Whether you're already leading or you have it on your radar, this book's for you. Don't expect a textbook full of highfalutin theories though, this book is rammed full of practical ideas that you can use instantly to help you in your current role or to get the position you want. How do you create a brilliant team? What is needed to establish an awesome ethos? How do you do those difficult personnel things? How do you make an impact? Answers to all of these questions and more are based on the combined 100 plus years of the authors' leadership experience in a wide range of educational settings. You'll find a cornucopia of pick and mix tips, strategies and stuff that really works and will make your leadership brilliant! Leadership doesn't come from formulae or from the latest list of government standards. Neither does it come from the school handbook or a 'values' poster in the staffroom. If you pick up 100 different leadership books you'll find 100 different nuanced definitions. Fundamentally, brilliant leadership is inspiring people to go the extra mile. There's a difference between 'outstanding' and 'brilliant'. Brilliant is self-made, inside out, creative and beyond the bounds of any simple description. Brilliance is a calling and brilliant practitioners go well beyond the call of duty. Middle leaders are the backbone of any school. At their best they challenge, manage, plan, develop and inspire colleagues to make learning brilliant for kids. Middle leadership covers a broad spectrum of roles and titles: curriculum leader, pastoral leader, key stage coordinator, subject coordinator, head of department, school leader, head of year, school leadership, head of house, head of faculty, subject leader. This book is aimed at anyone in middle leadership, regardless of job title, whether long in the tooth, new to leadership or wanting to get into it. Dip into this book and you'll find a wide range of tools, strategies, advice and top tips to help you be your brilliant best. Gary, Chris and Andy cover the myriad of issues facing middle leaders with their customary mix of good humour and solid, experience-informed advice. Topics covered include: starting a new role; whether in a new school or following internal promotion, what your colleagues and the kids will expect of you, identifying personal strengths and areas for further development, shifting your focus from your to-do list to your to-be list, having an impact, building rapport and a team ethos, planting seeds of positivity across the school, tips for holding effective meetings, how to plan improvement which works for your team and meets the expectations of senior leaders, planning, implementing and evaluating change, dealing with negative colleagues, overcoming issues and personnel problems, understanding and owning your thinking, celebrating successes, modelling and sharing best practice and developing a brilliant team. The Art of Being Brilliant series was a finalist in the 2017 Education Resources Awards in the Educational Book Award category.

A pep talk in your pocket This short, small, highly illustrated book will fill you to the brim with happiness, positivity, wellbeing and, most importantly, success! Andy Cope and Andy Whittaker are experts in the art of happiness and positive psychology and The Art of Being Brilliant is crammed full of good advice, instructive case studies, inspiring quotes, some funny stuff and important questions to make you think about your work, relationships and life. You see being brilliant, successful and happy isn't about dramatic change, it’s about finding out what really works for you and doing more of it! The authors lay down their six common-sense principles that will ensure you focus on what you’re good at and become super brilliant both at work and at home. A richly illustrated, 2 colour, small book full of humour, inspiring quotes and solid advice A great read with a serious underlying message – how to foster positivity and bring about success in every aspect of your life Outlines six common-sense principles that will help you ensure you are the best you can be

On a good day, being a primary school teacher is the best job in the world. However, in the interests of grounding The Art of Being a Brilliant Primary Teacher in pure realism, Andy Cope and Stuart Spendlow readily acknowledge that it can also be the worst. The purpose of this book is to help you have more amazing days by inspiring and challenging you to be the best version of you because, at your best, you're flippin' awesome! Andy and Stuart use their experience, studies and 'what if?' moments combined with their 'don't judge us' attempt at humour to bring you a fun, slightly provocative, thoughtful and motivational read. This book isn't riddled with lectures and theories from old professors of centuries ago. While it may be true that teaching was easier in the 'good old days' we reckon those days are long gone so our focus is on the here and now of teaching. These new days require some refined thinking and this book is simply designed to help you to be a brilliant primary school teacher whatever the weather (including wet playtime). Embrace the power of positive psychology, lift your happiness levels, discover tips and tricks to enhance your practice and get ready for some seriously brilliant primary teaching with this innovative, practical and positive guide. Andy and Stuart tell it like it is, without preaching. This is their light-hearted, thought-provoking take on modern primary teaching. For all primary teachers - from newly qualified teachers to senior leadership team members - who want to become, quite simply, brilliant.

Today the myriad skills needed to be an amazing middle leader in schools can seem mind-boggling. What's more Middle Leaders are taking up the leadership reins after gaining experience for far fewer years than ever before.Whether you are new to this role or are more experienced and aspiring to become a school leader, this book will give you the vital information you need in order to understand what is really important about your role and how to improve your key skills.

To make the best decisions possible, middle leaders need to have a nuanced understanding of the consequences of their actions. In this pragmatic book, Adam Robbins aims to boost their role-specific expertise to help them achieve that goal - and offers them a preferable alternative to learning from their mistakes. Instead of relying on generic leadership theories, Middle Leadership Mastery collates perspectives from psychology and cognitive science to share evidence-informed guidance on a wide range of topics - from supporting staff and students in crisis and managing wellbeing, to quality-assuring teaching and curriculum design. Adam Robbins draws on his sixteen years' experience of teaching in a deprived area to illustrate his points with stories and anecdotes from the front line, demonstrating how middle leaders can better understand their context and deliver the best outcomes from a variety of starting points.

p>In Middle Leadership for 21st Century Schools: From compliance to commitment, Bill Lowe sets out for middle leaders the essential elements of a contemporary leadership approach that will help them successfully navigate a rapidly changing educational landscape. The position of middle leader is one of the most challenging in any workplace. But knowing how to lead a team effectively will ensure that you, as a middle leader, have the greatest possible impact both on your team and on school improvement. In Middle Leadership for 21st Century Schools, Bill expertly combines the latest educational leadership research with anecdotal reports about a wide range of real-life school experiences, giving you the insights to help you establish yourself and strengthen your influence in the role. He shares impactful advice on boosting productivity both your own and your team's and offers guidance on how to succeed through people-focused leadership, rather than by using data as a weapon. Covering a range of issues from dealing with conflict and difficult conversations to building and maintaining your professional image this book reveals the how of leadership when applied to the day-to-day demands of the school setting. Well-established leadership and management ideas are identified, alongside a wealth of powerful strategies that work in the modern education world but this book also goes beyond that. Importantly, it uses your own experiences of being a leader and being led to illustrate key points so that the theories can be seen in practice . Furthermore, the act of reflecting on practice and experience is built into this book, providing honest reflection and current experience reflection activities that invite you to consider things that you have seen, been subjected to and experienced first-hand during your time in education. You will also have opportunities to think about how you might have done things differently and how you will approach things in the future. Suitable for both established and aspiring middle leaders in primary and secondary schools.

Celebrating Teachers: Making a difference, written by Gary Toward and Chris Henley, is a feel-good celebration of all that is great about teachers and teaching - and an exploration of the difference teachers make and how they do it. Forewords by Ben Bailey Smith (aka Doc Brown) and Sir Anthony Seldon. Gary Toward and Chris Henley believe that teaching is the best and most important profession. Now, you might argue that it would be medicine that should take that accolade - as medics save lives and mend people. But teachers create lives and 'make' people. They, in fact, create medics! This book celebrates the superhero of the classroom: the teacher. Teachers make a difference, and often that difference is life-changing. In this book, Gary and Chris look at some of the many cases where such a difference has been made and examine exactly what it was that made such an impact on the life of the young person - and they also highlight the key approaches that teachers might want to try out in their own classroom, with their own pupils. The authors link the real-life case study stories to what educational research and cognitive science tell us, and point the way for all teachers to adopt, adapt and develop these effective strategies and approaches in their own practice. And, in sharing these inspiring stories, Gary and Chris hope to offer an antidote to the negativity that too often circulates in the media around education and the teaching profession. An uplifting and insightful read for all teachers and educators.

Foreword by Jaz Ampaw-Farr. Forget data. Forget league tables. Forget the national curriculum. Teachers are the true weather gods in education. The default outlook in schools at present, however, seems to be 'gloom'. Our schools' staff are under relentless pressure, and their ever-increasing workloads can make it easy to forget about the humans they work with. So what can teachers do to bring back the sunny weather and make pupils' school lives more joyous? Gary, Mick and Chris believe that the answer lies in harnessing the power of praise and positivity. In The Decisive Element they offer an uplifting antidote to the anxiety by sharing praise focused techniques that will help teachers and school leaders create an ethos of enthusiasm: one that reduces stress, fuels ambition and builds confidence for staff and pupils alike. Crammed full of sound research, fresh ideas and top tips, this manifesto for positive mindsets celebrates the value of meaningful, impactful praise and shines a light on the myriad ways positivity can be unleashed to spark pupils' motivation and natural curiosity for learning. The book draws upon the authors' vast experience and anecdotal insights to provide sage guidance on how to create a self-sustaining positive climate for learning, and contains a wealth of practical strategies to ramp up the feel-good factor in the school setting so that staff and pupils can feed off each other's enthusiasm. It also flips the script on the stresses and strains of modern schooling by offering a more light-hearted perspective on teachers' and pupils' day-to-day interactions encouraging school staff to be proud of what they do and empowering them to make an even bigger difference in the lives of the young people in their care. Suitable for anyone lucky enough to work in education or with children. The quoted text on the cover of this title has been extracted from Ginott, H. (1972), Teacher and Child: A Book for parents and teachers (NY: Macmillan), p. 15. The Decisive Element has been named the Bronze Winner in the education category of the 2018 INDIES Book of the Year Awards.

Martha, Emily and Ben are thriving teachers. In Thrive they share their personal experiences and demonstrate how you too can thrive during the tricky training year, the daunting NQT year and the crucial RQT year. Using their collective insights, and plenty of evidence-informed strategies and advice, they detail how you can get to grips with the classroom basics - from behaviour management and lesson planning to differentiation and providing for SEND - and effectively continue your professional development. This book is not just a survival manual to help teachers get through their first three years in teaching. Nor is it an academic text that has been written by authors who have only a distant memory of what it takes to stand in front of a class of teenagers for the first time. Thrive is something very different. It gives both the aspiring and the newly qualified the support and guidance to become a thriving teacher, and has been co-authored by three recently qualified teachers who in this book invest their passion and practical knowledge to inspire and inform others who want to pursue enjoyable and rewarding careers in teaching. Thrive is divided into three parts specifically detailing what can be expected in the training year, NQT year and RQT year respectively - with the authors' commentary threaded throughout to demonstrate how the ideas discussed can be successfully put into practice. Their accounts are also complemented by expert advice from two people who are at the very top of their profession, Lianne Allison and Dr Simon Thompson, who provide wider perspectives drawn from a wealth of teaching experience. Forty of the book's forty-six chapters begin with a checklist outlining what a developing teacher is expected to do, and each chapter ends with a to-do list that can be used as a quick reference point to structure the strategies implemented. These to-do lists are also followed by lists of suggested further reading so that readers can delve deeper into topics and fields of research that they find particularly interesting or relevant. Furthermore, the book offers helpful counsel on choosing the best training route as well as an in-depth analysis of the change in priorities for busy teachers as they progress: encouraging constant reflection, outlining potential pathways and emphasising the importance of evidence-based practice and how new teachers can, and should, incorporate this into their teaching. Rooted in practical strategies and innovative ideas, Thrive is the essential guide for trainee secondary school teachers and teacher trainers.

At a time of renewed focus on the schools curriculum, Roy Blatchford has brought together some of the sharpest thinkers in education in a brilliant mixture of both practical and conceptual essays about what makes for a positive secondary curriculum. Perfectly timed to reflect the new Ofsted framework, the contributions reflect a range of thinking, planning and delivery, as schools do it now and will for the future. It is a compendium of proven practice, offering tips to less experienced/adventurous middle and senior leaders. Featuring contributions from: Iain Veitch; Deborah Eyre; Stephen Rollett; David Birch; Melanie Saunders; Fran Haynes; Mary Myatt; Rebecca Clark; Nick Soar; Rachel Macfarlane; Ashley Robson; Jo Facer; Ed Vainker; Samuel Strickland; Simon Watson; Elizabeth Swan; Peter Hyman.