Scaling the mountain to principalship: The barriers and the enablers of a female first time principal’s journey - chapter 3 Background to Janet’s life

Chapter Three: Background to Janet’s life

3.1 “Teaching was in her blood!” (Janet, 2015)

Janet was born on the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand in an urban area.  She was the second child in a New Zealand European family with an older and a younger brother.  Her parents had very big roles to play in Janet’s identity as teaching, music, social justice and family stood out to me as four of her main passions in life. 

Janet was a fifth generation teacher in New Zealand on her maternal side with her mother a kindergarten teacher and her mother’s father a principal.  Janet and her brothers spent a lot of time at their mother’s kindergarten after school as it was only three doors down from where they lived so teaching was the norm growing up.   Janet also used to mark both of her brothers’ homework after school and “although she wasn’t a good speller” she liked to “use the red pen.”  Janet’s mother often said to her when she was young that “teaching was in her blood.” 

The musical side of Janet came from her father who was a singer and a pianist.  There was a lot of music in the family as she was growing up and Janet was also heavily involved participating in a number of shows and musicals and was part of the New Zealand Youth choir.  When Janet was about to leave school she wanted to train to become a singer at Victoria University or go to Teachers’ College to become a teacher.  Her father said to her that at the end of the qualification she could be a singer with no job or a teacher with a guaranteed job. Janet chose teaching but specialised in music which gave her the best of both worlds.

In the early 1980s Janet attended the nearest Teachers’ College to where she lived as pre-service was then zoned in New Zealand.  According to Janet “experience was more important [at that time] than your qualifications” and she came out qualified to teach but without her degree.  On the positive side there were no fees for Janet’s study but this also meant that she was bonded for 3 years to a specific school. Towards the end of her time at Teachers’ College she applied for 172 jobs and was offered 3.  She decided as a single white female to take one at an intermediate school in the “back of beyond” of the central North Island with a high percentage of Māori in the community.  There was huge white flight from this community in the 1990s due to the change in the rules about workers in the mill living in the area which led to a decline in the economic situation.  There is now a very high percentage of solo parents and grandparents raising grandchildren.  Janet reflected that “[w]e’ve got a lots on the poverty line and below it even” but it’s a “really neat small community” and these “are my extended kids.” This reflected Fuller’s (2013) findings in her study of a number of head teachers in the UK, both male and female, that social justice issues such as poverty and the lack of opportunities for low socio-economic families, which Janet also detected in her area, affected their leadership and reasons they stayed in these communities.  Janet came, met and married her husband, had a child and “never left.”

Janet soon moved to the secondary school to create a musical pathway from the intermediate but this move wasn’t an easy option.  She “struggled with a lot of disharmony over the years as there wasn’t pay parity” as then secondary teachers were paid more than their primary colleagues.  There were also teachers at the secondary school who complained: “who was this primary trained teacher who thought she could come into a secondary school and teach?”  As Janet articulated, they did not know about her music background and qualifications. 

3.2 Summary of career progression

Janet applied for a dean position after a couple of years at the college.  She was then encouraged to apply for the assistant principal position which was made into a deputy principal position when the school flattened the leadership positions.  Janet remained as deputy principal here for eight years until she applied and was appointed to a deputy principal position at a larger school where she remained for thirteen years until she returned to her first high school as principal.