• Middle Leaders are, above all, close to children and learning: that is the heart of the work. Be clear about how you keep in touch with learning across your team and be resolute in protecting the time you allocate.

• Develop the culture of the open classroom. Make a point of being in and around classes, talking to children, giving positive feedback. Be proactive.

• On the classroom door put a poster which says, ‘what have you learnt this lesson? Agree to use it to reinforce whole class and individual reflection.

• As an effective middle leader you need to be able to get to know the people in your team, identify and acknowledge their strengths, recognise their worth and potential and, through this, empower them to take risks and improve. Make sure that you also acknowledge and value the work of teaching assistants and other support staff.

• Deliberately shift the vocabulary from ‘my team’ to ‘our team’.

• Publish times when you are available to your team.

• Use the head and other senior leaders to recognise the commitment and endeavor of members of your team – this gives them a real opportunity to show they know about and understand the work of individual teachers.

• Be seen to act upon good suggestions rather than just acknowledge them and then doing nothing about it. In this and other ways, be an active listener with your team and colleagues.

• Be aware of principles of emotional intelligence. People work for people and your team will be successful if you are able to work with and through people. Tasks matter, but don’t be too task-oriented.

Nobody is ever opposed to high expectations, though, in practice, they often mean quite different things to different people. Articulate and exemplify what high expectations mean in the team, in each year, at each level.

• Use data with student and staff to raise expectations, to challenge preconceptions and stereotypes. Develop dialogue within the team which progressively moves from an expectation for a whole group to focus on the attainment of individual pupils. Train staff to understand and interpret the internal and external data they are being given.

• Recognise that teachers in local partner primary schools also know a great deal about what we should expect from children in our schools. Find ways of building dialogue, for example in looking at samples of Year 5, 6, 7 and 8 work in your area, or reviewing schemes of work together.

Open up dialogue about display areas, policy and the ways in which display is more than an attractive covering for dingy walls. Ask how does this environment value and support learning? Create displays that give the message ‘we learn here’.

• Agree together how rooms should be set out to meet learning needs and provide a degree of consistency for children.

• Make display an item for discussion in meetings and workshops.

• Be clear about your team’s policy on learning environment and how it relates to wider school policy.

Move department sessions around team bases and provide some time for the ‘host’ to share an element of good practice.
When you meet, plan a clear, thoughtful agenda and keep to it. In big teams a bulletin or newsletter allows you to communicate basic administrative information to your fellow professionals. Overall, be clear in separating maintenance and development.

• Raise self esteem by encouraging positive comments. Support one another!

• Plan inter-department meetings to share best practice.

Agree your priorities for development together and make sure you keep a clear focus on learning. Involve the wider team in planning sessions and give other staff opportunities to take a lead.

• Ensure lesson observations are done not just by the team leader but by everybody so that the variety of teaching styles can be observed.

• Remove blame, show trust and offer a balance of challenge and support.

Be clear that the area of work in which you are engaged needs to be presented as part of the wider picture of the school to parents, governors and the community. Don’t assume that others will do this on your behalf. Find out where responsibility for community/media relations lies within the leadership team and be proactive.

• Involve governors in your work, either in enlisting them as volunteers, in using them as critical friends or in drawing on their specialist knowledge.

• Be bold and imaginative: Parent and community perceptions are vitally important – involve them, for example, reviewing arrangements for parent’s evenings and homework. Communicate the expectation that all members of the team will, in some way, contribute to this.

• Identify areas of innovation and build these into the team development plan.

• Keep asking the question: ‘how will we know if this has made a difference to the children here’?

• Develop a culture of constructive criticism.

• Ask pupils in a particular year group to keep a learning journal for a week.

• Use team time to look at samples of pupil’s work collectively – comparing the work of parallel groups or looking at wider issues of progression. This will also give you an opportunity to include classes you teach in the process. Emphasise that evaluation is about children’s learning, openness and collective improvement.

<SOURCE: THE HEART OF THE MATTER NATIONAL COLLEGE FOR SCHOOL LEADERSHIP>