What are the characteristics of the best leader you’ve worked with to date?

I wonder if he will ever read this …

Mr David Reardon – Former Principal of Russell Street School.

David was famous for wall papering his DP’s entire office with colour photocopies of The Muppets. I believe his photocopy budget was much higher than ours. Another time he minded the entire school, for some strange reason I can’t remember, and showed the kids really stupid Youtube Videos that I don’t think anyone else would have got away with. He’s more comfortable in shorts than a tie.

He knew you well, and he knew what you could do better than you did yourself. He created opportunities for his staff to thrive. He made so many of us leave. From my ‘cohort’, three of us are successful Principals, and three are DPs in large schools, one is an ‘Across School Teacher’ and two others are Team Leaders.

He taught me to always make your Office Manager a cup of tea in the morning, and that a staffroom should be brimming with laughter, delicious food, and a room full of equals where you can sit down and chat with anyone.

We got him a good once during our special announcements at morning tea.  There were four of us young women on our staff around ‘child rearing’ age. One by one we each stood and announced the impending birth of our first child. OMG his face was hilarious, his look of genuine joy for us morphing into disbelief as you could see him calculating his potential staffing disaster. I think by announcement number four he was starting to cotton on but when our 89 year old librarian stood up to announce her pregnancy the whole staff just lost it (they were all in on the joke). You could see the relief wash over his face … but still double checked with us that we were actually joking. A very thorough leader lol.

He had a stern conversation with me once as a second year teacher. I had gone away for the weekend and had come back late Sunday night. I was exhausted and rang in sick Monday morning. On Tuesday, I can’t remember his exact words, but he made it clear that I had a responsibility no only to the kids but to our staff, our team. I needed to suck it up and get through because my slacking off put additional pressure on our team. I was so ashamed I had let him down. His conversation made me a better person.

He is kind and he would never make anyone do anything he wouldn’t do himself. He is more than happy to let others shine, in fact he encouraged it. He is hard working, honest, and funny. He knew me and how important my family is to me, and he helped me to shine. Thanks David.

 

Once Again Sleep Is For The Weak

I’ve decided to post my study reflections and assignments for my CORE Education, Advanced Leadership Programme.

I’ll try and post any accompanying media if it is public creative commons. Otherwise if I can’t I’ll just bold and link the name to anyone I reference. Here are my first two assignments for the Introduction Module:

Assessment One:
Watch the video from Bill George (Professor of Management Practice at Harvard University).

Now tell the group:
Who are you?
My name is Mārama Stewart. I am my ninth year of principalship and second school. I came by principalship by accident really. I was bored waiting in my classroom for my next mid-year parent teacher conference. I had been at Russell Street School in Palmerston North for the last three years and was very happy collegially but wanted a different challenge. I was a good classroom teacher, but it was not my passion. I was browsing the Edgazette and I saw a vacancy for a Principal with ‘Attitude At Altitude’. It looked cool. I asked my friend whom was acting principal at the time if he thought I could do it. He said yes, and I said why not. In January 2010 I began my career as a Sole Charge Principal 30 minutes north east of Taihape with 12 kids between the ages of 5 and 12. After two and a half years and one ERO Review I accepted the principal position at Waiouru School. I have been at Waiouru School for six years now.

How well do you relate to what Bill has to say about leadership and lifelong learning?
I like what Bill said about getting out to meeting interesting people and seeing different cultures, engaging with different ways to lead. It makes you, I think, reflect on what is really powerful and what I just do out of habit. I think it is important, with what he said about trying to see yourself from the eyes of others. What kind of person, what kind of leader am I in there eyes, and does it mirror what I think I am.

What kind of leader do you aspire to be?
I would like to be an Innovative Leader who creates an environment where people are able to grow to be the best they can be.

Assessment Two:
For any professional development and networking process to succeed, you need to have some clear objectives.
What is an example of a professional challenge you currently face or think you may face in future?
My current professional challenge is the intersections of two phases of my career. The first that we are wrapping up our Teacher Led Innovation Fund Project and we are now at the report writing and dissemination phase. The second is that at the end of this year I will qualify as a ‘Leading Principal’ on my career structure.

Both of these phases will take me out of my comfort zone of leader in my school and our Waiouru community to leading at the next level. I will need to be able to disseminate the findings of our research at the Leadership level and to now ‘develop leadership in others’.

What do you want to achieve from participating in the Advanced Leadership Programme?
While I find the actual act of being a leader in my school and community quite easy, I seem to just do it naturally. I’m not actually sure in academic terms what it is I am actually doing. This has of course caused a bit of a road block for me for developing leadership in others. I really want to use this programme to understand what it is that defines an Innovative Leader. By learning about Leadership I hope it will help prepare me to take on the up and coming takes of the two phases I spoke of above.

What do you need to get the most from the programme?
To analyse who I am as a Leader to make sure that what I think I am, is what others are seeing in me.

First TLIF Mini Conference – August 2016

I really need to catch up on a few posts, but to cut a long back story short … we WON!! Our Teacher Led Innovation Fund was successful. We are working with the amazing Keryn Davis, we’ve got $102 000.00 to burn over two years, and an amazing team to work with.

I will do a bit of back blogging later – we can pretend future posts are literary flash backs – but today I’m super psyched to tell you about today.

We began the day with a quick welcome by me and an invitation for us all to introduce ourselves and to share our own back story. I explained that the way we are as a teacher is shared by our own worldview and values within ourselves.

While I had been engaged in my CORE MLC course I have gotten into a conversation with Mary Milne about Leadership change practice – and that as a leader seeking to change practice in our teachers we must be very careful because changing a teacher’s practice is very much changing that teacher’s values and their sense of self – about changing the person.

So in order for us to journey together with the TLIF (which is all about researching into our own practice and changing it for the better) we must understand each other’s motivation for becoming the teacher we are today. asked each teacher to share their earliest memories of their experiences as learners, in ECE, in Primary, and in Secondary, then explain how these experiences as learners shaped them as the teachers they are today.

The stories which came out of this process were beautiful and surprising and I believe brought us together so quickly in an open and honest way. Many connections were made, lovely stories told, and surprising observations made about the power adults have over young learners.  This process covered the whole morning block right up to morning tea – and at moments throughout the day we would find ourselves referring back and making connections with the stories told during this time.

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Keryn’s Research Vocab Explaination

After a delicious morning tea – Keryn ran an amazing session unpacking what ‘Research’ actually meant. She ran a brilliant activity talking about and explaining the terms and vocabulary around research. Qualitative vs Quantitative research; Rigour; Bias etc.  Throughout this process we had to build three statements around our TLIF – “Risks and Limitations”; “How we are going to work together.”; and “Ethics”. I won’t go too much more into it, but I will say that we were all leaning over the table eager to learn what she was explaining – she did it so very well (here’s a photo).

Keryn then led us through an activity about the tensions which raise when Curiosity turns into Critical Thinking – she used Jelly Beans. It was both delicious and thought provoking.

Then finally we started to build our story of us, and our innovation journey – how we got where we are.  I loved this part because it really honoured Māori Methodology – the need to look at the past, understand and celebrate the past, to value the past because this is what has made us.

I have kind of skipped through most of the day, but I am very aware that I am now part of a public research project and I must be careful with how I publicly reflect. Today was wonderful and every piece feed and grew the next piece of the day – I can’t wait until tomorrow.

Also I have to work out a way to get the rest of my staff involved as soon as possible!! Peace out.