Trudy Graham

13/10/2026

A student arrives at the hospital on a Monday morning, and nobody knows they were coming. They could be in Year 1 or Year 11. They could be there for two days or two months.

That is an ordinary week for the educators of the NSW Hospital Schools Association. Every learning experience is built around the one student in front of them, from K to 12, and usually with no notice.

Yesterday, on their student-free day to start Term 4, I ran AI Pro Immersion with this group. Watching them work, I could see how much AI will give back to them.

We explored the limitless ways AI can support their work, creating personalised learning experiences and resources perfectly matched to students' learning needs, and giving educators time back to spend with their students.

Thank you for spending your first day of term with me, and for the work you do for students when they need it most.

If you lead a school with an unusual context and want to look at what AI could do for your team, send me a message.

11/10/2026

Do you know how well you’re leading your middle leaders? Take the 15-question Leading Middle Leaders Scorecard and get your score in less than 3 minutes. https://scorecard.trudygraham.com.au/

09/10/2026

Are you spending too much time putting out fires instead of focusing on real school improvement?

Imagine if your middle leaders could confidently make decisions, coach their teams, and drive positive change—without everything landing back with you.

Discover how you can empower your team, sharpen your strategic focus, and build lasting capability in your school’s leadership.

See how your current practices stack up with the Leading Middle Leaders Scorecard

A 3-minute leadership team scorecard for principals to assess strategic capability across decision ownership, strategic focus, and coaching for capability

09/10/2026

Are your middle leaders truly empowered to make key decisions, coach their teams, and drive school improvement? Imagine a school where your leadership team owns its priorities, supports each other, and builds sustainable capability for the future. Want to see how your team stacks up and what you could improve? Take the Leading Middle Leaders Scorecard here

A 3-minute leadership team scorecard for principals to assess strategic capability across decision ownership, strategic focus, and coaching for capability

07/10/2026

This October I'm part of a team taking on Go Girls Move, a month-long distance challenge that raises money for the Go Girls Foundation.

The Foundation supports women in Victoria who have experienced domestic violence, isolation or homelessness, and helps them become work-ready and financially independent. It runs entirely on donations and fundraising.

I've set myself 100km for the month, and our team, under Emma McQueen, is aiming for $5000. I'll post updates as we go.

If you'd like to support us, here's the link:

Go Girls Move : Make a donation today to support Go Girls Move Challenge

02/10/2026

Dean Finlay's school was months out from a School Review that had already been rescheduled once, in the middle of a term already packed with end-of-year everything.

The self-assessment alone needed judgements and evidence entries across six separate domains. The kind of task that eats a week just finding the right words.

His instruction to AI was blunt: write these statements avoiding jargon and, in his words, "w**k words."

What used to take hours took minutes. And what came out the other end sounded like his school, not a compliance template.

Dean's full story is in my free guide, AI in Action: Field Notes from School Leaders. Link below.

01/10/2026

Lisa leads a growing school with a leadership team that had just been reshaped.

When we started working together, she told me straight: I'm bogged down in operational, and that's not where I like to sit. I'm a big-picture person.

Her meetings had become what she called operational regurgitation. Everyone reporting what they'd already done. Nobody challenging anyone's thinking. Everyone staying in their own lane and calling it collaboration.

We rebuilt the meetings from there. A card that gamifies pushing back on an idea, so disagreement doesn't feel like an attack. A framework to keep the team honest about which part of the work they were actually in, instead of jumping straight to 'this is too big'.

A year on, Lisa called it her most successful year in school improvement. Because her meetings had turned into something closer to a real conversation, people showing their work, naming what they were stuck on, out loud, in front of each other.

She told her team directly: I'm not interested in mini-me's. I need my thinking challenged.

When she asked them afterwards if they felt safe pushing back on her, they said yes. Because she'd made it clear that was the job.

Lisa's team didn't shift because of a slogan. It shifted because she could finally see exactly where they were stuck, operational or strategic, and built from there.

The Leading Middle Leaders Scorecard gives you that same read on your own team in about three minutes. Link below.

29/09/2026

As we step into Term 4, if you're a principal who wants to know how ready your middle leaders are to carry more of the load in 2027, here are some ways I can help:

1️⃣ FREE Leading Middle Leaders Scorecard
🔗 Take it through the link in the comments. You get a single score, a breakdown by category, and remedy tips for the areas that come out lowest.

2️⃣ Leading Middle Leaders Clinic
A small online group for principals only. You bring your scorecard results and we work on them together.
👉 My Progress Cycle used as a group coaching tool
👉 Peer coaching with a reflecting teams protocol
👉 Practical actions to put in place the following week
👉 A 1:1 follow-up with me about a week later

3️⃣ Teamship Foundations
The next step once you know where the gap is. Your whole leadership team completes the Teamship diagnostic, and we work from the results on how you lead together.

4️⃣ Trailblazing Teams
A 12-month leadership development program for principals and their leadership teams at medium-to-large primary schools.
🔥 Expressions of interest open for 2027
👉 Principal Roundtables
👉 Peer Coaching Pods
👉 Leadership and AI Masterclasses
👉 Goal setting, monitoring and review, with online co-working sessions

Start with the scorecard. For the Clinic, Teamship Foundations or Trailblazing Teams, DM "DETAILS" and I'll send you what you need.

24/09/2026

Your middle leaders are capable. That's exactly the problem.

Two conversations this month. Different schools, same story.

Principals telling me their leadership team is capable, genuinely capable, and still ending up in the thick of every problem instead of building people who can handle it themselves.

Emelie described her deputies as "ambulance drivers." Strong expertise, constantly pulled into fixing things, instead of developing the teachers around them to fix things on their own.

It's a pattern I keep seeing in the leadership teams I work with.

I built a scorecard to pinpoint where your leadership team sits between firefighting and building capability in others.

Five minutes, a score, a breakdown by category, and specific next steps.
https://lnkd.in/gniPSCsW

If the ambulance-driver line landed a bit too well, that's usually the sign to take it.

23/09/2026

Are your middle leaders ambulance drivers?

A principal I've been working with in regional Queensland had two deputies and a head of curriculum, all excellent in their portfolios. One deputy knew inclusive education inside out. The other, student support and positive education. But she noticed both kept getting pulled into the same pattern.

She had a phrase for it: ambulance drivers.

Rushing to put out spot fires in classrooms again and again, rather than building teachers' own capability to handle those fires themselves. Her head of curriculum had the same pattern in a different area, doing the work herself rather than leading others to do it.

We started with 360-degree feedback for her and her whole team, then something called reflecting team practice: each leader brings a live, real challenge to the group, and they work through it together instead of solving everything in isolation.

The shift showed up fast. Her student support deputy delivered a genuinely strategic professional development day. Her inclusion deputy started running classroom learning walks with the OT and speech pathologist, checking whether support was actually landing instead of just reacting when it wasn't. Her head of curriculum began a pre-moderation process, handing planning ownership back to staff.

She took four weeks' leave. Her deputy stepped in as acting principal. Her real goal was never just covering the gap, it's a school that runs well whether she's in the building or not.

A team that's brilliant at responding and a team that's building the school's future are not the same team.