Seen recently by Della on the wall of a classroom where she was delivering an ILM session for our Bolton West cluster... we loved it so thought we'd share it!


My Impact as a Teacher
 
I have come to a frightening conclusion.
I am the decisive element in the classroom.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or dehumanized.
 
by Haim Ginott

New arrangements for Teacher Appraisal 


Following a public consultation between May and August 2011, new arrangements for managing teacher performance in England have been introduced. They came into force on 1 September 2012.

 The new arrangements for teacher appraisal, including new regulations, remove unnecessary prescription and give schools much greater freedom to design their own appraisal policies.

The regulations are mandatory for maintained schools and local authorities.

The main differences are:

• The three hour limit on classroom observations has been removed – so that schools have the flexibility to decide what is appropriate for themselves.
• Each year, all teachers’ performance must be assessed against the relevant standards – so that leaders can make sure that their teachers’ performance continues to meet expectations.
• The overlap between the current appraisal and capability systems has been removed - so that under-performance can be tackled more swiftly and effectively.

More information can be found here...

Pulse Training and Development are running half day Appraisal Workshops in Wigan and Bolton early October as refreshers or for those new to the role.


Wigan - Wednesday 4th October or Tuesday 9th October
Bolton - Wednesday 10th October or Tuesday 16th October

Limited places so please book early.
Call Judy on 07740 432986 or email judy@pulsetraininganddevelopment.co.uk

As with so many organisations at the moment, there is a constant challenge to redesign the shape of the business to meet future challenges.  There can be little doubt that those who approach this by remembering their values and putting their people first tend to have a much higher success rate in terms of embracing change.

One of our lovely clients, the award winning City South Manchester Housing Trust in Manchester, who are particularly good at this recently set us a challenge!  They had identified a need for all their people managers to develop a specific skill  - hopefully one they wouldn’t need to use too often but nevertheless very important – How to Carry Out Effective Investigations!

As we all know, managing people effectively is usually the most challenging part of anyone’s role in any organisation, especially when something goes wrong or someone makes a complaint about someone. This is where being able to carry out a thorough, fair and impartial workplace investigation comes in.  

Lisa Manzano, the HR Manager explained that “As it’s not something that generally happens very often, people’s first reaction is often to panic a little and try and find someone to help do it for them i.e. us! So we wanted to be able to equip managers with the skills and confidence to be able to do it themselves.”

This was a new challenge for us at Pulse as it wasn’t something we’d delivered before and we were delighted to be asked to help. In conjunction with one of our specialist collaborators, we set about defining the purpose and aims with the team at City South so that we could develop exactly what was required and then over 4 days in July, we delivered two development programmes for almost every manager in the organisation. 

Using the formal investigation process as a framework, we initially worked with people to increase their understanding of advanced communication techniques, as well as the strategic importance that the investigation process represents to an organisation. We included technical aspects such as unpicking organisational policies and a highly interactive session which allowed people to put their understanding into practice. This revealed City South to have some definite contenders for Best Actor and Actress in next year’s BAFTA’s! 

Rewardingly for us, the feedback from people on what had potentially been quite a “dry” though necessary topic, was great! The acid test of course will be how confident people feel next time they need to carry out an investigation and judging by many of the comments including “It’s not as daunting as first thought”, we’re very hopeful on that front!

For more information on bespoke and cost effective leadership and management development for your people and to arrange a free needs analysis., please email us at

 info@pulsetraininganddevelopment.co.uk

Better by design…..

A successful programme for prestigious Liverpool based architects

As highly skilled professionals, well versed in their craft, the team at Denovo Design recognise that alongside the “technical stuff” there is a need to invest in the continued development of “people side” of the business.

To really understand what would benefit Denovo, we started with a free Training Needs Analysis and from there put together a menu of key topics especially developed for today’s professionals. Delivered in fast paced, interactive 90-minutes sessions, the training conveniently fitted into lunch time training slots. All the sessions were tailored to meet Denovo’s specific needs and designed to be full of practical tips, tools and techniques and not too much like hard work!

From a range of options the Denovo team decided they would get most benefit from the following sessions:-

• Communicating for success
• Building effective business relationships
• Dealing with “difficult” people & “tricky” situations
• Give me time!

The acid test for us was the feedback we had from Denovo about the programme……..

“People are at the forefront of everything we do, in our design process, in our relationships and in the way we run our Practice, and we continue to develop an internal culture to invigorate and empower our team.

 It was a natural progression, therefore, that we should invite Silka Lyon- Fraser of Pulse Training and Development to tailor a training package that would allow the team the opportunity to explore beyond the traditional skill set.

The lunchtime sessions were lively and thought provoking, with the main benefit being that we all came away with practical tips that could be implemented straight away!"  David Duvall, Director, Denovo Design

 ”

If you are a professional business looking enhance your bottom line, please contact us at info@pulsetraininganddevelopment.co.uk to find out more and arrange a free training needs analysis.