictured: Warren with students

Giving students opportunities to lead The change project Warren chose while doing the Impact program focused on developing a student leadership package. He was teaching senior year students at that time and identified a need to strengthen the role of the Student Representative Council (SRC).

‘We already had an SRC, but there was no solid framework for it,’ Warren says. ‘I saw it as a real opportunity to build leadership skills in these young people and give them something to aspire to. They face big life issues and it’s important to help them develop good social and interpersonal skills so they’re confident enough to get out there and participate in society.’

Warren reviewed the SRC from the ground up and looked to the operations of the Victorian Student Representative Council for inspiration. To build ownership among the students, he involved them in the process of developing the vision and branding for the revamped SRC. As a result, regular assemblies were introduced at the senior campus to give student leaders a platform for speaking in front of an audience, sharing information and developing their leadership skills. The SRC election process was also strengthened, with greater emphasis on the quality of nomination speeches and candidates demonstrating their leadership abilities.

Opportunities were created for SRC members to go out into the community to represent the school. ‘This year they attended a regional SRC convention, where they

represented themselves and the school really well,’ Warren says. ‘They also attended a performance on the waterfront by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra – they were just in awe of this orchestra.

‘In the past, these kids may not have done something like that,’ he adds. ‘It’s great to see them finding their voice, both within the school and in the wider community.’

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