Once you’ve hired a new staff member into your school, how often do you look at their LinkedIn page?
Is it fair to say very rarely? Why is that?
Maybe we are too scared to come up in a list as that snoopy person who was ‘looking at your profile’? Or maybe we are quick to ignore the experience that people bring to the school team outside of them being ‘Mary the Maths Teacher’ or ‘Muhammad the finance guy’.
As Adult Learning Principle #2 reminds us, the experience of our people matters a great deal. Our team-mates bring their lifetime of experience to the school or organisation, whether that is:
– From a teaching and learning perspective with their pedagogical approach.
– From a cultural perspective with their experiences leading and being part of groups
– Or with skillsets that they have picked up in former jobs or careers.
One short activity we like to do at the start of professional learning days is to have people share their ‘LinkedIn profile in a minute’ with the table, or with some people they are near. It can connect the group, lift the levels of professional respect they have for each other, and throughout the professional development session, you can encourage people to chime in with their insights beyond their regular thinking as the maths teacher or the finance guy!
The EC Team
#alwayslearning
