Fixing Broken Appraisals in Adventist Schools with Peter Williams

Welcome to the BlueVignette podcast, where we explore the Adventist digital ecosystem. My name is Luke Farrugia. I'm the co-founder of BlueVignette and I'll be your host. In each episode, we will sit down with different leaders from the ministry and technology worlds to see their insights, hear inspiring stories and get their hard-earned wisdom for future ministry leaders to use.

Hey, Luke. You know, we've been working together for a while now. In my previous experience, I was a schoolteacher and principal, and I would get an evaluation. Could you do an evaluation of my performance?

That'd be great. Well, you know, if we're going to do that, we really should do it well. And I've been thinking about this a little bit because we've got a project that we've been working on to build a performance appraisal tool. And the expert that we've been working with, his name is Peter Williams.

He is very educated on the topic. He's been amazing for us to work with. I think we should have a conversation with him. All right.

Well, let's talk to Peter. Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Blue Vignette podcast. My name is Luke Ferruccia and I'm here with my co-host Adam Weeks and our special guest for this particular episode is Peter Williams.

Peter, welcome to the show. Thank you. So just to start off, I know you've had a career that has had multiple chapters in it. You've got lots of experience across this this industry.

I wonder if just for a start, you could give us a sense of who you are, what you do and the experience that you're bringing to the conversation. Yeah, sure. So right now I'm the Associate Education Director for the North New South Wales Conference. This is a group of 10 schools. run by the Seventh-day Adventist Church that I help oversee and run within this particular conference.

So that's what I'm doing now. I do come from an education background. My work has always kind of straddled across education and educational administration. So I'm secondary trained as a teacher by background, but I've taught primary school, I've taught secondary school, and I've spent the last 12 years in a university context at Avernale University.

And yeah, always kind of researching kind of HR is my passion space, I guess. And so, yeah, my qualifications and my experiences have kind of straddled education and HR practice. A little bit about me. Thank you.

Just to sort of tell a little bit of the story here, our connection with Peter came via a project that we've been working on together, and that has been greatly benefited by Peter's experience. Can you also just, again, for that little bit of context, just explain what your PhD is as well? Yeah, so my PhD looked at school principal succession plan within the context of Adventist Schools Australia. So, yeah, succession practice has always been an interesting space to me.

Yeah, that was a very, very unique opportunity, I guess, straddle those two fences that I was talking about before, because it's such a critical piece in the HR space, particularly in the corporate lens, the lifeblood of business and succession. But not the case in an educational context, it's kind of an afterthought, a necessary evil of sorts. So yeah, succession practices is a really, really an interesting space to me. And having had the opportunity in my years teaching to look on as we saw different principal appointments.

I was always interested in the process, how we could improve it, what it looked like, and what needed to be in place to make it effective, and to have that sustainability of leadership in our system going forwards. Wow. Peter, I am super excited to be able to ask you questions as a former school teacher and principal who had a succession plan because I'm no longer there. I was looking and you had mentioned that Australia's system for appraisal is broken.

I'm going to add to that and say that it's broken here, too. As someone who has done appraisals, who has been appraised and trying to go through that review process, everything from student teachers to teachers who need maybe some help, they're struggling. And the board has asked you to, hey, review this teacher and all these things. Tell me what you mean by broken.

What is your context for that? Well, I'll speak specific to the role that I'm in right now. So in New South Wales, in Australia, the education system is governed by NASA. Now, one of the potential overlaying factors, I guess, in this space is that in recent years, as you would know, probably in your context, the same is here in Australia. there's been a real growth in the compliance element, I guess, that sits above schools and education systems.

So that over-emphasis on compliance in my mind actually kind of is a fundamental issue within our current appraisal processes because there's an emphasis, I'll give you an example. So recently I was at a NESSA audit for one of our schools here in North New South Wales. We had two NESSA representatives there. They came in.

They went through the process and at one point they asked, do you have an appraisal system? Now I know that school's appraisal system and it's not particularly rigorous, but by answering yes, it ticked a box. Now that overemphasis on compliance rather than teacher development and growth and the support that sits around that, the cultural elements of doing performance appraisal effectively, to me is one indicator of a broken system. Because if we can just answer yes, something, then that's probably defeating the purpose of what the true intention behind performance appraisal is.

I think another element is the feedback element is often troublesome in performance appraisal. We give feedback that's vague, it's generic, we look to avoid conflict in that space and so we don't get this rigor in the process and I think that's another piece that is broken within current performance appraisal processes in an educational context. But I think we've got misalignment as another piece that kind of breaks it as well. We've got systems that sometimes are a bit not aligned to actually understanding the challenges of what the staff, classroom teachers go through on a day-to-day basis in their classroom setting.

And that creates challenges because are they capturing some of the issues that teachers are dealing with? Well-being of students, diversity of students. Are they capturing behavioral needs? and things like that. And I think there's a really inconsistent application and implementation.

And I think that has a big bearing on the quality of feedback as well. So some of the thoughts in my mind, at least, that would indicate that, yeah, we probably need to be re-exploring performance appraisal in an educational context, certainly here within Australia. So would you say that when you have an inconsistent performance appraisal process, What are the downfalls of that? What are the effects that you see happening in schools that have really poor appraisal processes?

So much of this stems from lack of trust because it's really multi-layered, Luke. If you have staff who don't believe that the people assessing them, their appraisers, are actually qualified or capable of doing it, you have mistrust in the process. If you have a ticker box compliance kind of mind frame that is established by leadership in the school because they don't value it and they don't enact it and it's a touch point once a year and then it disappears, all of these type of things create mistrust of that process. And so I think a lot of that stems from trust issues, you know, like we're dealing with teachers here, you know, that you step into a classroom, you establish the rules with your students for what that classroom is going to look like. there's no buy-in from the teachers in the performance appraisal process and so in that sense it needs to be a two-way process and teacher voice is a really really critical piece and if they don't feel they're getting valuable feedback if they don't feel they're getting the support and growth in terms of their career trajectory their professional development the growth and support that situates itself within an effective performance appraisal then you're gonna have those challenges Yeah, that makes sense.

I want to take one step back here. I'm thinking that maybe for our audience, some people may not be aware of what an appraisal is for a teacher, like why they're important. Could you kind of just set the scene a little bit? I know we're kind of in it for a little bit, but what is a teacher appraisal and why are they important?

Why are they necessary? And kind of what does that look like? Yeah, so... Do you want me to make the distinction between ineffective and effective?

Yeah, let's let's do that. That sounds like a good place to start Yeah, well if we start with effective the first kind of key Component in my mind is that it's actually a structured intentional process hmm meaning you have something that's Intent is to evaluate the individuals performance in the classroom specifically referring to teacher appraisal here And you can track that over a specific time period. So in simple terms, I guess it's assessing how well someone is doing their job. Now the drawback of the ineffective space is that often it's ad hoc, like we said, it's driven by compliance.

So the intentionality that exists in an effective performance appraisal process is actually lost because we know that in schools, Everyone's under workload pressures, we're time poor. If it's seen to be a compliance thing, then it's probably not truly grounded in the growth and support that we want to encourage for our teachers to improve their teaching practice so that we can impact on student outcomes. And so I think performance appraisal in that sense kind of heightens the importance of that and creates the impetus that we actually have a structured, robust process to engage our staff in. What did you learn in your research, in your experience?

What did you learn about the way that the current appraisal processes, as you described, the ineffective ones, how does that feel for the teachers that are on the ground that are the ones that are experiencing it? What effect does that have on them? Yeah, so my research findings on the ground within our context. So yeah, I wrote a research paper on this a few years ago and it's interesting because the context, maybe it was a hand to God thing, I don't know.

The context of that was actually that I went out and interviewed and undertook that research project in the context of North New South Wales Adventist schools. The teachers told the principals and I talked to system administrators at that time and this is somewhere around 2020 2021. Now that time was really really interesting because a couple of things emerged at the ground level that are really specific around how appraisal felt to them. First one and this is an absolutely critical piece to make mention of in the North New South Wales context I Don't believe there has ever been a consistent system wide conference wide performance appraisal tool So you've got inconsistent use of performance appraisal instruments and this Created a number of challenges for staff on the ground.

It was probably the significant contributor to their overall perception that they had mistrust about the performance appraisal process. They lacked confidence in the processes that were in place within their school setting, and they didn't see the necessary support that they felt needed to be alongside effective performance appraisal. So that's one of the first findings at the ground level. Inconsistent use of the instruments themselves.

Not unsurprisingly, but unfortunately, I guess in our context, there was a lot of fear of the process. And staff who reported back, you know, they'd seen kind of the performance appraisal process as a punitive tool previously rather than... Like, I'm going to lose my job or something. I'm going to be under discipline of some kind, right?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, they're trying to performance manage me more so than, you know, I mean, there was issues of kind of, you know, people alluded to, hey, you know, this is used to kind of, you know, in promotion settings. You know, so there was a lot of kind of... caught up in that. It had been used in the past to emphasize teacher ineffectiveness rather than emphasizing the benefits of what effective performance appraisal can actually offer them.

There was a fear of the process. At the ground level, a lot of the staff were actually saying, you know what, we're getting appraised. We're being held accountable for where we are perceived to be at. And they had some skepticism about the ability of their supervisor to evaluate effectively and accurately where they were at in their teaching. practice, but they're also saying, we're being held accountable to this, but we're not seeing our principles being accounted to it.

The principles themselves in this research on the ground were saying, yeah, it's true. I've done a lot of performance appraisal of those beneath me, but I haven't really been engaged in the process myself in terms of someone else appraising my performance. And so again, there was some mistrust in that process. I talked a little bit about you know, the level of skepticism that some teachers experienced about those who were appraising them and how effectively they were set up to do that.

I already made mention of that. If I could just jump in there for a second, Peter, I'm sure we'll talk more about the best case scenario a bit later on. But like, what can you do to fix that if they don't have confidence in the ability of the person above them to assess them effectively? Like, what is the answer to that kind of a thing?

Yeah, so two things come immediately to mind. That research actually put forward as a suggestion that maybe what's needed is an independent party who's recognized as being a high potential, high caliber teacher. Where the teacher was identified to have the respect of their peers within the system, there was identified to be more likely trust in the feedback that is given to them. as they looked on on that classroom teacher's teaching practice. That was one thing that kind of came there.

And I guess the second thing really is, is training underpinned by a consistent standard. Now in North New South Wales, as you would know, Luke, having looked on the instrument that we're developing, and more broadly in the Australian context, we have the Australian, we have the eight school teacher standards. So you now have a consistent standard that's understood by everyone. that they are being evaluated against. They understand what is being looked at in that space because of the familiarity with the standards.

And that goes a long way towards kind of working alongside that supervisor to actually kind of engage in the process. And so those two things alone were seen to kind of be things that an effective performance appraisal system could have. And by extension, the training of the supervisors. which would kind of underpin, yeah, potentially more trust in the process. I resonate with your example of the teachers looking at the principal and saying, well, what do they know?

How are they supposed to evaluate me and a mistrust of that system? I was a teacher at a classical school, and it was a specifically, that's a methodology for education, but it's what set that school aside. And there was an evaluation done of me. by a principal, and she came in and gave me great marks on everything except for I wasn't classical enough in math class. And I said, after this, like, well, tell me more.

Like, what could I have done? Like, what? She's like, I don't know is what her answer was. Go talk to this other teacher.

Okay, so I did and Mrs. Hein, the classical teacher that she was, she's like, yeah, I don't know either. And I was like, all right, I was knocked down on something that none of you guys know what I should have been doing. My point in this is that evaluations can be used if done well to promote. what makes that school special.

In our context, we're talking about Seventh-day Adventist schools, schools that it's not a traditional school, it's a Seventh-day Adventist school, it's something special. And in the research you've done focusing on mission, is there something that these evaluations can do, these appraisals can do to help the mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and our Seventh-day Adventist schools? Yeah, I definitely believe there is you know, and I look at I guess something that has shaped my understanding of what Adventist education is called to be I think a quote by Ellen G. White in the book of education.

She says the work of redemption and education are one If we understand what our purpose is to reveal Jesus to our students and we work back from that and I think it goes without saying that we have We are called to be different. We're called to be set aside. What does that look like in our teacher practice? It looks like high practice, high quality practice.

But obviously there's the nurture and there's the growth and support that sits around that. And the growth and support space in the teacher appraisal area is, I think, one of the most significant drivers of missional alignment that we can possibly have with our staff. And we'll talk more about the tool that we'll make use of in North New South Wales and maybe some of the the nuance that captures that later, I'm guessing. But yeah, the short answer is I absolutely see a role in the performance appraisal space to align with our mission of who we are as Adventist Education and to encourage, nurture and support our staff along that journey as well so that they can have maximum input and impact on the kids in their care.

We want to reveal Jesus and grow the kingdom. That's our whole line of business. What is the overlap? I'm curious, because obviously we're talking about this in an Adventist context, but in secular education, let's say, how much overlap is there between your findings or what's true in this context versus that context?

In my personal view, there should be a high level of overlap. I don't think the two need to be separated because we're actually in a faith-based context. I think good performance appraisal leads to improved teacher practice, and the way you do that is you support your staff on their professional development and growth journey. So, you know, I think the tool itself is critical, obviously.

I actually see a higher level of overlap. Effective performance appraisal is effective performance appraisal in any context. We recognise some of the unique nuances in our context because we are highly relational. We're small communities. that also presents challenges, which I'm sure you can see in the performance appraisal space, but the reality of it is I see a high level of overlap because I believe that if I was in a state system implementing a performance appraisal system, now it may get shaped by my worldview, which I can't separate myself from, but I actually still see that there is a high level of overlap because what makes effective performance appraisal in an educational context to me is actually the robust rigor that the conversation, which is a care conversation, takes place in and that helps the teacher to identify their growth spaces to set goals in for improved teacher practice.

And I think that's the same in both contexts, secular or uniquely Adventist. Nice. So just to shift gears, you know, As I said before, we've been working together with you, Peter, for a little while now on a tool that does precisely this. And so just to build that out a little bit more, I'd love to, if you could explain how you would redesign the appraisal process from the ground up, because this is something that we've been working on together.

So if you could explain what that looks like from your context. Yeah, sure. Well, I guess there's always the challenge of balancing accountability with professional growth. First of all, let's just acknowledge that for a lot of this.

I think that's the singular challenge space that any new developed performance appraisal system would really have to grapple with. You've got to have a clear purpose and philosophy that underpins the whole process. It has to emphasize, in my mind, the growth and support that we talked about over compliance. All right, separate the two.

Yeah, this is a compliance matter, but we're going well beyond just ticking a box here. We actually want this to be meaningful and lead to improved teacher quality and student outcomes. It has to align the professional standards like we mentioned about. We've got the eight school standards here in Australia.

I think that's known and understood. It's got to have continuous checkpoints because one of the drawbacks of performance appraisal that we generally... generally see in educational context are that it's a once a year, you know, yep, it's all done, boom, 12 months until the next round. I think that's a flawed process because it undermines the continual growth and support of our staff along the way. It's got to have an emphasis on meaningful feedback.

We talked about feedback as one of the problem spaces previously. Feedback that is meaningful, that is actionable. It leads to steps that the teacher can follow to actually improve their practice. It's timely, it's specific, and it's meaningful.

It's got to have those elements in the feedback space. Whether this is feasible or not, if we're talking about a redesign from the ground up, to me, the most critical piece is the conversation that takes place between the teacher and the appraiser. And that space, I think I would love to invest in a lot of training and coaching and mentoring in. to make sure that we've got, I think that's the most critical piece. And so to me, if I was designing it from the ground up, I want to really hone in on what that rapport building looks like and how those supervisors embed the culture that we're actually wanting in this space. of actually meaningfully being shoulder to shoulder with those staff.

I think that's built on relationship. I think that's built on trust. I think that's built on good rapport in the school setting. And I'd like to think culturally we can align ourselves with that.

I think it's got to have teacher voice in there. There's a real process here in that conversation piece for the teacher to actually say, you know what? I know I need work on behavior management and facilitate that in a growth goal. teacher voice, taking ownership for those goals, the support they need from the school. It goes back to what we were saying about establishing rules in a classroom setting.

You co-create, you get buy-in. And so the teacher voice in this process, what they then do as a result of the appraisal process and how they go on with their growth and development is a critical piece. Two ones really, really quickly. It's gotta be linked to professional development.

It's gotta be heavy on training. And I think underpinning all of this is the creation of a psychological safe space that's built around trust, confidentiality, et cetera. And I feel like in our context, we should be able to have that. We should be a high integrity system that allows for honest, frank, supportive conversations to be taking place.

And that's what's a critical piece in effective performance appraisal. Thank you for that. That's helpful context. And I like that list.

As we're thinking about this, some could say, Peter, we've had paper and pens for a very long time. There's a form, a teacher stands, a principal stands in the back of the room, fills out the form, shows it right there to the teacher, makes photocopies for everybody. That system has been around for a very long time. Where do you find the gap in that?

Why is that not enough? If you could kind of summarize your thoughts on that. Yeah, I mean, look, it's really, really interesting when you look broadly at the educational performance appraisal landscape, because different places, and I can say Canada's fairly advanced in this space, parts of districts of the US, Singapore, I can mention kind of where interesting changing spaces are taking place around teacher performance appraisal. But the reality of it is when you look at the research, there's common elements.

And a conversation, self-reflection, and a classroom observation consistently come up in effective performance appraisal education systems. And so, yeah, they are tried and tested, but I think the difference is the time pressure, the level of buy-in. You know, in schools we say, you don't have a student culture until you have a teacher culture. You don't have a teacher culture until you have a leadership culture.

So it starts at the top and works way its way down It's got to be seen as a value add to the entity. It's got to be seen as a value add at the school level and Drilling from that it has to have that top-down kind of We value this we want Quality stuff. We want growth. We want improved student outcomes.

We want to reveal Jesus like it's all you know kind of wrapped in there And that kind of alignment with the staff saying, you know what, we see the value, we feel supported, we feel this is a safe space to have robust conversations. I think you're right, Adam, I think there's nothing new in this space. It really boils down to how it's valued, how it's perceived, and how it's embedded culturally within the school or the school system. That's my personal view.

I'm not, I don't think we have to reinvent the wheel here. I think there's elements that are tried and tested that work, but that perhaps have lost their focus, aren't communicated as being something we value. We haven't been able to drive the buy-in and really those are the points that let down appraisal in my mind. One of the things that I'm interested in personally when I was first heard about this project that got me excited is the benefits to longitudinal data that we can get from something like this.

One of the downsides I feel of paper and pencil and putting it in a folder somewhere that goes in a file that you don't see is that we can potentially graph these things out and be able to see trends. Is that something you're looking forward to? Anything that you're excited about being able to have this data and what we might be able to do with it? Most definitely.

Most definitely. I came to Blue Vineyard early in the conversations and said there's a couple of non-negotiables from my perspective embedded within any performance appraisal process that we develop together. One of those is and you know, I cop a little bit of criticism for this but it's definitely embedded in my thinking This process should help us to identify High quality practitioners. Why is that important?

It actually goes back to the succession piece that we touched on earlier When I look around our system In fact, I'll tell you from a factual perspective in North New South Wales the single largest proportion of teachers in our system 10 year plus teachers. We actually have, and if you look at the statistics, and obviously we've just got the back end of a baby, you know, baby Bema cohort that's retiring. If you look more broadly across Australia at the statistics, we have an aging population of classroom teachers. Where is the pipeline?

Where is the next generation? We don't inspire aspiration amongst our young leaders. I think we've got forward processes in terms of how we identify these individuals, and I strongly believe that performance appraisal needs to tip into that space. And so for me, to be able to have those metrics, to be able to have oversight over performance appraisal system-wide, I can start to kind of pinpoint, and I can use this tool to do it, where I need to go and have conversations with staff who are high performing. at any point in their career and say, what's your plans for the next five years?

Do you have interest in leadership? I can see your high capacity. Where do you see your career trajectory? They don't all have to be school principals.

They don't all have to aspire to that. They might be passionate about curriculum. Great. We've got leaders of learning positions.

We've got people who lead out in the teaching and learning program of their schools. They might be passionate about other spaces that we can invest in. and grow because we've got a leadership pipeline of people who are capable and willing to lead in those spaces. So for me, this is all about being able to identify and pinpoint where those conversations need to take place so that I can come back with my succession lens and say, hey, who do we have in the next one to three years that can be a head of primary, a head of secondary, a leader of learning, a head of school, a principal, a deputy principal, and I can map that out so that I can be intentional about the succession process. and ensure that we've got future leaders for advanced education. And I imagine that doesn't only benefit the, okay, sure it benefits the school because you can identify leaders, but like it benefits the individuals as well because if they, if this is, if there's a high capacity individual, this is something that I've learned in my own business. that if you have someone who's very, very talented and you don't challenge them, then they're going to grow dissatisfied with what they have and they're going to go and try and find something else that's going to challenge them.

And so you're going to have greater teacher retention. They're going to be more fulfilled in their jobs. There's so many knock on effects. I don't know if it's pushing back against the idea of this being a part of the appraisal process, but I think they have a very difficult argument to back up.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's why for me, it was something that we had to work through the development of this tool to be able to kind of draw on that insight, to be able to identify strong performers to initiate these conversations and better understand who we have on the ground coming through and what their skill sets are. I think of things that are measured improve. And we have to do that measurement.

And I am super excited about a tool that makes it accessible, that it isn't. There's a few things more discouraging to doing something like an appraisal that then goes into a black box that nobody ever sees again and then isn't useful. And that's one of these things that, hey, we're actually going to... correlate and grab this data and make it into something useful. And I'm guessing that we are going to see benefits that we haven't imagined yet.

If I could just take a step back, Peter, I was thinking about the process of what we've been discussing and building together. One of the frameworks, the base assumptions that we're using in that is this three-dimensional approach to appraisal and that hasn't featured strongly in our discussion just yet. I'm wondering if you could explain the idea of professional practice, professional behaviour and missional alignment, those three areas that we've been looking at. Yeah, sure.

So just to add to that. So this is what I would describe as part A of this performance appraisal tool that we're developing. It's a classroom teacher self-reflection, but supervisor does it also. And that in and of itself creates a data point for something potentially in that conversation down that happens a little bit further down.

So the idea that sits behind these three kind of pillars, as I'm referring to them, is that, and I'll mention what they are again. So the first one is professional practice. So this space is gonna measure all of the expected elements that you would as a classroom teacher be expected to be handling in your space. Your registers of work, your programs of work, your ability to kind of evidence the teaching practice.

It's all underpinned within that. Professional behavior starts to stem across more into some of those other elements that exist there. as we transition more to the mission space, which is more of the alignment piece. So it's those things. Do you arrive on time?

Do you attend? Are you serious about professional development and professional growth? Your appearance, your dress, those type of things, it sounds really nuanced and layered and down, but those are indicators of professional behavior. And so in that sense, it's not particularly, I don't think that section is not particularly invasive.

But it's asking those basic questions. How do you show up every day? How do you turn up as a teacher, given that you're a role model for our students and that you're guiding their spiritual development as much as you are their academic and other development? So that's the professional behavior piece.

And then the third one is mission. And we are really clear about that. We're Adventist education, unashamedly. I think we need to own that. more strongly.

My personal view is that I don't think we have a huge amount of time left to be uniquely an Adventist education system in Australia. And so the missional space is really just checking in with staff and saying, hey, do you come to our staff worships in the morning? Do you support the ethos and values of our school system? Do you contribute meaningfully to the spiritual tone of the school? are your interactions with our families, with our students, Christ-centered and focused, you know, service, all of those types of things that would fit in there.

And so between those three pillars, professional practice, professional behavior, and obviously mission space, I think it's a pretty well-rounded cross-section of what we want to be communicating to our staff, are the professional expectations of them, as well as tracking how they're going so that we can have those conversations along the way. and use that data to actually inform some of those spaces where they may need some growth and development and the school support alongside of that. So that's kind of underlying thinking there. Yeah, I love that structure. And I'm not sure who could argue against professional practice, professional behavior, missional alignment.

If our schools are doing those things better, everybody benefits, our kids benefit, our teachers benefit, our communities benefit. And again, if we're not measuring it, like, we're a Seventh-day Adventist school and we do Seventh-day Adventist things, what does that mean? Like, what do you mean you do Seventh-day Adventist things? Well, we have chapel, like, okay, we have Bible class, like, all right.

But if we can't communicate it in a very specific way that I think what you're talking about That's ideal. For the appraisal and the actual questions that are being asked, how do you see that being addressed from a research base like the questions that we are asking or the things that the principal or the evaluator is going to do the appraisal on? Do you see those things changing over time or we want these things all to be standard so that we can address them longitudinally. How are you thinking about the actual questions?

Yeah, it's a really interesting question because, and again, you know, I may have a different line of thinking to many others in this space, but I don't, I'm yet to be convinced that a perfect performance appraisal system, I'm not looking to get this right, 100%, if that makes sense. What I am interested in is iterating it, whether it works for our schools. When I talk to our principals, which is a space obviously that I work in a lot, the narrative that I'm looking to share there is this has to work for you in your context. I'll share an example of that.

We're coming up on having two of our 10 schools pilot this engine. That will happen in term four of this year. We're currently at the back end of term three. As we've gone about the training and we've created the conversations and we've focused in on the growth and support space that underpins this with the supervisors, we've said to them, hey, look, this is a baseline.

This is a baseline. The self-reflection tool, the classroom observation, the conversation guided by questions there, and then the growth and support space. This is a baseline. It's a minimum.

If you want to embed in your school, processes that are beyond this, i.e., I've got one school on the Far North Coast, they love peer-to-peer observation. It's not a part of this process. That doesn't mean you have to give that up. It's got to be something that the schools can work with and ultimately there needs to be an element of flex in it so that it works in their context.

We've got 10 different contexts within our schools. Schools with 14 students up to schools with 1,200. rural schools, urban schools. It's going to be an iterative process. So in my mind, it's not about coming in with an instrument that's right.

It's about coming in with something that the schools can make use of to facilitate an emphasis on quality performance appraisal that leads to tangible, measurable improvements. And we can track that over time and we can celebrate that. or we can have frank conversations, accountability conversations, but we want to be able to do that in an environment that is supportive and it's focused around improved practice. That's very good. If people are interested in the system that we're building, obviously, that's called the Elevated Suite.

There'll be the link in the show notes if anyone wants to learn more about it or see what's happened here. for anybody that's using any tools out there, if you were to give a piece of advice to any school organisation in order to practically improve their appraisal process or culture, what would be your number one or top two pieces of advice? Yeah, sure. Well, first, I need to acknowledge my own kind of mindset in this space is... I'm not a believer in overnight quick fixes.

We're talking about cultural change in my mind, in our space. However, one thing I would be doing is saying invest in and promote teacher reflection. I think it's a singular, well, not the singular, but it's a critical space in any type of practical shift towards improved performance appraisal. I think it's just, it creates This is the reality on the ground for schools that are time pressured and time poor.

One of the first things that go in a performance appraisal is the rigor in reflection because we're just caught up in the grind of the day to day in a school. You have to promote that. You have to actively encourage your staff to be giving meaningful reflection to where they're at with their teacher practice. What are the spaces that you can kind of improve in and go forward with?

I think the second one is Build report with stuff. You know, it's such a critical piece. Start scheduling 15-minute little check-ins that are informal, that sit outside of the performance appraisal, but build that report, build that relationship, build that trust so that when we come to sit down together and evaluate how you're tracking and what areas you can continue to grow. And it's coming from a place where there's good, frank, honest, because we know that it's a supportive environment.

So I think that's a really, really quick one. And normalize feedback. You know, I think what our system's done is it's withheld honest feedback for too long. We don't like conflict.

We don't like to have those hard conversations. But those hard conversations can often be the ones that lead to the most meaningful growth. And so we've got to normalise feedback. We've got to have growth-orientated conversations.

And that's got to become part of our school's culture. So, you know, they're not probably quick fixes as such. They're elements of cultural change. But for me... they are practical shifts that schools can focus in on that I think will enhance their appraisal culture.

Nice. Yeah. No, I think those are things that are really going to make an impact in education, in Adventist education. I'm excited to see this pilot roll out and to get feedback from it.

That's when we know you're onto something is when it gets in the hands of school leadership, teachers, they are able to try it out and we'll, we'll, we'll learn quickly. I'm, I'm sure. If there any, is anybody who's listening to this podcast that says, wow, I really have a passion for this or I know somebody who does, or has a lot of experience. Is there any way someone, you know, how would they reach out to you?

How would they connect? How would they get in touch with you? Yeah, absolutely. I'd welcome it.

I love conversations in this space. I try to have them as frequently as I can. They can reach out to me. I'm employed by North New South Wales Adventist Schools. peter.williams at North New South Wales nnsw.adventist.edu.au.

Drop me an email. You'll probably be able to find a contact detail online. Link with Blue Vineyard. They can put you in touch with me as well.

But yeah, I'd absolutely welcome it. Happy to have those conversations. Well, thank you so much, everybody, for checking this out. We are hopeful that you were able to get something from this podcast.

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