 Wow, Stacey's like being on proper telly, isn't it? I know I'm excitable, everybody, but I am beyond excited to introduce Stacey Salt, who is from the FE sector in England, which is my love and my playground, community college, Oldham College, which is a community college in the north of England. Stacey's an advanced practitioner, and what that means is that she has responsibility for professional learning within the organisation, and she's doing some amazing stuff. And I've had the pleasure of working with her on a couple of projects. In fact, I think our working lives are so entwined now without actually working in the same organisation. So my heart is bursting. I'm going to say no more, except she's a superstar. Over to you, Stacey. Thank you, Lou. Hello, everyone. So as Lou said, I'm Stacey Salt, and I'm here to tell a story about cultural change in the last 12 months due to the pandemic. So my title is cultural paradigm shift in the FE sector, and it certainly has been a shift over the last 12 months and a bit more. We've gone from one place to a completely different place, and there's lots of things that have happened in between for us to move into a new direction within the FE sector. So what is my why? So why am I here? And I don't just mean here today. I mean, why do I work in FE? So my background really is I worked in the energy industry for many years. I got made redundant, went through a hellish time trying to find my place, trying to find my purpose. And I couldn't. And anything that I wanted to do, I couldn't because I didn't have the qualifications. So as an adult at 28, I went back into education. I did my degree in business management. And then I thought I really, really want to help other people. I really want to help people in my position, people who are not sure where they want to be or what purpose they've got, and be a guide for them for their future. So I decided to do my PGCE and I was successful in completing that and gained a job in FE in Great Manchester pretty much straight away after I'd finished it. I've not been teaching long five years is how long I've been a teacher and I've been an advanced practitioner for 18 months. As an advanced practitioner, I get the opportunity to work with staff. It's really, really exciting. I get to help to develop them, conduct CPD, do training with them. And it's been just an amazing opportunity. And I've got more details about that as we go along. As a business tutor, a lot of the topics I teach do focus around organisational culture, organisational change. It's something I'm really, really passionate about. It intrigues me. I always want to know more about it. I'm really interested in what are those cogs that turn within the organisation to help it function on a day-to-day basis. And what happens when something like a pandemic can change all of that? For me working in FE, yes, I'm an educator. I'm an educator for students. I'm an educator for staff. But I also consider myself to be someone who is constantly, continuously being educated in this environment. I always seek to look for development opportunities. And I like to take those back into the organisation to share with students and staff. So why have I chosen culture? Basically, culture in organisations has been flipped upside down on its head over the last 12 months. And as I go through my slides, I will be talking about and applying a change model to do with culture. But I will also be sharing some of my story as we move along. So as a business tutor and I teach organisational culture, this is a quote that I use quite a lot with students. And it focuses around organisational culture as being components within the organisation that help it to operate on a day-to-day basis. And those components can be found in the norm. So things that you might do in a daily basis, the symbols, artifacts, mission statements, values, and even just the day-to-day practices, all of these functions together like heartbeats. And without them, or if something fractures slightly, it can impact the rest of the organisation. These components are embedded deep in the organisation. And if something changes that is huge like a pandemic, what happens then and what experiences have I found? So the norm. So this is just something I've doodled. I didn't want to use just an image off the internet. I wanted to doodle something. It's kind of what's in my head. The norm before the pandemic, very much top-down approaches. It's kind of like something that you used to happen in every day. It was almost robotic. What I found before the pandemic was that I wasn't aware of anything outside of the organisation in terms of how things could be done. I kind of operated on a day-to-day basis within the confinement of it, very much an internalised culture. And it was very much of the way things are done around it. This is what we do. Some examples that I've got on here are CPD. It was very much within the organisation. Teaching, learning and assessment, very confined within the organisation. Not a lot of innovation or creativity. Now what happens when something like a pandemic approaches? The way I've drawn this diagram is that the values are embedded in the centre of the organisation and things are built around that. At the moment before the pandemic, everything was connected. It was functioning really well within the organisation. Things were beaten. I've symbolised these as hearts as heartbeats because all of these have to be to the same tune kind of a thing for it to function and operate in a good way. And I will say it for those targets to be met. It's got to function. Everything's got to be beaten in time with each other. So just before I go into the next stage of my presentation, I just wanted to share that I'm going to be using a change model which is Bridges transition model and it's a three-step process. It talks about ending losing, having to let go, the neutral zone and the new beginning. I will go into more depth as we go on, but you will see this image in the corner of my next slides. So what happened when the pandemic arrived? It was something like we'd never known before. Everybody was completely out of their comfort zone. This was the moment when things were ending. Things were getting lost and we had to let go of the day-to-day things that we would do, the day-to-day routines. There was a need for change and everything was changing. The way we thought in the classroom was changing. We wasn't in the classroom. We couldn't be in the classroom. Something very interesting about this is that the change had to happen. We had no choice. It was external of the organisation. It was in the macro environment and as an organisation, as organisations across the country, we had to adapt to that. We had to find ways of still ensuring these heartbeats were still functioning. Initially, when the pandemic first came, I remember one day I was in the classroom and by the end of that day I was told pack your bags. We've got to get out of there. Basically, that was it and then woke up the next morning with a laptop and lots of students on the screen, so completely different. As an advanced practitioner, I kind of have the responsibility to support staff in that. But I didn't really know how. I never done blended learning before. I never taught online before. So I had to find ways of finding out how that could happen. This picture, what it's symbolising is the values of the organisation remain the same. But we started to see fractures in different areas. These are just a few examples. The teaching learning assessment, the fracture was, we had to completely change how we did things. Working closely with staff, it was apparent that they weren't comfortable with using technology. Something else which is quite sad and shouldn't happen is that we had students who might not have had the insight. They didn't have laptops at home or they were sharing laptops with the siblings. It was a really sad time. The way we conducted CPD, it was completely out of the norm. Instead of just the normal way we would do it and the normal topics we talk about in CPD, it was now all digital. How do you do this on a screen? How do you do that on a screen? And there was an urgency. There was disruption. It was a challenge. And the only thing we could really be certain about was that there was lots of uncertainty at that time. There was emotions all over the place and the beats in the organisation slowed down. And when that happens, when those beats aren't beating as fast as they are, there's lots of elements within the organisation, those components, those rituals that Hofsteed refers to, those symbols that he refers to. They change, they become unstuck, but for an organisation we can't lose those. So what happened? How did we do this? How did I do it? So we saw a shift, we saw a complete shift. And this is what I'm referring to on the change model as the neutral zone. So within this neutral zone what I found and through reading different articles, we've very much gone from this culture that was very routine, it was very rigid. It was the same every day, quite robotic. It flipped on its edge when the pandemic happened. We went from people at the top saying we need this doing, we need that doing, to people at the bottom saying actually we're in this situation now. What can we do about it? Student voices were so important, so, so important, and the voices of staff, teachers, support staff, IT staff, everyone, every staff member. What I've seen is that we've gone from that typical culture to a more enterprise culture. And what I mean by that is people at the bottom have kind of taken control of it. We've had opportunities to be innovative, we've had opportunities to be creative. For me as an advanced practitioner, I remember feeling what am I going to do? How am I going to help other people to be able to do what needs to be done? And for me it was coming out of my comfort zone. It was going to those other places, which I found through Twitter. It was sharing ideas with people and joining communities of practice, which I could then take back into the organisation, and also share what I've been doing with people up and down the country. What this picture is symbolising is it's my first picture of where things are connected within the internal culture. But through the pandemic and embracing it and rethinking about how we do processes, how we do teaching, learning and assessment, the culture is expanding. There's lots of external elements being invited in to help this heartbeat more effectively. And then we get to the new beginning. The new beginning is so exciting for me. I've had opportunities to work with people across the country on different projects. I've got some examples there of what I've done, and it's all based around collective environments, collaboration, care, to get those hearts beating again. We needed to care for each other, and that got imparted onto the organisation. On this particular picture, I've got dancers and there's 12 of them, and I'm sure Lou will know exactly what I'm referring to, but I've got the opportunity to dance, and I've been dancing ever since for the last 12 months. I've had the opportunity to work with a group of colleges where we have shared good practice, we have shared what is working, why it's working, and being able to build a website from that so we can share those resources. I've also been dancing round with AP Connect. AP Connect has enabled me to amplify the work that I've been doing with Greater Manchester Colleges. It's helped me to learn new things to do with technology. I've met the most amazing people from being able to do that, but more importantly, I can take that energy back into the organisation and share that. By being part of AP Connect, I now have a podcast series with a colleague that we co-produce together. It's called Let's Get Digital, and this is where we interview staff, and we share that across the sector. And JoyFE, something which has just been a lifesaver through the whole pandemic. Everything that we see here is things that I don't just keep to myself. I share them, I share them with my organisation. It informs the way that I do my teaching, it informs the way I deliver CPD, and it informs the way I support staff, the heart to beating fast again. And I can see a much more positive and brighter future. JoyFE, as well, has helped me to see different ways of communicating with people. So, for example, the thinking environment, it's completely changed how meetings are done, and my mission now is to take those sort of practices back into the organisation. Through the pandemic happening and having that complete culture change from one to another, I've been able to build networks, I've embraced them, I've accepted them, and I've transformed the way I do things on a day-to-day basis. And what I've really, really learned in the last year through exposure to all of these communities is that FE does not just exist within your organisation, and it shouldn't just exist within one organisation. It's everywhere. It's all around us. We just need to go out and find it. Thank you. Thank you. I've been in tears for most of that. I'm sorry. Because what you have done so amazingly there is told your story of such a bigger movement of March the 23rd last year and what FE did through advanced practitioners with a little bit of a space to dance, to do new things, and you have encapsulated that so beautiful. And Joe, my fellow co-chair, was in the chat and he said, there's so much of an opportunity for open educational resources here. So, for example, part of the reason why people still think we're Cinderella rather than the Dancing Princesses is we're shut off from the resources that universities have. When we are studying many of us on high level programmes, we can't get access to books and articles. There's so much more that we have so much to offer, and at the same time, maybe we trade some of our energy to universities for some of their books. I agree. There's so much more to do and there's so much more to give. I'm a bit lost for words because I don't know. I feel a little bit emotional now, but it's just been a fantastic experience. I did talk about my story, but I'm sure I speak on behalf of many other people within the FE sector who have experienced much of the same, and it will be good, well, I think it will stay now, it will stay 100%, but we can do even more, and we've got those platforms to be able to do that. We have, and it's by moving into spaces like this, that we actually bring what we are, the amazingness as well, and we start to just batter down those silos. So, one of Anna's saying, Anna from the OU saying, sounds like a good trade, FE and HE need to build closer connections. And Mark, over in California, Stace, if you can believe, 2020, the year teachers pretended they haven't been resisting digital technology for decades, and you just pushed through all of that. Fantastic. It's been great and thank you. Thank you for having me. I have absolutely loved it. I was so nervous as well. Brilliant. You need to go and have a look at the chat on YouTube because people just loving it. Francis absolutely loving their heartbeat analogy, and Sammy quite right with a plug for her workshop at 11.30. That little corner that was Joy FE, which is all of us, which is our movement, she's going to be presenting about that. Mark, you can only hope, but what we want is that we want to be able to call ourselves community colleges like you are as well. Oh my God, we're out of time. Stace. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, thank you so much for being a Joy. Thank you so much everyone. Lots of love. Bye bye. Lots of love, bye bye.