Leading & Learning: Insights from Principals

With Anna Masters , Principal Merici College

What have been the most rewarding aspects of being a principal?

There are so many rewarding aspects of being a principal. Some of the most important to me are:

• The people.
• Nurturing a growth focused and positive community that seeks to develop the spiritual, intellectual, physical, social, emotional and communal strengths of all.
• Building and enshrining a faith and values-based culture in my college
• Thinking strategically and creatively about the future to ensure short- and long-term goals for our college are achieved.
• Fostering the future leaders of my profession – that is one of my most important responsibilities.
• Thinking and working as part of a rich network of educators beyond my immediate environment.

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What qualifications and experiences were most valuable in your journey to becoming a principal?

I found the Flagship Program at AISNSW was wonderful. It involved personal discernment, a fantastic 360° feedback, shadowing a principal, being allocated a mentor who was an experienced principal, various seminars, leading a school-based project and starting a Master of Educational Leadership at UNSW (which I then completed).

In a system leadership role, I was privileged to visit almost 157 different schools and thus learnt from so many different contexts and leaders. Thus, networking is invaluable.

I also have completed Genos training (EQ 360) and change leadership programs which really helped me understand how to lead people, strategic thinking and change.

Can you tell us about some of the unexpected challenges in transitioning from a leadership role to principalship?

On reflection there are a number of challenges that I needed to be ready for:

• The isolation of being the leader – the distrust of leaders can be very real! Having a strong network outside of your school is key to help with this.
• The unconscious bias, fear of change and previous encounters with leaders that the new community bring to the table when you start. Fresh eyes, asking questions, honouring the past and softly, softly help with this.
• The intensity of needing to lead culture change and deal with heritage issues that might been known or take you by surprise.
• The need to factor ?self-care into an intense routine and rapid learning experience.

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What advice would you give to those aspiring to principalship?

There are many things aspiring leaders can do:

• Get involved in important or strategic projects being run in your school – be a teacher leader.
• Seek feedback and see it as feed forward – look at your own EQ and discern if you really want to or should take on the role of principal: thus, know thyself, your deep, non-negotiable values, passions and motivations.
• Do formal study.
• Find an excellent mentor – they are out there.
• Be a coach and mentor for others – you learn as much as they do.
• Get connected with professional networks and associations.
• Keep up to date with your professional reading.
• Visit other schools if you can and shadow? leaders in contexts different to yours.
• Hang in there with the recruitment process – rejections are not usually about you but about fit and context of the school you have applied to lead.