InvolverWhether you’re planning an event, a campaign or a project, you need to plan! Break your plan into small steps which will keep you motivated and on track, and be SMART.
These tips will help you understand what an action plan is and what SMART targets are.
Created by Asher Jacobsberg at School Councils UK.
Use the ‘More’ button to print or download (‘save’) this resource.
Action Planning Tips
Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
Albert Schweizer, French philosopher, physician and winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize (1875 – 1965)
It doesn’t matter who you’re teaching, training or working with, this is true; so we’ve made it central to everything we’re trying to do with involver. We know that if we don’t make participation fun, there’s no way we’ll get everyone involved, so we’re trying to have fun whilst we do it, present ourselves in a light-hearted way and use what we do as an example for school councils and other forms of participation.
With that in mind I’ve been working on little bios of me and Greg today, and it gave me an idea of a fun way to get people to know who their reps are. You can read our quick guide here and download for your own use with these links:
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Have Fun Getting to Know Your Reps
Update: I’ve created some templates to hlep you to create your own cards like the ones above: Getting to know your reps game template
As involver develops there’ll be more and more like this, so keep checking back, follow me on Twitter (I’ll always let Twitter know about new free resources), or subscribe by RSS.
I came across these two articles over the weekend thanks to Twitter.
The first is on the TES website and puports to contrast two views on pupil/student voice:
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6020426&navcode=94
On one side is Chris Keates, the head of the NASUWT, on the other is Schools Minister, Vernon Coaker. Unfortunately it doesn’t actually do a very good job of this. Chris Keates puts forward a clear, reasoned argument, but essentially based around the idea that ‘advanced pupil voice can be bad for teachers where it isn’t done well, so it shouldn’t be done at anywhere.’ Vernon Coaker’s counterpoint unfortuately doesn’t address this argument directly at all, it just reads like a Government press release on current policy. I’d love to see someone like Vernon Coaker, an ex-teacher and real advocate for children and young people, address the NASUWT’s arguments head on.
However, the other article I came across put the other side of the arguement very well in an incredibly practical way. It from the blog of a couple of teachers (one which I’ll be following closely from now on) and talks about how getting students’ feedback on their schemes of work is an essential part of improving learning and teaching. They’ve got a great name for it too:
http://www.staffroomproject.com/taketheplunge/2009/08/green-cross-learning-stop-look-and-listen
Greg’s coming over in a bit, so I thought it would be useful to get my thoughts down about what we need to get done. Then I thought, “and why not put them on the blog?” It puts a bit of pressure on us to actually get things done.
I’d suggest this is an excellent thing for school councils and other action groups in schools to do: Make your action plans public. You could set up a blog for your team (you can get free and easy to use ones at Blogger, WordPress.com or Edublogs – specially for people in education) and take your minutes directly into it. It allows other people to comment on them too, which is a great way to get some extra people involved. It also makes you realise that you need to keep things interesting and relevant, there’s no point writing a blog if no one’s going to read it and there’s no point doing something on your school council if no one outside of the council thinks it’s worthwhile.
Anyway, back to what we’re going to do today:
Wow, now I’ve written that all down, it seems like a lot to get through, so I’m glad you’re there to hold us to it.