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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