Friday 29 January 2016

Scaling the mountain to principalship: The barriers and the enablers of a female first time principal’s journey - chapter 11 Janet as a principal now and in the future

BECOMING A PRINCIPAL
Chapter Eleven: Janet as a principal now and in the future
It is impossible to separate Janet’s career path upwards towards principalship from her actually arriving at the pinnacle.  This is because all of the experiences and influences in her career and life, including her barriers and enablers, have led her to where she is now. 
11.1 “Put on my stage face” (Janet)
As principal Janet had broken through the glass ceiling but soon discovered that she was at the top of a “glass cliff” (Ryan & Haslam, 2005).  Janet’s “glass cliff” was a school where there were many changes occurring in the education of the whole community combined with the poverty of the area as well as it being a rural school, which is seen as less desirable in New Zealand (Strachan, 2009).  This can generate high levels of stress for principals (Robinson & Shakeshaft, 2015) and ultimately the failure of the school.  Janet recalled how this happened to another female first time principal: “to me it was almost like they (The Ministry of Education) sacrificed [her] just to get something.”
Janet still has days when she thinks “what the hell am I doing?” and is the first to admit that she’s “made a couple of mistakes.”  However, her passion for social justice, her sense of responsibility for the community and the school exude from her and although “nothing happens quickly” she knows that this is the place for her to be as “we can’t have any more kids falling through the cracks and doing nothing.”  Therefore, even when times are tough “because there is many a day inside these four walls I’ve cracked, cried under the sun I can’t do this” Janet puts on her “stage face” and becomes “the best actor there is because no one can see that you are not coping because as they see you are not coping everything else falls apart.”

11.2 “You just don’t have that time” (Janet)
One of the reasons Janet was reluctant to become a principal was that she “saw what the secondary principals did” and how they were in their “office all the time and [we] never saw them.”   Unfortunately this fear has become her reality too as she commented “I worked that night to 8 o’clock just to sort out the issues that had come up during the two hours [I was out] from my office.”  Janet spends her Saturdays “going around watching the kids playing sport as the principal” but she also includes the sports her previous principals never made it to as when a principal showed up … it was always significant to the kids.”   
Also in relation to time and a lack of work/life balance which comes from working in very difficult circumstances (Strachan, 2009) Janet commented:                            
You just don’t have that time so I’ve sacrificed. I don’t play sport, so I come to        school and I work 6 to 6, six days a week, so I work Sundays and when I go       home, if hubby is home we will share a meal together, that is about the extent of it, and if he is not home I go home, terrible diet, I just eat whatever is fastest             to cook, get out the laptop and carry on working, so honestly I don’t do          anything other than work.

11.3 “I miss the children” Janet
A second reason Janet was reluctant to taking on a principal role was that she worried she would miss time with the students.  As principal her focus is on
when’s ERO coming; what’s the latest complaint from the community; have          we got enough money for this; a teacher’s on maternity leave so I’ve got to            get staff for that…. It is really funny as not one of those things actually            features the kids.

Yet Janet is a very child centred person.  She keeps toys in her room “so that a child brought by a parent could play, even though the older child was there for disciplinary reasons.” She is “trying to establish a culture, send them to me when they have done good stuff, I want to see them when they’re awesome.”  Janet also aims to maintain links to the students which she was so worried about losing by going back to the classroom: “I taught a music class last term and it was absolutely delightful.”  However, when Janet is out of her office she does pay for it in time although questions the rationality of it               
I worked that night to 8 o’clock just to sort out the issues that had come up during the two hours from my office and it was sort of like it is a sacrifice that you make to leave your office but you should be able to leave your office and walk around the school.


11.4 “Whānau orientated” (Janet)
Janet’s commitment to people is also focussed on her staff.  She is “very whānau orientated” which she thinks is “very much a female thing” and “it is really important to me as a woman.”  Janet actually organises the beginning of the year family barbeque herself because “teachers in this school can only do their job as well as they do because they have support because husbands or wives and patient children get seen second.”  During “parent interviews, we organise for senior students to look after the [teachers] children.”  She also has “more empathy for female staff in the sense that my deputy principal’s got two little children and I worry about her, the amount of hours she spends here.”  Janet has begun to start mentoring with her senior leadership team “because I would like to think that either of these two deputy principals will step in here when I leave so they can carry on [with it.] “ 

11.5 Action needed to “change” the status quo
Although Janet does “carry the can” as principal she doesn’t let this stop her enacting her own resistance to neo-liberalism as she wants to improve social justice at her school by changing the “excess of standardisation in favour of a more creative curriculum” (Skerrett, 2009, p.10).  Janet, as both principal and as a resident for 35 years, wishes to “raise the bar” with the dress code of teachers and students, as by raising standards she believes student outcomes will be improved (Gold, Evans, Earley, Halpin & Collarbone, 2003; Skerrett, 2009; Theoharis, 2007).  Principals are responsible for the education of children in a society that sets excessive store on educational qualifications as the measure of children’s success and school effectiveness (Fuller, 2013). Janet understands this but also knows that she desires the best for everyone not just the “small line” of academic students and therefore turned the “timetable on its head.”
Our philosophy is that if we can have every child in this school leaving with a driver’s licence of some sort and our 18 year olds if they can have a fork-lift driver’s licence, with liaison with the local company, they can get jobs. Every child will leave with a barista qualification and a first aid certificate because those three things will get them a job before NCEAs


11.6 What next?  This is “definitely my swan song” (Janet)
Someone asked Janet “what’s your next project?” and she replied “I haven’t finished this one yet.”  She continued by saying

            this school is definitely my swan-song. I’m 55 now, I was 52 when I took on          my first position as principal and now at 55 I sort of look at it and think this is          my home. I’m going to give it the next ten years so basically to me this is it.

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