leadership

Much Ado About Nothing

theprimaryhead1 Comment

‘You chose this over Henry V? You’re idiots! You’ve got to do an exam on this you know. Didn’t the title give it away…nothing happens!’

Our replacement A-level teacher who was furious with us for getting bored with Henry V and switching texts half way through exam year.

Circa late 90s.

 

And so, as I got chucked out of my Deputy’s and Business Manager’s offices for the third time yesterday morning, I stropped around the office, bored, because sometimes, when you’re a Head…there’s nothing to do.

I know what you’re all thinking:

Teachers: Typical bloody senior leader, not doing any real work. Try working at the coalface mate-you won’t be bored then.

Senior Leaders: Typical Head – letting us do all the real work. (I can’t wait to be Head)

Heads: The man is an epic failure for a) thinking he has no work to do or b) giving the game away.

Well I’m sorry but it’s true. There are times – not many I’ll grant you – but times, when I honestly think that I shouldn’t have bothered coming in to work.

Take yesterday for example. There were no pressing matters for me to sink my teeth into. I put this down to two main reasons:

  1. I had been too bloody strategic for my own good last week.
  2. This term’s data deadline isn’t until Wednesday.

The few days before the data deadline are the worst. I can’t look ahead, I can’t analyse the past and there’s nothing interesting going on in the present, due to assessments going on whilst teachers give me evils because the data deadline is in the middle of the week and their PPA is on Thursday. So I am reduced to an infinite number of little jobs:

  • Authorising school orders
  • Un-authorising holiday requests
  • Preparing for a governor’s chairs meeting
  • Creating the backgrounds for the Christmas performance on PowerPoint
  • Emailing staff important messages about next week’s timetables
  • Updating health and safety files
  • Checking the child protection folder
  • Deleting emails
  • Trying to see if I can slip into the staff room for an extra mince pie without anyone noticing.

I’m not saying this stuff isn’t important – it’s just not what gets me up in the morning. It’s not stuff that when I leave work in the evening, I reflect back on, thinking: today was a good day to be a Head. No, yesterday was a day that achieved nothing spectacular, that did not move the school forward that did not develop me in any other way apart from expanding my waistline as I relentlessly gorged on miniature heroes whilst everyone else was working.

I don’t know how I should reflect on days like these. Should I accept the fact that when you don’t have a class to teach and when there is no crisis to reckon with or no master plan to strategize and put into action, the role of the Head is more caretaker than leader? Or should I jolly well find something meaningful to do?

My only consolation is that these days are few and far between: as today began with me chairing a PEP for a recently placed child in care followed by a meeting with a staff member going through their own crisis, followed by a development of an on-going behaviour issue that we had thought we’d almost cracked, the phrase ‘once more unto the breach dear friends, once more’ sprang to mind As I ended my day with my Deputy discussing twilight inset agendas, and, as I tossed the first chocolate éclair I’d had time for that day into my mouth, I thought: today is a good day to be a Head.

And he said ‘let there be light’ and there was…well it wasn’t as dark, let’s just leave it at that.

theprimaryhead6 Comments

Beginning my third year as a Head I think we would all agree I am now considered something of an oracle of leadership. That must be why I have found myself co-co-ordinating an induction programme for new Heads in Bristol. There is not a lot I don’t know about being a head and all the fresh-faced newbies attending the five day course will find that out pretty quickly – I probably won’t show my powers too early for fear of intimidating them but, they’ll know…I mean one look at me and they’ll just know.

Or so I thought when @manwithadog asked if I would like to help him lead the induction programme – it was him that the LA actually asked for. In reality I think he only asked me to tag along for my PowerPoint and Prezi skills and to have someone to organise the photocopying. The fact that the local authority said ‘Who?’ when he put my name forward is neither here nor there and should be put out of the reader’s mind for the rest of this post.

So, yes, I was very pleased and excited to be helping the heads of tomorrow (well the heads of today really, but you get my point).

Then I made the mistake of visiting @PrimaryHead1 at the weekend, who has recently left the city to go and work in the country, under the delusion that the more cows at the end of your garden, the less stress you feel at the end of the day. After I had sampled the very best of country living (this consisted of walking past a chicken farm, attempting to row a boat, suggestively feeling up a bulrush and trying to get a cow to lick my hand) we started to talk about his new school.

It was about this time that I began to feel the old familiar pangs of insecurity and, whatever the word is that describes the feeling that you’re drowning in a pool of inadequacy whilst being arrested for fraud. As @PrimaryHead1 began to talk about his new school it dawned on me just how terrifying taking over a school is. I don’t care what kind of school it is, becoming the Head of it, is a challenge in the way that Everest is a steep hill. When you actually learn the reality of your own school however, that steep hill becomes an even more gargantuan climb. Think I’m over egging the pudding? Well, consider if you will, the last time you met a Head Teacher who said at the end of their first term ‘This is going to be easier than I thought actually’ and you can be rest assured that the egg in my proverbial pudding is over your face and not mine.

No, becoming a Head of a new school is terrifying. A school that is out of your comfort zone: even more so; and although that could mean a special school, a massive school, a small school, an urban school, a country school, an academy, a free school (I could go on) it could also, quite rightfully, mean any school where suddenly you are the accountable one.

So this was just great, I was now feeling that I would be the worst person to induct a bunch of new Heads, but I dutifully created a PowerPoint, did some photocopying, chose a tie that suggested ‘confident control’ and prepared to look wise.

As the first induction day continued and the new Heads appreciated both the transition effects I had selected for the slideshow and the fact that I had colour photocopied everything, we began to ask them to reflect on their year so far. Just like @PrimaryHead1, each of their situations sounded uniquely terrifying to me. But as we continued round the group I noticed some common themes, dilemmas and questions:

  1. What you were told about the school on interview day and what you found out about the school by the end of day one tended to differ significantly.
  2. How do you get the school community to see things differently and accept that change is coming whilst being sensitive to the fact that they’ve been working very hard to make this what it is today?
  3. Who do you ring when you have to do something ‘Headteachery’ and you haven’t a clue how?

After listening to their own tales of how they jumped out of the frying pan and ended up in the fire I began to relax – not because I’m a sadist but because I realised that I may yet be of some help. You see I know what it’s like to realise that the job you took on is too big for you and that if you’d known you wouldn’t have accepted, heck, if the interview panel had known they wouldn’t have asked you in the first place. I know what it’s like to be a lone voice within a community desperately trying to get them to come with you in the hope that they don’t all rise up beat you senseless with a copy of your own SEF. And I also know what it’s like to not know many, many things and be too fearful of ringing another Head for help in case I’m rightfully judged to be an idiot. I know all this…and I’m still a Head!

I’ve lived through all their fears – still do on a daily basis – and I’m still here.

I am the proof that you can do it.

I am the light.

I am the oracle.

I am a Head.

Freeze sucker!

theprimaryhead1 Comment

So September loomed closer into view, a blot on the summer holiday’s horizon. Very much like the slow dance at a disco: all the fun stops and the dancefloor slowly clears leaving you feeling isolated and alone – well maybe that says more about me than the start of a new term. But as I relentlessly updated Twitter on my phone desperately trying to find an important tweet to distract me from reality it became apparent that the dancefloor was not in fact empty. There were hundreds of folks on there, jiving away to the sexy and exciting tune of ‘I’m going to a new school!’ Fresh faced NQTs about to embark on a new exciting career; middle leaders about to start the rocky road to senior leadership; and once jaded long in the tooth heads, given a much needed shot in the arm as they prepared to tackle and untangle a new school of mysteries and problems. Was I the only person staying put? Was I the only one on the twittersphere without anything new to look forward to? Why will no one dance the rhumba with me?

So I went to sleep the night before school feeling…nothing. I wasn’t dreading it. I wasn’t itching to get back. It felt like a regular Monday albeit after a massively long weekend. I knew what I was getting: same school, same teachers, same kids, same challenges. I imagine at this point you’re probably thinking, that should the opportunity ever arise, you probably won’t be booking me for a motivational inset, but do you know what: I don’t care. Sometimes going back to school isn’t exciting, sometimes you don’t have a year full of anticipation and excitement and wonder. Sometimes you’re just going back to school.

I went out to the playground to meet and greet the children and parents. I do this every morning and I’ll admit that as the year builds so does the knot in my stomach as I pick up the school bell, push open the door and step out onto the playground. I scan the playground for faces that look like they have something to say to me which at 8:45am is usually not a positive, but a pent up, over-rehearsed, distorted and angry complaint. But on this morning, the first morning of a new year the playground was nothing but smiles and I realised, just then, that I should embrace this moment. No one has anything to say except for happy hellos and cheerful enquiries into each other’s holidays. The children are all excited to be back and there is a real buzz and most delightfully, nothing awful has happened that I can be blamed for!

Throughout the day I caught up with not only the staff but the children. I was genuinely surprised at how (almost) emotional I got when I saw a very ‘vulnerable’ child who I worked extensively with last year, bound around the playground looking happy and healthy. Seeing all the children en masse in assembly sat beautifully looking up expectantly at me, I began to feel so lucky that I knew them and they knew me and it was a pleasure to welcome them back to OUR school, a place we know and value so much and promise them that this year was going to be awesome!

Then the meeting with the staff to go through the handbook. The school’s bible, containing more than just the ten commandants – this epic tome makes clear every nuanced expectation, routine, system and structure in the school. Nearly two years in the making, it is now finished, a blueprint for the school we have created and I again, internally pause to embrace this moment. We’ve done it. We’ve built this school from the ground up and it is ours; it is ours and it will succeed. We go through the tried and the tested and although it’s a lot to digest, we take comfort in the fact that there are no more changes, we do not need to evolve because for now we are perfect.

Then there are the changes of course…universal free school meals, life without levels and the new curriculum. But we don’t care. Not least because we’ve already thought about them and have things in place – we don’t know if they’ll work but they’re in place. But better than that, we know that all schools are going through these changes. And for a third time I allow myself to enjoy being here, in a school that isn’t playing catch up to every school I know or have worked in, due to a lack of care or attention to policy and principles through past leadership regimes, because we’ve put that right. Now we can tackle the national challenges of the day on an even battleground and that feels…wonderful.

I know that one day I’ll get itchy feet and long for a new challenge. I know that one day my way will be the wrong way for this particular organisation and it will need a fresh pair of eyes to sort out the problems I would have become to blind to. And when that day comes I’ll be blogging and tweeting about how excited I am about my new venture, I’ll be dancing on the podium and spreading the love of change to anyone that will listen.

But for now, I want to enjoy being frozen in a state of suspended animation. I want to revel in leading a school I know like the back of my hand and where for the briefest of moments (and let’s face it, it will be brief) I am in control!

I haven’t moved schools…and I’m very, very happy.