The winds of change are blowing wild and free

The word has finally been made public that I am leaving my job at the end of June.

After five years working as a consultant I have decided to start my own business here in Australia. I want to build on the work and ideas I have been developing over the last ten years or so. I am both excited and anxious, but mainly I feel calm, ready and determined.

I am sure that my writing will shift to charting that journey, as I start up and as Dialogic Learning takes some strides into the world.

Dialogic is a way to describe some of my best work. Developing capacity in others and leading organisational change requires dialogue, it requires strong, trusting relationships. I know I can form these quickly and that this establishes a great platform to do creative, challenging work. My new business will focus on that.

My understanding and expertise with the creative process has grown and I still believe that teaching, and learning design, requires our deepest creative skills. Dialogic Learning will focus on helping people improve their creative process.

There is still a lot more to develop, share and write about as I build things up over the next three months or so (and also look back on the last few years). I have created a little holding page for now, just to countdown until go time and where you can sign up for updates and get in touch.

I have had some great support from all sorts of different people as word has spread. My online networks have played an integral role in my thinking and development over the years and I want to keep it that way.

Thankyou, more soon.

The 20000 Character Job Reference

Last week I had an interview for a Deputy Head Teacher post. I was successful (wooo!) and will be starting my new job in the Summer term.

I just wanted to extend my thanks and appreciation to SO many of you who gave some time to offer an endorsement via Twitter replies and blog comments after I requested some help.

One of the interview questions was about something successful I had instigated which I was proud of. I talked about this blog and then handed out printed copies of the collated Tweets and blog comments that you left for me to the panel. The response was suitably neutral for an interview. But I know it helped to back up what I said about bringing my network with me to the post.

13669440 c3ebeb5098the interview by Stitch 
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

The interview process was a great challenge – lesson, formal interview, school council interview, data analysis task and presentation – reading through your amazing comments gave me a great boost in confidence.

Once again thankyou so much if you contributed your 140 characters or more to #tomsinterview, you helped me turn it into #tomsjob and I will always be grateful for that.