Become a highly effective leader!

What does the future hold for you and your career at Western Cape Sport School? Most of us ponder this question from time to time… "When I get time, I'm going to get back into shape/play the piano/find someone famous ". But in reality, what we want tends to evolve and change throughout each day of our lives.

As we learn and gain experience, we find our strengths and build our skills. When we stumble, we find new ways to cope and adapt. As we find success, we extend our ambitions. And so, as we change and grow, we shape our futures. Setting personal goals is a powerful process, and I would like to use your goals for motivating change within the school to turn the original vision of the Western Cape Sport School into reality.

More than this, sharing our goals can be incredibly motivating to each other, and as you get into the habit of setting, sharing and achieving your personal goals, you'll find that your self-confidence builds and those around you develop a similar sense of accomplishment. The Western Cape Sport School’s Goals are set on a number of different levels: First we need to create the "big picture" of what we want to do with the school, and what large-scale goals we want to achieve. Secondly, we need to break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that each one of us must hit so that we can reach our shared goals. Finally, once we have a plan, we can start working to achieve it.

We start this process with discovering everyone’s “Goals”, and work down to the things we can do today to start moving towards them.

We need to develop the idea of a "boundary less organization." This means that everyone is free to brainstorm and think of ideas - instead of waiting for someone "higher up" in the bureaucracy to think of them first. As a team you have been "turned loose," and I promise to listen to ideas from anyone in the school. Everyone from the learners, to the non-educating staff, to senior managers, you have my attention - if you have something to say or a new idea that might make the school better, ‘just talk’.
Let us all stay true to our passions and what we know is right.

Lessons learnt from a life in learning

“There is no greater undertaking than exists in schools”(Sean Friedenthal)
Whether it is a minister or a missionary, whose position and profession exclude a certain group of people; nobody has the group of people to work with that teachers do. It is a privilege to have the involvement with people and the influence on the future that teachers do.
Habits of excellent teachers
1. Believe in people
2. Take risks on the growing edge
3. Keep learning
4. Plan thoroughly
5. Nurture your faith
6. Use findings of the latest neuroscience research
7. Reflect
How to maintain discipline in classrooms
• Create an ethos that celebrates what is good rather than just punishing what is bad.
Learners who are on the cusp of either good or bad behaviour will lean towards the side which you give most attention to (i.e. if more of your attention is on punishment of what is bad, they will lean towards that to get your attention)
• What you condone, you authorize to exist.
• What you want from kids, you have to give to them in return and more so.
How to engage young people
• Get them involved in the learning process.
• Assuming basic education (literacy and numeracy) is in place, focus more on emotional education.
Measuring success in teaching:
• In the short term, measurable results such as final marks and matric results are the only way.
• True success in teaching is measured in the thirst for further learning that you have cultivated in your students.
• An important lesson to teach kids is to imbue them with the tendency to selfless service to their community.
Lessons learned from a life in teaching:
• We need to teach children to deal with failure correctly
• Don’t move too quickly in your career to seek promotion, because this results in too much lateral movement.
• Teaching can consume you and it is important to work together with the people in your life to create some sort of balance to deal with this
• Teamwork in teaching is essential, since it builds the capacity of yourself and the entire institution.
Good education systems have:
• The best people as teachers
• Good training for teachers and principals
• Good support for mediocre students
• Good maths and science programs
An effective Governing body:
• Is supportive of the school, but not controlling.
• Involved in fundraising, but not demanding.
• Should not attempt to micro-manage a school, because this undermines everyone in a leadership position within the school
• Has a role of oversight and monitoring, not undermining.
• Puts in place a good succession plan for all leadership positions in the school to ensure a seamless takeover of duties!
Rest a little, thank you for your support!

Do learners really need teachers?

With the wage strike still ongoing and more than half the teaching staff exercising their right to protest at the Western Cape Sport School, I thought I might begin with a question or two today, just to get those here thinking about things. Let’s begin by asking whether the learners really do require the attention of teachers, and confinement in school, in order to learn. In other words, are teachers really necessary?


Even more radically, some news paper writers have suggested that young people may be their own best teachers. For example, they say research on the process of acquiring a language indicates that we learn, not by being taught by others, but from everyday experience – by listening to others, trying out patterns of words, and eventually discarding ones that don’t seem to work.


Teachers are ordinary but unique people who become teachers for different reasons, have different teaching objectives, and work in different circumstances, against a background of unequal educational provision.


I believe the impulse to teach is fundamentally humane and represents a desire to share what you value and to empower others. I began teaching when I was twenty-five and my students were thirteen years old. Now I’m forty-something and those youngsters are in their thirties. There’s not as much difference between forty-something and thirty, as between twenty five and twelve. I believe your students ‘catch up’ with you and quite often end up knowing more than you do. It’s wonderful to witness that continuous growth at the same time as you’re taking on another group of learners. You can see and feel your students grow, and that finally is the
reason to teach and the reward of teaching.


To all the staff at Western Cape Sport School, whether you were here or not whether you felt the need to strike or not... Your time and effort placed in educating the learners is appreciated by me and the community we serve.

Have a little break this weekend and return to the school ready to continue with the sterling work you already do.