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.

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 Boyne, Emily Clements and Ben Wright’s Thrive: In your first three years in teaching equips trainee secondary school teachers with the know-how to lay the foundations for a successful career in teaching, long after the challenging first few years are over. 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.

Many people think leadership is a higher calling that resides exclusively with a select few who practice and preach big, complex leadership philosophies. But as this practical book reveals, what’s most important for leadership is principled consistency. Time and again, small things done well build trust and respect within a team. Using stories from his time at Netscape, Apple, and Slack, Michael Lopp presents a series of small but compelling practices to help you build leadership skills. You’ll learn how to create teams that are highly productive, highly respected, and highly trusted. Lopp has been speaking and writing about this topic for over a decade and now maintains a Slack leadership channel with over 13,000 members. The essays in this book examine the practical skills Lopp learned from exceptional leaders—as a manager at Netscape, a senior manager and director at Apple, and an executive at Slack. You’ll learn how to apply these lessons to your own experience.

Readers will discover the qualities that make a good executive, and they'll learn how to develop the critical ability to focus, coordinate, delegate, recognize, and listen.

This book links the academic research on leadership to a set of very practical tools that help Middle Leaders work effectively.