Home, School, Two Weeks In...

As I write this, the news of school closures in the UK have just come in. I have been tracking the situation here in Italy and been in constant communication with colleagues back home. These are unprecedented times for most of us and I am, as ever, incredibly proud of how brilliant, resilient and strong schools have been in these weeks of uncertainty.

I previously shared an initial view from Italy when our schools closed and now that we are two weeks in here, I felt it worth sharing some observations of being at the receiving end of distance learning from a parent and child’s point of view. I write these as the parent of a learner going to an international school here as well as from conversations with other parents across the age range, British colleagues and Italian teachers and their pupils in the state sector here.

Here are the key observations I can offer up two weeks in.

1.       Don’t overdo the online learning if that is your suitable and main option for your learners

Nobody needs six hours at a screen, checking the screen, uploading on a screen, playing educational games on a screen, writing onto documents on a screen, hanging out on a screen, doing PE or arts subjects from a screen. The novelty has worn off quite rapidly. There is delight in doing anything that isn’t IT based. It’s a long day to be effectively tied to a device.

2.       Build in social contact and down time

An Italian colleague was telling me this morning that they phone up a few of their students each day in rotation to talk to them in person and that they organise an online hangout for those who can access it every other day to just say ‘ciao’ and basically make fun of each other. There is a lot of use of WhatsApp class groups for a bit of communication and keeping in touch. Various online meeting platforms are being used to the same effect. All the children I have spoken to miss their teachers and friends desperately. Teachers and communities here are organising online pub quizzes, bingo and virtual coffee breaks. Human contact beyond the home is something you realise you underestimated for far too long.

3.       Calibrate pace and volume of learning

Learning at home is a different experience and that ‘feel’ of being in school can’t be recreated. Not being in a classroom with their fantastic, witty, watchful, reactive teachers or in the multi-dimensional purpose-designed learning environment of their school means that learning happens in a different way. Trying to do too much, too quickly, without being in the room with that learner to take the temperature of their understanding might cover a lot of curriculum, but it doesn’t become embedded learning and knowledge. Schools, subject teams and teachers here are starting to see this and to reset the pacing of their planning.

4.       Learning Needs and Support

I’ll relate this on a personal level. My son is dyslexic, his processing for spelling, copying and his confidence for writing need a lot of support and he freezes under time pressure. He is 10. At school, he gets this from his great TA. At home right now, that’s me. It takes longer to complete tasks, so we cannot keep to ‘by the end of the lesson’ turn in deadlines for real-time online learning. I am adapting task types and response formats, helping with drafting, re-drafting and doing some scribing. I am able to do this in terms of time because I can be hugely flexible with my own work and am an experienced teacher. If I just left him to it, his learning would undoubtedly regress. I am communicating regularly with his fantastic teacher and his TA so we make adjustments to how time is allocated to different subjects in the day or decide what he can skip to focus on some key target areas of his learning. I absolutely understand the privilege of my own situation and I know that this is not the case for lots of other children and parents out there. I worry about the capacity schools have to support the specific needs of some learners, but not their expertise, organisation or planning.

5.       Home life and expectations of parents

We don’t usually spend this much time together, all week. We are learning to work and learn together in the same space. There is all the usual daily stuff that needs to be done, a working day to get through, a school day to complete. It can get terse. It can be lovely. It is tiring. It is bonding. It is an extraordinary experience. We need time to be a family and not pretend that we are all at our ‘9 to 5’ because…we aren’t. Parents who are working from home are doing just that and might be under a lot of pressure right now. They mostly don’t have the time to support or monitor their children consistently through the day. Many fellow parents are finding it really hard to ‘home school’, particularly with primary phase children and are terrified of getting it wrong. Many parents don’t have the luxury of supporting their child’s learning through the day. It is causing a lot of angst and a lot of family friction. Frequent, reassuring and open communication are really helpful, both to parents and learners.

(Teacher parents I’m in contact with who are being expected to fulfil both those functions in real time throughout the school day are exhausting themselves, working even harder and for longer hours on top of everything else. In Italy, the government has ensured that schools are able to keep on their regular supply/PPA teachers to cover for colleagues who fall ill, have to look after family members or to give them additional planning and preparation time in this unusual situation.)

I’ll end by saying that you have nothing to prove to the vast majority of parents. After even a day with their children learning at home, they will have an even greater appreciation of what you do day in, day out. We don’t need to be blown away by your cutting-edge use of technology or the cleverness of different modes of online teaching and learning. We want to feel that our children are still learning but we don’t need you to throw everything at them to show us that you are all over this. We know you are. We trust you. We’d quite like you to keep safe, stay sane and look after yourselves and your families, because that is what we are all trying to do right now. Most of all, we want to say thank you. Grazie.

Insieme ce la faremo. Together, we can do this.

             

Lessons from Italy

It’s been enormously interesting watching educators based in international schools leap into action with distance, online teaching and learning this week in Italy in response to school closures. There has been great collaboration and the sharing of advice and resources on Twitter, with the growing interest and needs of colleagues in other countries opening up excellent discussions about how to approach this problem. These schools are, by their nature, well-resourced and have a narrower, wealthier socio-economic profile to their student body in relation to the state sector, as you’d expect. Their rapid response to school closures has drawn interest from the media and it is good to see their use of technology and imaginative teaching highlighted and shared as exemplary.

In Italian state schools, the use of digital means to continue learning is patchy, much as it would be in the UK or elsewhere. This has more to do with scarce resources rather than a lack of teacher skill or knowledge, although years of low funding for digital learning and equipment obviously has its own impact. INDIRE, the Italian government body that looks after teacher professional development, has been running daily webinars and distributing dedicated online resources, many of which have been generated from lead schools in a national project researching effective digital learning.  In its crisis preparations, the government had already put in place deals with online platform providers so that schools could access their resources for free if schools closed.  

There are lots of news items showing Italian teachers video-conferencing lessons to keep in contact with their students, while everyone tries hard not to lose the power of those classroom relationships. My conversations with Italian teachers and parents this week paint a picture of distance learning mainly taking place through tasks being emailed or sent by text to students and their parents. Learners provide their own textbooks in the state sector here and course books are the norm, so these resources are more universally available to them, unlike devices or internet access.

At the moment, some regions will have had schools closed for nearly 2 months by the time we get to the current opening date of early April. For some international schools who have scheduled Easter holidays at that time, the return to classes will be a couple of weeks later than that. With the entire country in lockdown now, children will have not only missed the day to day routine and contact of school, but also opportunities to socialise, take part in group activities or get together with family and friends. The social media tagline of #iorestoacasa, ‘I stay at home’, is the summary of the collective effort to ‘flatten the curve’ of the virus spreading. It’s being taken very seriously. Italy has an ageing population who have been most affected by the virus and even the President cited the need to protect the nation’s beloved grandparents from unnecessary contagion.

All of this has been experienced by me partly as an inquisitive educator and recent senior leader who happens to have relocated to Italy at this interesting time, but largely as a parent of a child whose school has closed. I think that there are some observations that might be useful to consider for anyone planning for school closures elsewhere.

·         Children of any age learning remotely relies somewhat on the supervision of an adult, to a greater or lesser extent, dependent on how old they are. Not all will have parents who will be able to be at home to guide them and help them keep on task. Also, if parents are able to work remotely, they will have pressures and expectations on them for their output (including teacher parents) and might not be able to give much or all their time to supporting their children’s learning. So, when designing distance learning solutions, it’s worth thinking about how independent you realistically expect your learners to be and how you maintain equity for those who won’t have adult support or supervision or who usually get additional support in class.

·         The obvious... Not all children have laptops, devices or internet access available to them at home. They might have siblings who also need these and who might take priority because of age or exam preparation. Not all children have spaces to study at home and they might be trying to learn in a full household of people who don’t normally spend that much time together and are finding that stressful. Not all children have a supply of stationery at home and it might not be an affordable unforeseen purchase. Not all children have somewhere to go and play, let off steam or get some fresh air where they live, nor might they have books, sports equipment or board games to ‘take a break’ with. You will know your community and its families. You will know what is possible and how accessible you want the learning experience to be so that nobody is disadvantaged or feels it more acutely.

·         Learners are losing the social time that comes from travelling to and from school, having breaks with their friends and just being children in a school’s social setting. All those minutes add up to hours of enriching human contact and relationships every day, beyond their home setting. While it is admirable to provide a full school day of learning, the reality is that normally that time is split up by all of those things and even lesson or class transitions. We refer so much to effective learning and how we load it, let’s not forget that there is a limit to how long children are going to learn with any lasting impact if they are overloaded in our efforts for them not to ‘miss out’ or prove how great we are at providing distance learning.

·         If you are using it to provide some or all remote teaching and learning, there is an endless amount of technology out there, some of it incredibly intuitive, some of it harder to get to grips with and some of it just a bit too ‘out there’ for some people, both teachers and learners. It’s worth checking and asking ourselves if the time invested in using the technology actually enhances the experience and my perennial investment question, is it making any notable impact on a child’s learning or providing any efficiency for the teachers? It’s easy to get caught up in our own inner-geek and lose sight of what is actually worthwhile.

·         I know that many in the UK are already asking questions of the DfE about what will happen for children on free school meals if schools close and of course there are similar concerns about children we are involved in safeguarding or assisting with any number of complexities in their lives. The answer to this is not entirely in our gift and there are no easy solutions to report from Italy other than keeping lines of communication open for learners, parents, carers and communities is vital. Even with no personnel now allowed in school buildings, the government here requires phone calls, emails and texts to be diverted to staff working remotely, who still carry the same responsibilities for liaising with the necessary bodies if they have any concerns about a child or their family.

·         Finally, clear, concise, timely and compassionate communication from school is incredibly important when you are a parent wondering how in the world you are going to manage children, work, life ‘stuff’ and a rampant virus. Knowing that the school is offering to listen and support as it usually does, that there is someone who will try to help you navigate it all or have a motivating chat with your reluctant home learner, these make a huge difference. This also goes for giving notice of any changes to plans or even to manage expectations of when things are likely to happen.

There are already positives arising from this situation in Italy. There is a sense of collective effort, of working as communities, of looking out for each other, following a set of common rules for everyone’s benefit and showing care and kindness to others. Sounds like almost every set of school values I’ve ever seen displayed. Good luck everyone, however this affects you, your colleagues and your learners. You'll know what to do.

Lost and Found...

A few days have passed since the second @WomenEd Unconference and I am sitting on a flight back to Naples, unable to just sit back and snooze before real life starts again. I have had a wonderful trip back ‘home’, seeing friends and family, wandering wistfully around places and cities I adore and catching up on everyone’s news.  I never thought that I’d ever say that I found what I thought was my lost mojo in Reading, but I did. Honest.

On an autumnal Friday night, after a packed train journey full of people heading for the excitement of London, I arrived at the hotel and was very quickly greeted by others linked to WomenEd. There was that ‘thing’, which happened over the whole event, where the familiarity gained though communication on social media was suddenly thrown into the reality of not really knowing each other. I described it to a friend as ‘what online dating must feel like when you finally decide to get real’. What happened over the rest of the evening, several large G&Ts (thank you @MissWilsey) and a lot of chat and laughter was what encapsulates the spirit of the network. Egos were not present, everyone was themselves, quiet, loud, tired, hyper, shy, confident…  We were all distant cousins who had come together at the annual family reunion, ready to share our stories, support each other and make plans for future get-togethers. Just without the tension or arguments (or maybe that’s just my family).

The day of the conference felt special from the start. I greeted friends old and new, a minibus full of much-missed colleagues from my last school and was approached by people who had read my writing or engaged with me on Twitter. My session, on authentic leadership pathways, was both a catharsis and a passing on of experience, advice and my thinking after what feels like a pretty long time in the profession. (It felt even longer when one of the participants realised that I had been her French teacher 17 years ago). As I was speaking and facilitating thought and discussion in the room, the most enormous sense of calm came over me. I had hit my groove again, I was enjoying every moment, the words came easily and those who shared their stories made my heart sing at what wonderful, interesting souls do this education thing.

Afterwards, some of those in the session took the time to find me and thank me, giving me the most generous feedback. I met people who I have helped with job applications via e-mail, making me beam with joy at their stories of success or increased confidence. I even had a blog post I’d written about job applications recommended by the wise and exceptionally supportive @jillberry and sat inspired hearing how she and @nataliehscott approached their writing, feeling the fear but doing it anyway.

If I could have bounced back to the train station, I would have done. This is what healthy, wholesome networks do for us as professionals and people (all of us, not only women). We share ourselves without pretension, we listen without judgement and we pass on the best of what we know to light up paths and ideas for others. We welcome, we laugh, we support. We find our identity and if we need to, we re-invent ourselves in the afterglow of empowering inspiration and get a steady push out of the starting blocks towards our next adventure through our lives and careers.

So, this woman, who arrived as a tired, anxious mum who had left her son and husband on distant shores, who was stressed after a fortnight of unintentional KS1 teaching (that is a whole other story), who constantly pines for being amongst wonderful educators and colleagues, who misses their particular sense of humour and collegiality, who worries that she has lost her place in the best profession in the world, this woman found her mojo again. In Reading. 

With great power...

Last summer, Emma Kell of @thosethatcan asked Twitter to say how being a parent had changed them as a teacher. As you can tell, it has taken me a long while to grapple with this. The more I thought I had a pithy and clever answer to tweet back, the more I challenged myself to properly communicate the multitude of thoughts swarming in my mind, the myriad of feelings swirling in my heart. I have kept coming back to the question as I have watched my son move through Year 1 and found myself shocked by the visceral reaction I have had to moments in his experience.  You see, I think that what has changed most is that I had completely forgotten the potential for the utter heartbreak of watching your child learning to be a learner at school.  After a few weeks of reading so much about what children might experience in their primary years, triggered by the new assessment regime of the SATS, I have come back to that question over and over again. How has this changed me as a teacher and a leader?

Power. I have been reminded of the power we have to make or break a child’s day, week or entire state of being. The unfortunate action, the badly phrased admonition, the labyrinthine behaviour code, forgetting a promise, dampening enthusiasm, not delivering on those said and unsaid agreements that make our relationships in the classroom work. Because of what? Time, resources, external pressures, stress, juggling too many things, our own sense of importance, control. Nothing that the child is responsible for. Nothing that the parent can easily explain. Often beyond the conscious practice of the well-intentioned but pressured teacher.

My son had been so excited about starting Year 1, but within a week he told me one night at bedtime that he was ‘no good at anything’ and ‘not a good boy’. The words shot through my heart. I cried all night. I was shocked by my response and how little control I had over it.  I met with a defensive teacher (new to the school and grappling with a very different environment), who told me that he wasn’t going to change the behaviour chart that all the children were calling ‘the naughty list’.  I wasn’t asking for it to change, I just wanted my son to understand why his being ‘ready to learn’ was suddenly defined as being ‘red’, ‘amber’ or ‘green’ on a bit of card and that excitedly talking to a friend about superheroes while sitting on the carpeted area didn’t make him a useless and naughty six year old. 

When we asked for new readers (farewell Biff and Chip), as he was speedily ploughing through the same stage he had been on in Reception and wanted to not ‘be bored’, we were told that it wasn’t book changeover day, that there weren’t enough books in the next stage to share out, that there needed to be more books ordered in. He couldn’t have more or move on a level because then they would run out of texts to give him.  I was so taken aback by this reasoning that I actually couldn’t contain my tears when I went to see the senior leader responsible for literacy, to ask her what was going on. This was reading. The holy grail of loving to learn.  My child wanted to read more books, and he was told he couldn’t have more from school, but don’t worry, Mummy will get some for you to have at home.  He felt guilty for asking, confused and frustrated. It was the third week of Year 1.  

I had spent years telling him that school was the most exciting place in the world and that learning was the most incredible journey he would ever go on. If he wanted to be a deep-sea/arctic scientist-explorer, ninja artist, rock star and dinosaur bone hunter then school would help him learn everything he needed to do that when he was all grown up. I felt like a massive fraud with the very unfortunate propensity of living out my child’s disappointment in highly dramatic fashion.  With the distance to reflect, I realised that what hurt so much was my own frustration and lack of power to give my son the experience of learning and school that I had spent my career trying to provide for other people’s children.

Had I done that successfully? How many times had I used my position as ‘teacher’ to dismiss the concerns of a child or their parents without properly listening? Had my defence mechanism kicked in at the end of a long day, a bad week or a demanding term and made me give shallow reasons for me or my school not doing its absolute best for someone’s child?  Did I do everything I could to give those I line-managed the opportunity to tell me what they needed to make learning come alive in their classrooms, to argue for the funds on their behalf?  Had I spoken up enough about the rigidity inherent in any ‘behaviour management system’ or could I have done more to make it simple and relevant to the children?  How many times had something gone to the bottom of my busy and ever-expanding list that was of burning urgency to a child or their parents?  How often had my power led to disappointment and chipped away at a love for learning or trust in me or my school?

Those are hard questions to answer, not because they require a huge amount of recall or soul-searching but because, of course, it is impossible to teach or lead in a school and be unimpeachable against any of those counts. 

So. How has being a parent changed me as a teacher? I know that I cannot afford for myself or those in whom I entrust my child’s education to forget what extraordinary power we have. I know that I have to ask myself those questions more frequently, more searchingly and more honestly. I know that I must expect that of myself and foster that heightened sense of responsibility in any learning environment where I have influence. Most of all, I know that we all need to remind ourselves that the only thing that matters when we teach is our ability to explode the boundaries of each child’s own universe through learning. That delicate, difficult, extraordinary task that puts all those mundane ones, all the formalities, stresses and strains into the dark, distant shade.  As a leader, I need to endeavour to make everyone feel that this is their core purpose, every day and protect them from all that noise and distraction that swirls around us in education.

There, then. Not an easy answer. Certainly not one I was ever going to fit neatly into a tweet…

Letters of Note

Next weekend will see the first WomenEd residential 'UnConference' spring to life, focused on making next career steps. While I am sad not to be able to be there in person to share in the fantastic community that has been created, I am really delighted to have been asked to offer a virtual workshop on writing letters of application.

Like many at any level of leadership, I have spent many hours reading letters from prospective candidates.  Sometimes it is heartwarming to see the passion and enthusiasm they transmit. Other times it is depressing to see that an 'insert name of job and school here' approach has been taken. Often, I have been taken aback by how little I know about someone even though they have spent two sides of A4 telling me what they think is notable about their skills and experience.

So, the wonderful Hannah Wilson of WomenEd asked if I might share some tips and here they are...

Read the job specification. While this might seem rather obvious, a letter that doesn't convince me that you really want to do the job I need you to embrace, shape and excel in is not going to make it onto the 'yes' pile for interview.  If you didn't need to know the job details, school or department context and any other information you have been sent, assume that they wouldn't have been given to you. 

Read the 'essential' column of the person specification and don't be put off. These are going to be the non-negotiables and more about qualifications, specific skills or essential experience, the sort of thing you would cover in your application form. If you don't have them, will you by the time you start the post? Are you being proactive in ensuring you will? Do you need to explain this in your letter? Yes, is the answer. It's worth taking a different view of the 'desirable' column. Research has shown us that all too often, women feel that if they can't tick every single box on a person specification then they will be put off applying. Don't be - use your letter to demonstrate what already fits, what you are working on and what else you can offer to the post. Remember that your capacity and potential to fit many aspects of the role will be given a chance to shine through at interview. So, convince them on paper that it is worth finding out!

Be yourself. You have about 8 paragraphs to show me who you are as a professional, what you value as your best achievements and skills and what you are going to bring to the table in my school.  This is different to listing your career stages, telling me about everything successful that you have single-handedly achieved and asking me for the opportunity to do the same in this new role.  Don't be scared to write about your passion and what drives you (although if you read it back and it sounds like power ballad lyrics, tone it down). Think of achievements or successes that relate to the job specification and relate these honestly, whatever your part in them was. Don't say you led if you didn't, there is nothing wrong with having been part of a team that made something work, quite the opposite. Identify any relevant challenges and how you (and your team) overcame them, particularly if this will chime with issues the school is trying to address. 

Use the language of an emotionally intelligent professional. It is absolutely fine to 'feel' and to 'believe'. Equally, go on, be 'passionate' and 'excited'. Have you shown 'concern' or 'support' for a colleague, students or a situation?  Were you 'challenged' or 'inspired' by a problem, person or goal? Did you work 'with' and 'alongside' people? Did you 'lead a supportive team'. You get my point. I have read letters and sat in interviews where candidates have been very eager to make sure that I know that they alone achieved great things, that they simply told other people what to do and then spent no time at all thinking about how these feats of leadership happened. It is, of course, a fine balance between making sure that you take credit for your skills and underselling yourself. If you think about your letter being a reflective, relevant account of yourself rather than a shrieking sales pitch, you will give a much fuller picture of yourself as an individual.

Don't claim anything that you can't back up with evidence face to face. Remember that your goal is to actually be called to interview. Then remember what it feels like to be interviewed. I will just illustrate this one with a real example. The letter said, "I led a department-wide initiative to introduce new classroom-based learning assessment techniques. It led to excellent outcomes."  The interview answer to a question exploring this was, "I made coloured lollipop sticks for a couple of us to trial with our classes in plenary sessions and the kids loved it."  I would have been really impressed if the letter hadn't made bigger-sounding claims in 'clever' words and had just referred to trying out simple techniques with colleagues that had successfully engaged the students. It certainly would have made the moment less awkward.

Jargon isn't clever. Too much, the overuse of current education buzzwords, or heaven help us, 'management speak' that would be great in the City but not in a school - these all just come across as diversion techniques covering up a small amount of substance and not so much of the good stuff. 

Spelling. Spelling. Spelling. Many people will just put your letter on the 'no' pile if you make spelling mistakes.  Oh, and while you're at it, get the name of the school and the person you are writing to completely correct as well. This really helps.

The only other thing I can say is that you have to believe in yourself and know that you really want to do this job you are applying for. However hard you try to disguise it, any shakiness over this being the right move for you, right now, in the right school will climb out of every sentence you write and jump up and down at the person reading it.  Follow your heart and your instincts and you will be well on your way to achieving your goals.  Good luck. We need people like you.

For more information about WomenEd, go to www.womened.org

Finding my way...

Next week, I will be packing my bags and heading back to England for a few days to attend a conference about women in education leadership. I will also spend some time helping with the professional development of some newly-appointed female leaders in their school.  I am always very excited when my experience of education takes a new turn and the recognition of the need for a community of support for women in the profession is a wonderful thing.  It has, along with many other colleagues, made me think of my own experiences and my own feelings about my career.  The more I read and reflect, the more I keep coming across words like ‘confidence’, ‘balance’, ‘guilt’, ‘opportunity’, ‘support’ and ‘choice’.  Various forums have debated these, offering up personal stories, discussing the nature of being a female leader or that of one who is also a mother, arguing out work/life balance, promoting the right to lead authentically and in one’s own style and much more. 

Increasingly, I find myself listening to women considering their careers, who are filled with doubt and tension about what to do next and the only advice I can ever give is to do what is right for them right now. I too have had the sleepless nights and butterflies in the stomach caused by the fear of bad decisions, the terror of messing it all up and having to compromise at the cost of all that hard work.  When I contemplate it all, there is one word that keeps bobbing about in my mind. ‘Permission’.  More specifically, it is the permission I have slowly learned to give myself to do what I think is best for me.  It has been a lengthy and often frustrating journey, but one that may well resonate with others.

If you asked me what has been the significant shift in my attitude, I would say that it has been that instead of seeking others’ approval, their acceptance, their perception of where my career should go, their sense of my professional worth, I can now finally find the validation and direction from within.  This has not been easy.  While I have never been an ambitious, career-driven seeker of opportunity for the sake of it, I care deeply and passionately about education and being an educator.  If I have ever gone for a post or promotion, it has been because it was the right thing for me and it would make me happy to be able to contribute more through that particular role.  As I have moved through my life, other factors have played a part in my happiness – my family, my home, my sense of wellbeing, my close friends, my thirst for knowledge, my understanding of time.   As this has happened, I have had to learn to give myself permission to do what enables me to feel peaceful and happy about my own life, without worrying so much about what other people think about my decisions.  To be honest, if I hadn’t, I would be a miserable wreck and that is no way to lead your life.

It started before I even met my husband or became a parent or had anything else much to think about in my life.  After a very rapid move through promotions in a couple of schools, I suddenly realised that I had been entered into a race I wasn’t even aware existed and it terrified me.  From nowhere, it became about becoming a Deputy Head in order to reach the heights of Headteacher as quickly as possible.  If I didn’t do it in my mid-thirties then I was no longer one of the frontrunners. It bothered me, made me achingly uncomfortable and I felt like I was in danger of letting myself be convinced of what I wanted rather than following my heart. I remember how, one sunny Sunday morning, I suddenly felt an unforgettable sense of calm when I decided that I wanted to go and work elsewhere in education for a few years. Just because it would give me a great experience of so much in the wider system. So that is what I did. It made me even more passionate about education. It made me want to continue on as a school leader because there was work to be done and some incredible people already doing it. Most of all, I did it because I wanted to and not because it was what was expected of me.

Once family happened, my ability to give myself permission to do what was tolerable to my soul became even more important. I found this out after I had cried for 3 weeks straight dreading telling the Head at my very new school that I was unexpectedly pregnant. She was brilliant, told me some enduring home truths about being a working mother and couldn’t have been more supportive when we then had to move due to my husband’s work. Awkward. I had to let myself absorb the guilt and embarrassment of not having control over my own life and career, but equally to accept that nothing would have been worth our family living apart all week, every week. As I said in my leaving speech, my younger, feminist self would have imploded. My older, wiser feminist self was happy to be able to make the choice and be content with it.

A few years later, I had strong words with myself and said it was absolutely ok to say that I didn’t want to be considered for potential promotion to lead a school because I didn’t know if we would be moving again the following year. I knew I couldn’t live with letting anyone down, least of all myself and my own sense of professionalism.  I gave myself permission to skirt the edges of madness holding together a web of support around me and my son, so that I could give it my all again in that second Deputy Headship, with my husband in another demanding role with unpredictable hours.  I learned to ‘let it go’ when things didn’t go to plan. I stopped looking at how many cars were in the car park when I got to school and at the end of my working day, its length dictated by childcare. The world never once ended, I didn’t feel less respected. I realised that if I worked hard, was a nice person and did what I said I was going to do, then nobody cared what time I entered or left the building. My voice was heard and I was taken seriously because I thought about what I said and made sure I knew what I was talking about, not because I declared how busy I was or how many hours I’d worked over the weekend.

Most recently, I gave myself permission to be happy to take a long sabbatical that potentially jeopardised the next steps in my career, because it meant that my family could move abroad for a few years and have an amazing experience together.  Which we are.  I have started studying again, I am very involved in my son’s school, and I indulge myself in writing, which I have always adored.  Every day, I tell myself it is ok to feel a pang when I see someone I know move on to their first Headship, when I watch posts go by in schools I would have loved to lead, when I read about the latest policy I want to be in school to fight from the trenches, when I can’t participate more because I’m not ‘home’.  I have learned to give myself permission to choose the right path for me, for living in the present, and it has been the most liberating thing I have ever done. 

I am entirely at peace with my life, both personal and professional. I wish I’d known that would be the case as a middle leader in her late twenties with no life, a caffeine addiction, plenty of great ideas and too many late nights working, trying so hard to live up to other people’s expectations.  I wish I hadn’t wasted so many hours since then feeling guilty, confused, inadequate, emotionally exhausted and a disappointment because I just didn’t always want, or could do, what others felt I should aspire to.  I wish I could have told myself what I have learned.

Be true to your own ambition, not that of others. Know that it is both good and right to put your personal self ahead of your school self.  You only gain professional respect by walking the walk and being a consistent, compassionate human being. Life is messy, you will always have days when you feel like it has all gone wrong. It all works out fine in the end if your aim is to be happy.

When I left my school last year, someone asked me if I would find it difficult to give it ‘all’ up.  Without even thinking, I simply said that I didn’t feel I had anything to prove to anyone except myself, and I absolutely meant it.  It felt great.

This post was inspired by the WomenEd network and their first ‘unconference’. You can follow @WomenEd on Twitter and more details about their networks and events can be found on their website http://www.womened.org/

Gently does it...

There are many things to be learned from leadership courses, but in general I am not well suited to them. I have an exceptionally low tolerance of role-playing, team games, hot seating, card sorting and all that other stuff you are made to do to throw you ‘out of your comfort zone’. I have spent many hours half-heartedly throwing balls of paper at targets, drawing various diagrams and creating paperclip towers, but like many, I have always learned best from seeing, doing, making mistakes and putting them right. I have worked with brilliant leaders, terrible ones and others who were finding their way. When I first started my journey into school leadership, I desperately hoped that I would find the right role models and that they weren’t all the very similar, stereotypical ‘blokes in suits’ or ‘unapproachable women in twinsets’ that I kept encountering in my career.  As a relatively young female school leader (back then…), I wanted and needed to know that it was ok to have a gentler, more subtle approach to the whole thing and still be taken seriously.

It has therefore been my great fortune to have worked with some wonderful leaders of all varieties and they have all been hugely influential in how I have grown both personally and professionally. I can only hope to be like any one of them.  Right now though, my mind is very focused on one particular person who would probably never presume to think that she had influenced me at all.  Let me tell you about Jenny. 

Jenny is the person who has been my guide to so much that I would want to be as a leader. At the end of this school year, she will retire as a headteacher, having given her all and then some.  She has always taught, turning her hand to various subjects but mainly as an exceptional teacher of art and photography. She will continue to teach, she loves it too much to step away completely. However, I am sure that many others would join me in saying that perhaps her greatest teaching role has been incidental, that of living and breathing graceful, compassionate, moral, dutiful, robust leadership. All done with a cracking sense of humour, creative flair and quiet humility. 

What I have always admired most in Jenny is that she is herself, always.  She will agree or disagree and make her feelings known, she will ask the question that everyone else is trying hard to avoid. It will be done with care and consideration, but if it falls outside her understanding of what is absolutely right for her school, staff or students, then her tenacity and incisiveness will cut through any amount of smoke and mirrors.  Jenny has her own way of leading, never attempting to emulate that of other colleagues or leaders.  Hers is a calm, steady voice that doesn’t need to raise itself to be heard, because her reasoned, rational wisdom is something we all want to listen to.  There is no ‘flannel’, no artificial persona created to command power or respect, because there is no need for it. She has the knack of entrusting responsibility, stepping back, then asking the right questions at the right time to allow you to shine or to steer you back in the right direction. I have watched her give the over ambitious a mile just so that they can realise for themselves that they only ever wanted an inch, then support them through taking ever greater steps towards their goals.

One thing I really can’t do is ignore the fact that Jenny is, clearly, a woman.  In a world where I am sometimes wearied by being told to lean in/be fierce/speak up/roar as a female professional, it is truly my great fortune to have had a role model so relaxed and discerning with her own traits as a woman.  She can be the listener, the comforter, the lender of advice and the dispenser of hugs. She can be the owner of the demanding arched eyebrow, the softly-spoken yet razor-sharp inquisitor, the instigator of the difficult conversation, the gently nagging voice in your head.  Nobody wants to displease her or let her down, not out of fear, but because they know that she will take it upon herself to make things as they should be and you will feel that your loyalty to the collective mission has been tarnished. Forgiveness is immediate, but goodness me how you will work to make it up to her and give of your very best, just so you can look her in the eye again. 

I have shared tears of laughter, frustration, sadness and raw emotion with Jenny.  She held it together giving staff our OFSTED feedback, letting them know how highly we had all been praised, but it took one moment of eye contact for us both to be moved to tears by pride and relief.  She has delivered sad news of the illness and passing of staff and students, making it her personal business to keep in touch, visit and bring human compassion to their families way beyond the role of colleague or headteacher.  Her voice has cracked during many a speech, but she has never been too proud to just stop, breathe a while, then carry on.

On a very personal level, I couldn’t have asked for a better role model when it came to work-life balance.  Jenny encouraged us all to not eat ‘al desko’, always asked what we were doing at the weekend, often shared what she had been up to, teased us when we spoke of weekends chained to laptops or marking.  Above all else, in a school already incredibly family-friendly, she completely understood the value of supporting teachers with families.  How could we not want to give more and be better when we could do our jobs and get to go to the Christmas play or the awards assembly, stay home with our sick children or deal with family emergencies without being made to feel the external pressure of guilt? Likewise, those without families could earn their day at Glastonbury or their best mate's wedding by cannily being asked to do something in return for the good of the school.  They paid it back several times over, gladly.

In my case, with a husband in the Forces and away for almost a whole academic year, working full-time as a Deputy Head with a four year old would have driven me insane if it were not for Jenny’s support and outright knack for being eminently sensible.  No, the world will not end if you can’t deliver your Year 9 Options presentation because your son has been throwing up all day and wants his mum, not a babysitter.  It shall be dealt with and we shall speak of it no more.  When I told her that we had the opportunity for the experience of a lifetime as my husband had been offered a posting abroad, she simply said, “These are other people’s children, of course you must go.” There was no disapproving lecture about my career trajectory or leaving the school. Life is not a rehearsal.

No number of leadership courses could ever teach me any of these lessons in how to be a great leader; a great female leader; a great person who happens to be a female leader. One who is gladly followed, much loved and enormously respected by all.  I know that I don’t have to be anything other than myself, that understated is as good as shouting from the rooftops, that showing your humanity is exposing but powerful.  I know that I do not need to be part of a 'club', the most visible person in the room or concerned with the recognition of my peers. I know that it is ok to quietly listen while the ideas form in my mind then ask the questions that need to be asked. I also know that reaping your own rewards from a job done well and with care for others is a wonderful thing.

Jenny will be mortified that I wrote any of this, but deserves every word. Having been her colleague at various points in our careers, I am deeply honoured to know that she is also my friend. It will be my privilege to continue to learn from her.

“Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me. “

(extract from ‘Phenomenal Woman’ by Maya Angelou)