I love it when a member of our school team follows through on an idea or project about which they are passionate. Passion drives innovation and this is certainly the case for our school’s Digital Learning specialist, Mrs Karen Stadler.

During the course of 2012, Karen visited the wonderful Kruger National Park with her family. A trip to a watering hole was to be a defining moment as she witnessed five magnificent rhino arrive to drink the water and wallow in the mud. She realised that within a year there was a possibility that some, if not all, of these gracious creatures may have been killed by poachers.

This realisation moved her into action and she set up a Global Classroom Project known as The Travelling Rhinos. This involved having five small rhinos, which were made and covered in traditional African Shweshwe fabric, sent to schools in South Africa, Australia, Canada, Ireland and the USA to teach pupils about the plight of the rhinos in Africa.

Although this video is aimed at business leaders, I believe there are take-away pointers for school leadership as well. What follows is my attempt at summarising some of the key points from the various speakers and a few thoughts on their application in a school context.

Leaders need to develop the skill of managing across real or imagined boundaries

Schools are full of boundaries. Some are real while others are imagined. There are boundaries between grades and departments, among the pupils (across and within grades), professional boundaries (often linked to a lack of skills in certain areas), boundaries of knowledge, boundaries of leadership capability, boundaries of time, boundaries of classroom doors and walls separating physical space and boundaries set up by those who seek to maintain their sense of power by position alone. Effective school leaders are those who can identify the boundaries in their school which are causing conflict and inefficiency and deal with them decisively and fairly.

Through the network of teachers in my PLN I have the privilege of meeting some amazing educators from all over South Africa. One such teacher is Robyn Clark of Sekolo sa Borokgo, an independent school in Johannesburg. We met up at a conference in Pretoria last year and met up again at a conference in Durban last month when we both shared as speakers. What I love about Robyn is her willingness to embrace challenge and change as well as her drive to be a teacher who makes a real difference in her pupils’ lives.

Robyn’s innovative and open approach to the use of mobile phones in her classroom is evident of her desire to use the tools available to her pupils to teach them more effectively.