'If we could get every teacher to move every student in their class up at least one competency level, the overall impact on the system, on the country, would be enormous. Just one level of competency....'  Emeritus Professor Patrick Griffin talks about the importance of moving to a competency-based curriculum and the need for principals to help teachers become skilled observers.

Transcript

Loretta  00:03

You're listening to Loretta Piazza, experienced school principal, mentor, and coach. And together were talking out at school. You will hear from leaders who have lived and breathed so many experiences, good and bad, agonized over decisions, and have tossed and turned through countless sleepless nights. These are the people who will help you stay ahead of the game.  The curriculum debate is once again raging. A couple of years from now, we will be at it again. And again. And again. We all agree that we want our kids to do better. So what do we focus on? Revising the curriculum and bringing in more compulsory assessment such as the year one phonics check. Don't get me started on that one. What are we missing here? According to Patrick Griffin, we're missing a lot. Let me tell you a little bit about Patrick. He was a professor at Melbourne University. And he was also the founding member of the Assessment Research Center. He was Deputy Dean of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. And he has published over 30 books, and has written hundreds of journal articles. He's worked in many countries during his long and distinguished academic career. It was on a lovely autumn day that I drove to Drummond North, located roughly between Castlemaine and Kyneton in Victoria, to have lunch with Patrick, and to interview him for this podcast. These days, he takes life very slowly. But he hasn't lost the spark, or the fire in the belly, when he talks about the over-emphasis on teaching content, and the disservice our schools are doing to our highest achieving students.  Patrick, Hello, welcome to Talking out of school. So you've had an incredibly interesting career. I know you're an academic, but very specifically, what has your work entailed?

Patrick  02:23

Almost inevitably, my work as an academic has been to do with competence and competence education. In fact, I've been employed by several governments around the world to help convert teachers to a competence rather than a content model of learning and teaching.

Loretta  02:51

What are you passionate about?

Patrick  02:54

I guess that's the thing. It's, I am quite passionate about competence, rather than content. Somebody said, the difference between content and competence is the teacher who teaches the students the poem, Daffodils. That's content. It's whether or not they can then take the lessons from that and apply them in a context somewhere. That's competence. And increasingly, the curriculum, content curriculum, is becoming so crowded. At every issue, every problem is foisted onto the schools to teach another topic, another topic, another topic, and then teachers  tend to portray the content as the end product. Whereas in fact, it's not every school, every teacher, every principal should be looking at. What is the trajectory? What what is the progression of increasing competence? This is what have Glaser in America, coined in the 1980s. We monitor students through stages of increasing competence. That's not true stages of increasing content. So once we do that the content doesn't become irrelevant, but it's not the dominant thing in education. That this is a very, very big change in teaching is, you know, teach To Kill a Mockingbird. That's the That's the story. What is one of the lessons that come out of that? And what can we do with those lessons? So it's a matter of identifying what level of competence each student is at and then deliberately intervening to move them to the next level. So the teacher's job is really to identify, first of all the progression, the stages of increasing competence. It's analyzing what in the teachers mind, is the skill involved? Then how does that skill become progressively more difficult to demonstrate? How does the progression of skills lead to the idea of a competence? Once we develop that, on that notion? What's the why? What are the stages of increasing competence? It becomes possible to abandon a lot of the peripheral content curriculum, and focus more on what the students can do. So

Loretta  05:59

So there's no real reason for us to have an overcrowded curriculum, is there?

Patrick  06:06

No reason at all. In fact, the thing that is attractive to ministers, at least in other countries and not here is that this actually frees up the curriculum. We're now interested, instead of the curriculum being a model of what the student what, what, how the student imitates the adult population. It's a matter of how the student can demonstrate skills and competence outside of the classroom, as well as in the classroom. The key to all of this is the progression of increasing competence. And when we developed the literacy profiles in Victoria, in the 1980s, we started out asking teachers, how did they know somebody could read? How did they know someone could do mathematics? Inevitably, we got a feedback to say, what the teacher did. And that was transferred to the student in terms of the competence. But it wasn't Of course, it's not about the teacher, it's about the student. It's not what the teacher does, says or performs. It's about how they lead students on. So that started out with at the very bottom of this scale, just beginning to read, holds the book up the right way, read from left to right, and so on through to the top of the progression, where the student is able to differentiate between strategies, persuasive strategies that different authors might use. And then to be able to evaluate those strategies in terms of their meaning that comes across. That's very different to what the general curriculum might be. There, most teachers have this in their mind, but still refer to their own performance rather than the students performance. And a teacher comes back into the classroom might breathe a sigh of relief. That was a tough lesson. I did this and I did that, that couldn't break through or, alternatively come into a word of what a brilliant lesson there was. Whether it's a brilliant lesson, or whether it was a tough lesson is dependent upon what skills the students acquired as a result of it, not what the teacher did.

Loretta  09:04

That's a really interesting perspective, Patrick, because I think teachers, they do spend a lot of time reflecting on their own practice. So based on what you're saying, then we should be encouraging our teachers to spend more time observing and noticing what it is the kids are achieving, and conversely, what they're not achieving?

Patrick  09:33

That's correct. And in fact, the work, my work was governed by three theoretical perspectives. The first was criterion referencing is developed the notions developed by an American psychologist Bob Glaser, who talked about monitoring students' growth through stages of increasing competence. Now, formally, we can see things like the NAPLAN progression, we can see things like PISA progressions, they all came about as a result of the notion of criterion referencing stages of increasing competence. So you don't need the formal NAPLAN progression, you don't need the formal PISA progression, just in the teacher's mind, they need to spend time talking about the stages of increasing competence that they observe in the classroom with their colleagues. The second theory that drove the work was the notion of the zone of proximal development or scaffolding, largely attributed to the Vygotsky, the the Russian psychologist, and that zone of proximal development is a thing. It's a region between what the student can do and what students cannot do. The important word there is do, not learn. Alone, there's ways to find that the ways we find the zone of proximal development as a result of the third theory, that is psychometric theory of Rash. Rash developed techniques of measuring the student ability, and the difficulty of the task were given to the students on the same metric. What we did to identify this was we developed something called a Guttmann chart. I regret calling it a Guttmann chart now.  What do we call them now? They're still Guttman. But I'm astonished at how students in our Melbourne University program took to the notion of guttman charts to identify the progression of increasing competence. But also the area for every student with a performance broke down between the can and cannot do. Astonished at the take up of that amongst teachers. So that's across the top of the guttman chart, you'll see the progression of increasing skills, because the teacher's got to be able to recognize that they're skills, not content, put those across the top, then, for every task that the student does, who records yes can do within a one year, no cannot do with a zero. And really, teachers only need to recognize where the pattern of ones and zeros gets a bit mixed up. That's data. It's also important that teachers can do this without formal statistics or formal by becoming skilled observers. Noting in the class, where the student is able to demonstrate the skills involved, and a student who is not able to demonstrate the skills and the students who are inconsistent in their performance. That inconsistency is what we call the randomness of it. And that is the zone of proximal development. So in this one chart, we can identify what the zone is for every student in the class. Experience tells us that there is not 25 or 30 different zones of proximal development in any classroom, but probably a maximum of five groups of students who can be mentored to move them to the next level of competence.

Loretta  14:15

So they will then indicate to a teacher that they could confidently differentiate the curriculum and run maybe five different groups of kids that all their kids would actually fit into those groups.

Patrick  14:35

Absolutely. Then, the difficult part then is what the heck are teachers gonna do about it? Because if we talk in terms of grade equivalence, now, it may well be that at the bottom end of the scale of the competence level, the student may be at a grade Three level, at the top end a student might be at a grade seven or eight level. And this presents a bit of a challenge in terms of lesson preparation in terms of monitoring progress. So now different forms of teaching activity take place. I wouldn't purport to know how to do that in every subject. But when I was teaching, I very rarely ever taught a whole class. What was happening was identify students who are stuck, who are needing intervention. And I would gather that small group of people out front or another place in the classroom, and we would just teach, directly teach that group the problems that they were having with the competence level, then they can move to the next level. Now, that didn't happen immediately, while but by direct instruction, when we identify the zone of proximal development, we could we could move on informing that and helping the students move through that stage of competence.

Loretta  16:31

So the emphasis that our current education department and previous ones have, the emphasis that they put on assessments such as NAPLAN. How important do you think it is for our kids to do well in Naplan? What's the value of that type of assessment?

Patrick  16:56

It's important at a school level, I think, it's not particularly useful for a teacher to know what the score is. One thing we can do is abandon scores all together and talk about zones of proximal development. Scores is a number and it's useless, a useless piece of information in that the teacher has a class full of students whose scores range from say 153 to 300. What are they going to do with that information? They can't watch us work harder. What will our teachers do? However, if I could reanalyze, the NAPLAN data to take a look at it. Guttman charted of it. They might be able to move kids quickly to the next level. But I honestly can't see what is four months between doing the test and getting the results. But that waste of time and wasted effort and stressful effort on the part of teachers. I don't think school principals should be stressed. But it does give an idea of how the whole school is is progressing. And that's important. It is important for the principal to know how the school is going. And even to know within the school, there might be cohorts of kids who might be particular groups of kids who are also struggling. It's important for the principal to know that. But there's not a lot that says the teachers can do four months after the test, or in Pisa, a year or two after the test.

Loretta  19:00

Looking at the high performing kids. And I know you've done a lot of research around this. Why is it that we don't see high levels of growth in kids who are performing say above average, compared to the kids who are not achieving to the same level? Yet we see we can see higher levels of growth there. Why is that? What's going on there?

Patrick  19:30

A number of things. Some of the research that we did at Melbourne University was related to exactly this. We took the lower quartile, lower 25% of the class and the top 25% noted the difference between these two top-meaning high scores on a test. We monitored the difference between the top quartile and the bottom quartile from grades three to grade nine, in maths and reading. The at the same time we invited workshops with teachers to come in and tell us what teaching strategies they would have employed in their classroom for these different groups of students. The first thing that was noted was that for the kids at the bottom, and the bottom 25%, they had almost a limitless array of strategies they could use. To get to the top 25%, almost nothing. Because we're so fixated on the bottom 25%. We're not self congratulating on top 25%. Just what's the results come out with NAPLAN? What will results be? So many percentage below the bottom benchmark is a report about 70 percentage above the top benchmark. That's the first thing. The use of the data focuses on the bottom quarter. Don't ignore them. But my goodness, we've got to get strategies to help kids in the top quarter. And teachers coerced almost into thinking about the bottom quartile of the class. But the top quartile will be all right, they can learn on their own. I don't know how to help them. Some teachers are intimidated by kids at the top end of the spectrum. So there's a whole lot of work that needs to be done in terms of the top quartile of kids. When we monitor those bottom and top quartile across schools. We were alarmed. And to say that by year nine the top quartile kids were going backwards in mathematics. Not so bad in reading but in mathematics, the top quarter, were not progressing, on average at all.

Loretta  22:50

Now, what year did you do this research?

Patrick  23:00

2005, 6.

Loretta  23:02

Okay, so we're 15, 16, 17 years further on. Has anything changed do you think?

Patrick  23:09

I don't think so. We're still focusing on the bottom end, which is good. Some schools are doing well. Some classrooms are doing well. And there's a long, long way to go.

Loretta  23:31

You mentioned that a lot of teachers are perhaps fearful of these higher performing kids. I'm interested in a comment that that you made not long ago about a fairly large cohort of teachers who are not particularly, for want of a better word, skilled, or intelligent. I'm not sure where do they fit in in terms of their ability to teach kids in that top quartile?

Patrick  24:13

I think the most serious area where this is the case is in mathematics. Teachers are not trained in maths education. They're not mathematicians. They're not... they don't understand themselves what the principles, what the competencies are. Did you come into the staff room in grade eight, and say today I taught simultaneous equations? Well, that's good. Did the kids learn anything? Most wouldn't know.  So let's for the teacher who knows simultaneous equations, one of our students went into school teaching mathematics and was alarmed with the coordinator in the school, the level of mathematics competence that person had. That's unfair to teachers. It's so unfair to put a teacher who doesn't have a background in mathematics, in reading, in history. And I asked him to teach kids at the top end of their spectrum. Not going to happen. So I wouldn't say that teachers are not intelligent enough to do it, I'm certain now. Competence is not natural, if you don't have it, you don't get it. You don't become competent by teaching somebody else. If we move to a competence curriculum, all these things should settle. And we can dispense with a lot of the content in the garage. And then the expertise in the teachers who have the skills and competencies will be much better aligned to the zones of proximal development that they discovered in the classroom.

Loretta  26:43

So thinking about principals now, imagine you're standing in front of a group of 100 principals, like you did many, many, many times. Many times, I was one of those principals in that room. In terms of whole school improvement, what do they need to be focusing on? What are the key points, in a nutshell, to bring about whole school improvement?

Patrick  27:17

They need  the teachers to become skilled observers of students. It's as simple as that I think. I've worked with with teachers a lot. And I am bothered by the teacher performer. The teacher who's got her wisecracks, who's got the jokes, who's got the charm, exuberance in the classroom. I'm thinking of someone in particular at the moment, who entertains the class knowingly, but the kids don't bloody well learn. Because they're too busy watching themselves perform in front of the class, their audience. And they're not picking up on the messages that the audience gives them through direct observation. So as far as school performance is concerned, whole school improvement become skilled observers, of what the students can do, and what the students cannot do. And identify that zone of proximal development, you don't need the statistics or anything like that. They just need to be skilled observers to say that the zone is evident, in ways where the student is inconsistent. With the performance, become observers.

Loretta  28:54

Yeah, that's..... in my own mind it becomes.... or thinking about what we keep hearing: evidence, latest research, et cetera, et cetera. So we continually hear about that. And yet, the message is, and very clearly, that teaching is a craft. And it's the teacher who has the knowledge to be able to identify where kids are at in terms of their observations, their questions that they ask, listening to the kids and so on. So are you referring to going back to teaching as a craft, where we give teachers permission to really do the job without necessarily doing all these assessments? Doing all these tests and running all these, you know, running records and doing Fountas and Pinnell and pre and post tests. Is that what you're suggesting?

Patrick  30:10

Oh, probably not to that extreme. But in the teacher's mind, in fact, the principal need to talk with every teacher. What in their teacher's mind is the progression of where are the stages of increasing competence? For every teacher? Once that notion is identified, then there's no further, there's no further formal identification that is needed. Teachers just need to be able to articulate what three or four levels of competence might be exhibited in their classroom. And to make a note of those things, so that they're able to pass that class on from one teacher to another. And the second teacher also has stages, three or four stages of increasing competence. No more than that, you don't need to 10 or 11 stages. Maybe two or three, four stages of competence that they can recognize in their students, or that they deemed to be critical for the students' progress. I think that that would get that would get teachers out of the content curriculum, and into the competence curriculum. But if I were to advise you as a school principal, I would talk to all your teachers, find out if they've got this notion of competence and progressions at all? Or are they still tied to content in the curriculum? If they're tied to content in a curriculum, then I'd be watching very closely how their students were developing. If they're conscious of the competence, and stages of competence, then they should be able tell you the percentage of kids that are reached my stage three, or my stage two? And why stage one? What am I going to do with kids who are in stage one? To get into stage two? What are we going to do with kids at stage three, move on to the next year's level, or whatever. But I would say, if you don't know what your teachers have in their mind, you've got no hope of moving out of a content curriculum. You're gonna be pestered by issues, tension cycles, ad nauseam. It's got to be competence, not content.

Loretta  32:59

So if you were the Minister for Education, what would change?

Patrick  33:05

Oh, I would move immediately move towards a competence based curriculum. We know how to do it. We get, yes, we know how to do it, how to shift it. That would be the one thing that I think would help Australia, help this country become really high skilled, quickly. Teachers need to have in heir mind progression that the kids are on. I know every kid's an individual, and they don't all follow the same trajectory. But the data needs to have that in mind. This is where I want this class to be. I'm going to move them. I've got four levels in my class. I'm going to move every one of the kids up one level. If we can get every teacher to get all the students to move up one level in the year that the teachers have them, the overall impact on the system, on the country, would be enormous. Just one level of competence.

Loretta  34:30

Patrick, thank you very much for

Patrick  34:33

thank you for the opportunity.

Loretta  34:34

Your insights are fabulous, and it's certainly no nonsense. It's, the notion of competencies are quite complex, but how we progress through competencies, it doesn't have to be a daunting task does it.  Patrick  thank you for your time. Thank you for your thoughts. Thanks for your many,  many insights. Wishing you all the best.

Patrick  35:07

Thank you.

Loretta  35:08

Thanks for listening to this latest episode of talking out of school where we cover topics and dilemmas associated with the ups and downs and even the downright curious of the school leaders job. Want to know more? Then visit me @shapingleaders.com.au But for now, here's to staying ahead of the game.

'Get this region out of the Herald Sun.' These were Minister Lynne Kosky's pleas to newly-appointed Northern Metropolitan Regional Director, Wayne Craig.  What happened during the next eight years involved developing and implementing a courageous narrative of school regeneration and school improvement.

Transcript

Loretta  00:03

You're listening to Loretta Piazza experienced school principal, mentor, and coach. And together were talking out at school. You will hear from leaders who have lived and breathed so many experiences, good and bad, agonized over decisions, and tossed and turned through countless sleepless nights. These are the people who will help you stay ahead of the game.

As we journey through the north, it doesn't take long to realize that back in 2006, the landscape was bare and bleak. If the western region was termed the basket case, then there are no words to describe the northern region when Wayne Craig became regional director. The Achievement Improvement Zones or the AIZ, also known as powerful learning, took educational reform to scale. It was essentially a subset of the efforts to lift achievement across all of Victoria at that time. Even to this day, I still recall Wayne's mantra about moral purpose and postcode not defining destiny. Wayne doesn't make this story about himself. And he tells of the collective efforts of all the academic experts, the principals, and the teachers who worked alongside him. His story is more than just school reform at scale. It's really about changing the hearts and minds of the people doing the work. I know this for a fact. I was one of those people.

Loretta

Hello, Wayne, welcome to Talking out of school.

Wayne  01:48

Thanks, Loretta, nice to be here.

Loretta  01:50

Well, I think we've got quite a few things that we can talk about, given that you were my Regional Director between the years of 2005 and 12. So prior to that, what was your role?

Wayne  02:08

I was the principal at Box Hill, Senior Secondary, from about 94, I think it was. And that was an interesting place because it had been a merger of a boys Technical School and a girls technical school, but in the round of closures under Jeff Kennett, they chopped out a junior part of the school. So half the staff lost their job. When I went there, it was its first year of operation. So it had no feeder schools at all. You didn't know whether you had an enrollment or not. It was in fair state of disarray when I got there. In fact, I would have walked out the door for the first six months if I'd had an opportunity. But it turned around, it was actually a fantastic place to work and a great experience.

Loretta  02:53

Okay, so you mentioned that there were a few challenges. So what were the highlights then?

Wayne  02:58

The highlight, I guess, was turning it around. So it had been a school of last resort for a lot of kids, which was fine. But it became kind of a school of first choice for lots of kids. And they were different kids. So some are academics. But we developed sport programs so that kids who went on to be seriously good athletes or develop careers around sport. Introduced probably the first online roll marking and progress reporting system, had laptops for teachers years before the department ever thought about it. So I was just a really good place to work. And, you know, I had sort of strong relationships with other schools in the area over time as well.

Loretta  03:47

You're talking about that technical aspect, you know, introducing laptops and so on. Were those ideas from you?

Wayne  03:56

Yeah, yeah. The roll marking was basically out of necessity, because it wasn't done well. And it was a very complex place in terms of timetabling. And we had an enrollment audit one year where they took a number of kids off me, which was fair enough, but I vowed and declared that would never happen again. So we looked at, we actually introduced a roll marking system using palm pilots, no one actually knows what they are anymore. But that got us on top of the enrollment of the attendance issues straightaway. And then in maybe 2000, or a bit after we went to online roll marking so parents could check in on the kids at any time, and we could do the same. And then we put in a progress reporting system that the kids loved and we actually attached grade point averages to the progress reports which kids also loved. So that was a long way ahead of its time. And in fact, the guy who developed it with us if he had any business acumen at all, he could have made a fortune out of it as, as Compass John de la Motte and Lucas Filer . So yeah.

Loretta  05:13

Turninh things around. That wasn't the first time. Well, that was the first time that you did it. But you actually did it again, when you became regional director of our northern region. How did that come about?

Wayne  05:27

It was an accident, like most of my career, I was contacted.....

Loretta  05:33

I think you're being very modest.

Wayne  05:35

No, no, I've never, I've never had a planned and you know, when I went to Box Hill, I applied for a few schools, basically, because a couple of principals and told me I should and eventually agreed with it. But I chose Box Hill, because of the what they were doing with curriculum. It looked to me to be interesting, I didn't realize all the other issues. And the Regional Director thing was really I was asked if I'd like to be a regional director. And I had no time at all for regions, I thought they blocked and they focused on trivia. And when I was contacted, I said to the person what, you know, what have I done to offend you? Why would you want me to take on that job? And during the interview process, Grant O'Here was the secretary at the time. And it became clear that if I, if I took this job, I'd be going to the north, because part of it at least, was in a state of disarray. So anyway, in the end, it was time for a change. I've been at Box Hill for nearly a dozen years. And we kind of all knew what we were going to say before we said it. So it was time to move on and do something different. And I don't think I was particularly well prepared for it, I had no idea really of the depth of the issues in some parts. My overall impression was that most schools were reasonably comfortable, you know, if, and particularly the ones in more affluent areas. And unfortunately, in some of the tougher areas, I think people had given up largely like, and government would, or the department come along and sort of point a finger at those people and saying it was not doing a very good job, and here's some money, go and fix it. And then they change again. And there were things like in Broadmeadows on on one side of the railway line, they were using a particular set of approaches to try to improve outcomes. And on the other side, they'd be doing something completely different. So it just seemed really bizarre, basically. But it was, you know, it's challenging. The minister was Lynne Kosky and she made it clear that she just wanted the region off the out of the newspapers, out of the Herald Sun. If there was a bad news story, it was quite often to do with the North.

Loretta  07:47

Poor North.

Wayne  07:48

Yeah, and it was, it was unfair, in a lot of ways, because there were plenty...and most, no one comes to school to do a bad job. And even in the places where things were really difficult, it was like there wasn't much support, and there wasn't much sense of direction, and there wasn't much optimism or hope. And you could understand, and there was also a culture of blame. So you know, people would blame the kids and blame that.... I remember I went to one school and did a session with the staff. And I had one woman tell me, you don't know what it's like here. We need to teach the parents first. And it was like, Well, hang on, you teach the kids who walk through the door full stop. That's your job. But that kind of attitude wasn't across the board. But even in the affluent areas, most of the schools were doing okay. They kind of, they're all aware, all right, we don't need to worry about this stuff. And the reality was, in most cases, they were doing okay, because of the kids who walked through the door, not because of anything in particular, they were doing. I couldn't say that in many cases, there was much value add going on.

Loretta  08:50

So would it be fair to say that your job was about school improvement?

Wayne  08:56

Yeah. And it was also, I mean, it was the time of the Blueprint. It was time when you had Lynn Kosky saying things like postcode's not destiny. It was time when Darryl Fraser had come in with a focus on school improvement. There was a little bit of money around and there was a bit of flexibility. And there became a little bit more money through national partnerships and so on. But yeah, the focus was very much on school improvement.

Loretta  09:23

So what did that mean to you?

Wayne  09:28

Basically, in the end, it meant getting the best out of every kid in every school. So which was kind of moral purpose, but also meant re culturing the organization. Because, if you looked at I think they were senior education officers, they were responsible for 40 schools, but they were really accountability bookkeepers. So you know, have you filled in this bit of paper, if you've got a performance plan? Have you done this? So it wasn't really about school improvement. It wasn't about working closely with schools to try and get them to improve their outcomes. So the first part was, how do we change the culture of the organization? And how to, you know, how do we reduce the numbers so that they're manageable, because if, if you're responsible for 40 schools, you simply can't do it. So we managed to get the numbers down to 20 to 25. And there was one Darebin, and whatever the inner North one was. Yarra, they'd been, or Darebin had been two networks that had been Preston, and the sort of area around the south around Fairfield and those places, and they didn't talk to each other. And they didn't actually want, they actually, principals came to me and said, We don't want to, particularly the ones down south, we don't, we're not, we don't want to meet with these principals, we've got nothing in common with them. And it was like, Well, bad luck, you know, this is how the world is, and you're going to meet with them. And in the end, when we started off the Achievement Improvement Zone stuff, the Darebin people were the ones who are most keen to be involved. So things changed fairly quickly. But it was, it was almost a cultural look after myself. And there was a degree of.dishonesty is probably a bit strong, but no one actually talked about what their data was like. If you're in a school that was struggling, you didn't talk about it, because there's almost a stigma attached to poor data. And if you're in one of the good schools, you kind of just let people think you are really good school, when in fact, the data might show you're okay. But you weren't a really good place. So there was all that sort of stuff in the background.

Loretta  11:29

Can I let you in on a little secret?  When you started to put the data up for everyone to see, we were all dying a silent death in the hope that it wouldn't be our data

Wayne  11:44

Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Loretta  11:45

It was so confronting, it had never happened before. We didn't know where to look, didn't know what to say. And then we'd breathe a sigh of relief when we realized it was another school's stuff. And then we'd feel sorry for them. But that changed and I'm really interested in the Achievement Improvement Zones. So it's the AIZ. Where did that come from? The idea behind that?

Wayne  12:13

Again, it was was kind of serendipity. I I knew David Hopkins a bit, I'd done some work in, in the UK for a month or so around 2009. I met David and I got on okay with him. We weren't bosom buddies or anything. But the very first conference they had for the region, which I wasn't involved in organizing, David turned out to be one of the guest speakers. And I can remember very clearly that there was a really bad comedian at dinner; it might have been on a Tuesday, I think, and David had been traveling for, I don't know, 38 hours or something to get there. And when David's tired or angry, or both, he gets a stammer. And he sat down beside me at dinner. And he said, Wayne, if you had been traveling for 36 hours, and you saw this comedian, and this food, what would you think the state of education was in the northern provinces of Melbourne? So Well, David, you'd think it'd be pretty bad. And you know what,  it'd be right. So we had a conversation. And he said, Well, basically, how about we go out for a drive and we go to some of these schools? So we spent a week driving around the region and going to different schools, and he was kind of fishing for a bit of work. He was going to be here for a month at a time three times a year, because he had an HSBC visiting fellow thing at Melbourne Uni, and eventually said, Look, I'll work one week, every time I come out pro bono.  And I said, Well, that's fine, except one week's not going to be enough, we'll need more. And then, he'd been involved in Achievement Improvement Zones in the UK. And that was basically one secondary school with maybe four or five primaries. And anyway, came back with that as a suggestion. I said, well, that's not going to work. You know, the problems much bigger than that. We had a third out of the, the worst 50 worst performing primary schools in the state. 38 of them were in the north. And I said, you know, if we just work with it, you know, four or five or six schools, we're kidding ourselves. And he agreed, and there was also the issue of too many schools. So you know, there are lots of really small schools, which people wanted to hang on to, but it was killing principals. And it was killing teachers. Anyway, we came up with this Achievement Improvement Zones, but then it was, so what are they going to actually do? And I've always had this thing about literate, numerate and curious.  I'd had that for a long time. So we worked on that. And then we, we looked around at who we could get to work with us and I knew John Munro, really well. I'd worked with John a lot and John John had become a personal friend.  Peter, the maths guy whose surname I can't remember, he was at Monash and I kind of knew of him. Ray Lewis on classroom management I knew well and worked with. And I knew Patrick Griffin from Melbourne. So we set up this thing about, let's work on those areas. There was a little bit of money around and you could you could fiddle with money. And it turned out schools were prepared to put some in. And basically, the message was, you know, you can do this, but you don't have to, but you have to do something. So, if you don't want to be involved, that's absolutely fine. But I think I was lucky because that stage, schools wer wanting to do something after they actually saw that wasn't just someone coming around to beat them over the head and tell them they're no good or ignore them. Because most of them, I reckon in the past, just ignored them. There was actually a strategy there to try and do something. And it was.....I remember the first week, I had a meeting at Mill Park at the whatever it is the council center there, that was my first meting. Darrell, I think might have turned up to that. And you could tell people were shocked, you know, we've got a performance that isn't good enough. And we've got too many schools, there was kinda silence. And no one you can tell whether people were in, they just looked the other way. It was like I wasn't there. But the next day, I went out to Broadmeadows, and there was a meeting of 500 staff about what they were going to do in broad Meadows. And it all revolved around refurbishing Upfield High School, which is a school that had been closed, and I sat there and I listened to it all morning, and then in the afternoon starting and it was like, you got to be kidding yourself. And I didn't know one person in the room I don't think, and I said Listen, can I just have a talk for a minute? I said, Look, if you think this is going to solve the problems in Broadmeadows, you're kidding yourself. All you're doing was shuffling the deck chairs, let's stop and have a serious look at what schools should look like, for the 21st century, not what they should have been like 20 years because they were.... Broadmeadows was a disaster. And anyway, that that set the ball rolling in that area for it was eventually to become the Regeneration project. But you know, your had pretty much every primary school in the bottom 10% or so in this state. You had one in five, one in three kids choosing to go from one of the primary schools to one of the local secondaries. And there was one chance in five they'd be there at the end of year 12. So it was just collapsed. And you know, there were 1000 kids a day heading out of Broadmeadows to go to another secondary school because they could, but there was a whole bunch of kids who couldn't do it. So it was kind of a mental mindset, a lot of goodwill eventually. And yeah, people just bought into it because they wanted to do the right thing. I reckon moral purpose is a big driver for lots of people on that that engaged many. And when they realized they weren't going to get beaten up for their data, I think that did that did a similar thing.

Loretta  17:57

That's an interesting term moral purpose.

Wayne  18:00

Well if you put it really crudely, it's a desire to do good things. But if you if you actually take, you know, Michael Fullan, David Hopkins, Alma Harris, they all put it as critical in in the improvement process. And now they'll talk about David Hopkins, for example, talks about as changing the life scripts of kids, Michael Fullan. It's about you know, raising the bar and narrowing the gap. What it really is, is stable and generalized intention to which to achieve something that's meaningful for the person, but meaningful to the broader world. And if you have a look at TELUS OECD Teaching and Learning survey from 2018, and more than 90% of Australian teachers, become teachers because they want to do something good for kids. And more than 80% believe that teaching was a means of addressing social digital disadvantage. So in essence, it's about doing good work to improve outcomes for kids to help them fulfill their potential.

Loretta  19:13

Okay, so you finished up around 2012?

Wayne  19:18

Yeah

Loretta  19:19

Given the situation that you inherited, and then what you were able to achieve in your years as Regional Director, and through the AIZ and working with people like David Hopkins and John Munro, and so on. Fast forward to today in 2022. Where, where are we now? What happened? Have we progressed, or have we stagnated or have we gone backwards? How would you compare today to 2012?

Wayne  19:55

I think I think maybe in the North things haven't stagnated quite as much as they have in a lot of other locations. But if you if you look at Tom Bentley, who has been an advisor to people like Julia Gillard, and I think now he's at RMIT. He argues that, basically, there's been no improvement in performance for a very long time, despite significant investments. So you know, if you think back over the last 10 15 years, we've had NAPLAN, we've had My School, we've got a universal year of pre service Ed, we've got Professional Standards for Teachers and Principals, we've had Gonski come along, and there's additional funding, and we've had the AEDI come in. And yet, if you look on every measure virtually no NAPLAN data has improved. Since we started basically, it's reasonably stable. And every now and again, one jurisdiction will go ahead a little bit. But overall, performance has been pretty static, our performance on PISA has been going backwards since 2000. And disturbingly going backwards. And, you know, Patrick Griffin, from Melbourne who worked with us a lot, he would argue that what we've done is miss out on doing the best we can for our most capable kids. So w've made some progress with kids who are at the bottom in terms of their performance. But if you look at the top kids, we don't extend and challenge them enough. And I think that shows up in both NAPLAN and the PISA data, TIM's which is the math science test that is for years 4 and 8, is not quite so bleak. So I think in the last round of TIM's stuff, in a couple of the measures, we were in the top 10 in the world, but in all of the others, all the other measures we've gone backwards consistently. And things like PISA are important because they're not just sort of tests of your capacity to regurgitate they are actually test and be problem solving ability. The fact is we've got an other jurisdictions that have gone ahead. But we've gone backwards in real terms. Our performance has actually declined compared to ourselves. So forget about the rest of the world.  Our performance has actually gone backwards over time.

Loretta  22:32

Well, how does that happen, given the enormous amount of money via equity funding, support from regions, and a whole range of programs that have been introduced?

22:46

Well, I think none of it sustained for a start. So you, you get a change of government, and you get a change of narrative. And so when Martin Dixon and the Liberals, Martin Dixon, my experience, you know, he'd been a teacher and a principal, and he actually understood what a good school was, and stuff he tried to do, which I can't even remember what it was now, even though I was involved in it, but it was a twist and a different approach. And now, you know, we've got this government that their focus is actually on improving NAPLAN. And what we want to do is improve kids learning ability, and we want to teach as well as we can. And things like NAPLAN will take care of themselves. It's interesting. I'm, I'm doing through Melbourne Uni, some work with South Australia's Leadership Institute. And they've got a target to be a great system by 2028. And you look and think, well, that's a big ask, because the rest of the country is not going forward, particularly here, you are looking to move yourself from where you are when they started in 2015, I think, but they've got a long way to go. But they actually, the targets are not. It's a it's a basket of targets. And they're not being specific about how we want to be here on Pisa, or we want to be here on NAPLAN. But then when you look at, okay, if we're going to do that, we're not going to be teaching the test. We're going to teach kids, we're gonna teach them well. And we'll teach them that how to learn how to think, how to ask questions, teach them how to manage their own learning, that kind of thing. And we, we tend not to do that or have the support from regions. I reckon we've gone back to where we were when I first started.  The people who are the link between the Regions and the schools, the SEILs, they're just bookkeepers. They're not necessarily deeply skilled in school improvement and they're not expected I don't think to really be involved and get their hands dirty. They go around checking up and making sure things have been done. And I think if you look at well, even if you look within the bureaucracy, there's not much in terms of knowledge about school improvement. And so, you know, none of it makes sense. And then the other thing I reckon is, for most bureaucrats, schools are pretty much the same thing. And I've had senior bureaucrats say to me, oh, you know, teaching this Groundhog Day, you do the same thing every year, and they don't understand you're actually dealing with different kids all the time, in school, each school's unique, unique combination of personalities, dispositions and knowledge. And they change every year, at least, because 20% or more of the kids are new, and 20% have gone, then you have a turnover of teaching staff. But there's no real attempt to focus or allow schools to do the work I'm doing at the moment, I think there are schools that know how to take what systems have on offer, and tailor them, tailor those offerings. So they actually meet what they need to do in their school to improve outcomes for their kids. And that was kind of what we did.

Loretta  26:00

Okay, if you were to walk into a room, and sit down with a dozen principals who were genuinely keen to bring about improvement in their school, regardless of whether they're high socio economic or low, what  would you say are the most critical factors that they need to focus on to get things happening?

Wayne  26:25

Ah, yeah, it's interesting. I think....

Loretta  26:29

it's a bit like solving world hunger, isn't it?

Wayne  26:33

Yeah, it is. But there's some, well, firstly, focus on teaching and learning. So that would be the, you know, you go straight back to what's instructional leadership. And so the first thing is to develop the schools of purposeful community. So be really clear on what it is we're here for. And we're here, in the end, to improve the learning from our students. The second thing I would look at is guiding change and developing people. So we're going to work if you're not, if you're not changing and trying to do things better, you're actually falling behind. So what do we do there? Well, if we want to develop people, we need kind of intellectual stimulation. So we need to engage them in the work, they need individual support. And we need to be able to model what it is we're trying to achieve. If we're talking about guiding change, we want to strengthen the school culture, we need to modify the organizational structures to manage the new work, and we need to manage the environment. And then the focus on teaching and learning would be about a high degree of consistency, kind of strengthening teachers skills and expanding their repertoire of practice. And I think, you know, the the work itself, David and I have argued this for years, the work itself is technically simple, we pretty much know what to do to boost student learning. And the HITS from the department would be an example of you know, that's technically simple, although they've made it look complex. But it's the challenges the social complexity, how do you overcome individual practice? And then, in terms of what would you do? Well, your work on the right thing. So the right things are things probably that are going to fulfill your moral purpose. So it's about what's in the best interest of kids in our schools. We implement evidence based practice, we improve learning and achievement by becoming more precise with our teaching. We work in teams, and we probably use moral purpose and intrinsic motivation as the drivers for change. And then we're rigorous about whether we're actually achieving what we set out to, so that they're the thing and I'd be saying, well, firstly, you know, you've, you've got to get this vision of what we're going to look like, how will kids benefit? And what will teachers do to achieve this, select the teaching strategies are the pedagogic strategies, put in place professional learning structures that will support teachers to develop those skills. And make sure that what you're doing is consistent, and then check to see whether the culture is changing. And it will be because if culture is what we do around here, if you're improving how you teach, you're actually changing the way you teach. So you're changing the culture of the school, and there's a whole lot of things that sit beside that are part of the equation. But the important thing I reckon, is doing the right work. And I think we get distracted by doing the bureaucracy's work. And you can do both. But I think that pendulum, important swings too much towards the clerical and accountability side and it's not intelligent accountability either. Not sure whether that answers the question or not.....

Loretta  29:47

Look, I think in reality there are a whole lot of principals in schools that just feel that they've they've got to get all their technical work done. You know, the occ health and safety. And because it's such a busy work, they don't get into the nitty gritty, what's the most important work, working with the kids in the learning?

Wayne  30:09

Yeah. And I think for some people, I think that's true. But I think there are some people who, who are not confident they have the skills to do that other work, whereas they can do the sort of department's busy work. And there's more challenges in doing the school improvement side of things because you actually need to bring people along. And you've got some people are deeply uncomfortable about being asked to change, not because they're, they're bad people, or you know that they're not willing. They just don't understand really what it is they're supposed to do. And they feel like they're doing it alone. And so I think, but there is, there is also still that argument that technical expectations drown the work you need to do. And I was lucky, because when I, when I was a principal, we didn't have email. And I would just say, I never got that letter or replied to that letter six months ago, what have you lost it? That kind of stuff. So you could, but but I think the other thing in that is principals don't realize how important they are to the system. And if they're doing a good job, if they have the support of their community, they're not easily hit on by the bureaucracy, you know, the bureaucracy can't do that much to them except so listen, can you get on with that stuff we need done. And I think part of the job, as a principal is to prioritize what's most important, and absolutely, there are obligations to the system that you have to fulfill. And some of them need to be done urgently. But there are others that don't. And I think, you know, things like occ health and safety policies, can have a look at those. They're the same in every school. So you don't need to spend years dwelling on what the health and safety policy looks like. Put your energies into the right work, you know, what is the right work? What's the workloads that schools exist, so kids will learn more efficiently and effectively than they would without them? That's the primary focus. So it's the right work, put most of your energies into that.

Loretta  32:18

So what does the future hold for you?

Wayne  32:22

Who knows? Finish off this doctorate. I'm doing what I'm doing a bit of work, which is not really what I intended to be doing. It's quite nice to, as you're finding, just to be able to sort of suit yourself when you do things and don't do things. But I want to finish the doctorate off.  I've just had a conversation with my supervisors and things have slowed down a bit because of COVID. So I'm looking at maybe taking a six month break, so schools can say...... what I'm looking at is workplace curiosity, driving improvements in student learning. And it's impacted by moral purpose on schools' capital. And the main part of it is a survey of teachers and principals, and I've done I've got about 200 responses so far. And it's really interesting. I mean, things like moral purpose do matter for teachers. And if they stay, moral purpose doesn't decrease over time. There's obviously some people who leave, because they just can't do it anymore. But moral purpose matters. Workplace curiosity seems to be important. Intellectual Capital, and social capital are really important, I think, when there's a guide. David Hargraves, who first did that work and I met in the UK a long time ago. And his argument was, if you want to improve student learning, that's improving their intellectual capital, you need to improve the intellectual capital of your staff, your teachers who do the work. I'd argue it's broader. And you need to have strong social capital and social capital has got two parts. One is the levels of trust within an organization. And the other is how efficiently a school can spread knowledge. So as we're learning something new, can we spread that across the whole school? And when you start to think about professional learning like that, it changes the way you go about business? I think. So yeah.

Loretta  34:24

Well, I mean, despite COVID, it sounds like a fabulous project, and it sounds like you're getting lots of support. So I certainly wish you very well in completing your research, because it certainly will have an impact on the way schools move forward and principals think, but I'd like to say thank you for your insights. And I can honestly say having been been in the North for more than 22 years as a principal that your legacy does still live on in many, many ways.  We might not talk about the AIZ, or we might not talk about, say, David Hopkins, but a lot of that learning still does remain in our schools.

Wayne  35:12

Now, that's terrific. I think that's true too. There's a lot of teachers and principals who who know that stuff deeply now.

Loretta  35:21

So wishing you all the best.

Wayne  35:24

Same to you. Thank you, Loretta.

Loretta  35:27

Thanks for listening to this latest episode of talking out of school, where we cover topics and dilemmas associated with the ups and downs, and even the downright curious of the school leaders job. Want to know more? Then visit me at shaping leaders.com.au But for now, here's to staying ahead of the game.

'Listen girlie...'  A former Regional Director recalls the challenges associated with lifting standards.  In six years, Katherine Henderson took the Western Metropolitan Region from basket case to the highest performing in the state of Victoria.  Here's how she did it....

Transcript

Loretta  00:03

You're listening to Loretta Piazza, experienced school principal, mentor and coach. And together we're talking out at school. You will hear from leaders who have lived and breathed so many experiences good and bad, agonized over decisions and tossed and turned through countless sleepless nights. These are the people who will help you stay ahead of the game.

She was tasked with not only lifting the standards in schools in the former Western Metropolitan Region, but also giving women principals a voice. Back in 2008 when Katherine Henderson was appointed Regional Director, about half of all primary schools were led by female principals. What stands out about our regional directors at that time, and for the next five or six years, is that they were a force to be reckoned with. Their profile was high. They were integral to network meetings by their sheer presence alone. Principals didn't see them as bureaucrats far removed from the work of principals. Admittedly our regions have now doubled in size. But somehow, I can't help thinking that the two former regional directors that I know would have let that stop them from doing the complex school improvement work. Today's episode is part one of school improvement at scale. Despite Katherine Henderson being proud to call herself a bureaucrat, and not wearing the 'former principal' label, she has all the hallmarks of what we truly value in our school leaders. A few years back, I had the privilege of working with her in the University of Melbourne Network of Schools initiative and what I learned then increased my literacy and numeracy knowledge tenfold. Katherine will go down in history as being the only Regional Director to take a basket case of a region and within a few years, turn it into the highest performing in the state.

Loretta

Hello, Katherine. Welcome to talking out of school.

Katherine  02:14

Hi, Loretta, thank you for asking me to talk.

Loretta  02:18

Now, I'm actually very interested in your journey as regional director, which was from I believe, 2008 to 2013. How did you end up in that role?

Katherine  02:33

Basically, I was asked to, if I would be happy to transfer into that role, because the department was struggling to find someone they were confident to put into the role after, after the previous regional director moved on to another role. And I was very, very happy to do that. Because I love working in a space where you're working with practitioners and backing them so that they can do really, really precious work, which I believe school principals, do.

Loretta  03:06

So what was the work that you were tasked to do?

Katherine  03:11

I was tasked with two things. The primary thing was to support the region to improve student learning outcomes, because they were really low. But as well, there was a concern that women, many of the principles were women, that women weren't being heard, and their contribution wasn't being valued. And so I was asked to pay attention to that, which I did.

Loretta  03:34

How many women were actually principals back then?

Katherine  03:38

A good proportion of the principals who are women, I don't have the exact numbers, but certainly around 50%, at least in the primary schools.

Loretta  03:49

So in terms of improving student outcomes, let's start with that. How did you know what work had to be done?

Katherine  03:58

I describe the way that I like things to work as layered learning. So that's a way of both bringing everybody in, engaging people, but also learning. And so when I knew I had the job, but I had several, like, you know, three months before I took it up, the first thing I did was interview anybody I could who could tell me anything about the region that included people in head office. And but it also included principals in the region and even other people who worked in the region and even parents. So because I wanted to get a feel for it. So that was a kind of personal learning and development for me. And of course, I looked at the data. And I looked at the data around student learning, I looked at the data around teacher and leader wellbeing or the proxies of that which might be you know, teacher absenteeism, for example. And that gave me a picture and I was really interested in the demographic of the students, and it was the region with the highest number of refugees as a proportion in the state. It was the region with on any measure, both related to teacher wellbeing, but particularly student learning outcomes, in student wellbeing at the time that we started, was the was the lowest, including all the rural regions. So that gave me a picture and just talking to people at the same time as I was building relationships, which were precious over the time I worked there, I was learning a lot about what the issues were in the region, what the culture was. And it's fair to say my judgment was that the people who worked in the west were fabulous. They are very strong values based belief driven in their work. They, they absolutely cared about the kids and the kids wellbeing. But there is a sense in which people didn't really believe that kids could learn. Not enough anyway, to make sure the kids did learn.  They were absolutely concerned for the wellbeing in the future of the children, but they weren't focused on the learning. And there was some.... a sentence would start: Katherine, yes, but yes, but you know, you don't know these, these kids and their families. And I used to think at the time, look, some of these children come from families, whose parents have sat in refugee camps for 10 years, and they've got themselves here for the sake of their children. So they are relying on us, you know, it was so important for those families. Katherine, do you think that these educator were making excuses by saying, yeah, but? I feel, I actually think that they didn't, they weren't confident that they could make a difference to kids' learning. And yes, you could say they were making excuses, but they would need and I would need in that situation, to have a reason for myself, you know, rationalization. And I think the work we did, was all about creating possibility, building confidence, and energy and action, the right work, getting the focus right, and working together and proving to ourselves that these kids could learn, and they did learn. And that was, that was the joy. And I think, I think many, many people in the region were excited by the changes that we we created, that did mean that many more children learnt than had been learning. I'm not saying either, that it's just a simple, easy thing to do. And to the families, the children, families, in many cases, face quite challenging circumstances and had challenging backgrounds. This, you know, that wasn't an easy fix for the people who were doing the work. But they got there.

Loretta  08:01

You came up with this really big picture idea of where the region needed to go in order to improve student outcomes. How did you actually make it happen?

Katherine  08:14

Well, the first thing I want to talk about and how we made it happen was how we set it up. So I had some good, the first thing that I did with the principals was say to them, we've you know, we've got I was upfront, the data is not okay, the kids aren't learning enough. They can do better than that. And so can we, and I, and I put put a question to them. I said, how do we become the most in how do we be the region with the most improvement in most improving regions in student learning outcomes in the state of Victoria? I didn't say how can we become the best? Because all sorts of things affect the best, including education, socioeconomic status of parents or money in a school, you know? So you could say that some of the most elite private schools are the best because they get the highest results. We weren't interested in that. We were interested in learning growth. How do we become the most improved region in student learning outcomes? For most without question, then we the next thing we did was we actually spent a whole year, not a month or a week or maybe writing a strategic plan. We spent a year and I had someone working full time on this. Designing the methods we used to consult and work with people at every level in the region, exploring that question, what do we need to do? How are we going to do it? And so we had discussed focus groups with principals, with APs, with teachers, with people working in schools as in teacher aides or you know, lollipop ladies, that sort of group people who weren't educators, and were parents. And then in that August that year, we had a conference, drawing on all those different groups. And we were asking ourselves, what do we have to do? How are we going to do it and we built a plan together, we built a three year plan together. And in that three year plan where...and this was before money came in, which supported us on this, we made a commitment that we would improve student numeracy and literacy as building blocks for access to a rich curriculum, we weren't dumbing it down for the kids, we weren't just going to try and make them do better reading and throw phonics at them, we were going to build their literacy and numeracy as building blocks or for access to a full curriculum, and we were going to provide a full curriculum. And that was, by the time we made that plan, I think we had really strong buy in and the buy in was because we worked with people, we didn't just write something on a piece of paper in an office and hand it out. And then the next thing that happened was that as part of that plan, every school committed to having somebody with time release in their school, to support literacy, and somebody with time release in their school to support numeracy, serendipitously, just as we're about to start at the beginning of the next year, funds came through for schools to have people with that role. So our schools all had a literacy coordinator and a numeracy coordinator. And that was great. But we really needed to be very, very precise about the kinds of pedagogy, the kinds of teaching that we were asking of people, which we had evidence for, that would make sure that kids learned and to do that we had so we had the coordinators in the schools. We had, and they were our school coaches. I think we called them then regional coaches. Funding came through for those people. And then we tendered, as a region for people with expertise in literacy and numeracy who, who were there to support and develop our regional coaches in our school based coaches. So those three groups work together. So a second really critical element of what we did as a region was coherence. The focus was student learning, what we consider was going to be powerful was coherence. People working on the in the suited to their particular conditions, or the students are working with at the kind of school they're working in. But with coherence around how we did things. And as it turned out, principals would say to me, after a couple of years that we prefer to recruit from from the western region to our school, because our teachers have got a shared practice, and they can work with each other. And I'm now working in another area with for the Menzies Foundation, and we're looking at collective efficacy. And you know, that that's now John Hattie's number one impact strategy or HIT. And what we were doing was building collective efficacy. Probably didn't use that language at the time, but we certainly did use the language of collaboration. So we so we, we set the challenge, which was the question, we built the shared purpose, which was the plan. And then we actually worked actively towards collective efficacy. And so we had three, I'd say three stages of implementation. The early implementation was very much about the regional leadership, relentless communication around implementing the priorities. And communication wasn't one way we worked with every network group. I, I and the Deputy Regional Director made commitments to each other that we would try and be in schools, at least two days a week every week, and we came close, we didn't do that exactly. So we had the Equip Professional Learning Program, which was around that coherent, shared curriculum for all of us around instruction, we brought in the expert consultants, and we had monthly professional learning and planning for those school based coaches, the regional coaches, with the expert consultants. So that was just an example of what I'm calling the layered learning. And then those school based coaches worked with teachers. We also ran an immense number of workshops for teachers, again, with this shared approach at all times. Who are the experts that you called upon to help?S So first and foremost and in which there is an OECD case study, which uses the case study of that improvement in the western region, I can talk about the detail of what the improvement was, but the person who was our most significant and important critical friend and expert was Diane Snowball, who had led the same kind of work in in New York and other parts of America. And her particular expertise is in reading and literacy or literacy more generally, but but also in supporting teachers to become more effective in their teaching practice. So she was our advisor, she and through her, we were able to recruit some amazing people who were already highly skilled at working with working in schools and with coaches. We, you know, on every level, we nutted things out together, we had a weekly meeting of the regional network leaders with me and the ARD, and the person responsible for teaching and learning in the regional office, a weekly meeting, because we thought it was important to keep close to each other and be able to hold each other to account and stick to our focus and our purpose. I pick up that you're very humble, Katherine. Yeah. Look, you said, Look, I've never been a principal. I, you know, I know something about education. I know a bit, but you know, not as much as maybe others. You surrounded yourself with really competent, knowledgeable experts. By doing that, you are able to get the results that you wanted. I always say that I'm a bureaucrat, and I'm proud to be a bureaucrat, and my definition of a bureaucrat is a person who makes it possible for things to happen. So I've worked in health and education, and particularly, and that local government, state government, and my absolute passion is making things happen, implementing, seeing a change. And it's always for me, of course, about improvement for people. So yeah, if you're going to do that, and you don't have the professional knowledge, you need to either get it yourself, we certainly need to get a broad overview. So and you need to find the people, the right people, good people. And the third thing, I think, became more and more important to me as a regional director was the word respect. And it was about respecting the people we were working with, because so many people in the community, wag their fingers about what schools ought to do and what principals ought to do and what teachers ought to do. And there are more experts about education than anywhere else, because everyone's been to school. And a lot of them a lot of those people are wrong. And so, and principal, I think being a principal is a lonely job, it's people, people, people 24 hours a day, but you're the one that you know, it's on your shoulders, it rests on you. And, and I also think people who are principals, a lot of people, including teachers, but principals in particular, don't get the sort of glory and the feedback that say people in business might get or in other sectors. They, and they are people who are very different personalities, but they're not generally show ponies, and they're because they want to promote themselves. So I think that that word respect becomes really important. Because if you want to work with people and support them, then they have to trust you, you know, you have to show that you respect them. We went into a school, I think we talked about this the other day. And I saw children sitting in rows going mat, red, set, fat, hat, back, and they were 15. And I thought this is wrong. I didn't know any more about it. I just knew it was wrong, because you shouldn't do that to young adults. And I went back to the regional office and said that to the people who are fantastic people working on teaching practice. And they said, Well, you know, we've got to tell them to stop it. Tell them to stop it, Katherine, you're the regional director. And I said, I'm not going to tell them to stop it. And they were horrified. And I said, I'm not going to tell them to stop it till we've got something better. Because these are people who are trying, they've made a decision they want their kids to learn. And they've caught on to a program and they think it's the ants pants. And so until we've convinced them that we've got something better then I'm not walking in and telling and that's what I mean, by respect. I think that matters a lot to me in my work.

Loretta  19:03

Well, I think that's a really beautiful way of putting it because if you want to, to get people on board that respect and honoring the work they do and appreciative and then as time goes by, as they learn, they will replace their actions and what they're doing with the new things that they're learning. So that that's how it works.

Katherine  19:25

I'll tell you another one. We heard one network and it was the it was on the on the measures the department used at the time it was point nine something on SES, which means it was really, really one of the poorest networks. It was the probably and there there were, I don't know maybe about 14 principals in it. Maybe more actually. So maybe about 19 principals, and they were all men except one. There was one woman in the room. And this guy, Frank, he won't mind me saying this, he folded his arms like this and he said, almost like: listen, girlie. Although those arent the exact words. Listen, girlie? Listen, Katherine, I've been a principal for 10 years. We're working as hard as we can, and we can't do more. And I said, Thanks, Frank, thank you for letting me know about that. And I went back to that network. You know, I used to go to them, most of them regularly. And I went back to that about two years later, I'd been there lots of times. And Frank said, Katherine, what you said, you're right, we're on it. That was a hard nut to crack. And it was so exciting when he said that. So because he was sucked in we and we gave... Richard Elmore talks about reciprocity. If you want to ask people to do something, you've got to be prepared to back them to do it. And that might mean quite explicitly with resources, or it might be another way, it might be just listening to them, you know, might be paying attention, but we had a set of values. And that was a really important one in our values.

Loretta  21:03

What did you achieve? How would you sum up your achievements?

Katherine  21:08

Well, first of all, there is absolute, it's unquestionable that we had a huge impact on student learning. And there's data that supports that. And in fact, there's a beautiful slide by Professor John Hattie, which showed our region making phenomenal progress over two years. In in, going from very low to the top region in in, in student learning outcomes in I think it was numeracy or literacy was one of those for the years, seven to nine, which is a hard group to move. So you know, on on, we went from being the bottom in every, in every measure, and under NAPLAN, making significant progress. And there were several different measures. It's unquestionable that we made really big gains in student learning. And that becomes a spiral because the teachers start to believe that they can make a difference. And I think it was Roger Goddard's definition of collective efficacy. If the teachers believe that children can learn, students can learn. If the children believe that they can learn and if the teacher is confident that they know how to teach them, that's collective efficacy. According to Roger Goddard, you'll get a significant improvement. And that's what we did. And I think that's what we created. So we I think we also created a working environment for people where they had great pride and joy in what they were doing. I'm not saying that it was all a perfect world, but it changed the culture. And, and a lot of it lasted for some time. So some of those networks were still there were informal networks meeting around particular areas, and they were still going a couple of years later. And I think up until at least three years later, there was one group that met that used to invite me to come which I like so. And either Patrick, I think it was Patrick Griffin, it might have been Fields said to me, Katherine, if it's not written down, is that it goes, it disappears. So the OECD case study is written down, that I sort of properly documented, but I'm not an academic. So I haven't got a PhD.

Loretta  23:25

Yet, yet. Quite a legacy. I'm also very curious, because you were talking about one of the things that you were tasked to do was to give women voice.

Katherine  23:41

Oh yeah. I'm sure we did. What I didn't do is ignore them and pretend they weren't in the room and work to the blokes. So I don't know that we.... I certainly know that the very people who had raised this issue with the relevant Dep Sec, who was at the time, Darrell Fraser, came to me later and said yes, yes, it's changed. I didn't go out actively, you know, I didn't set up anything special for women or do anything like that. But also I think we shifted the percentage of women who were principals. It was more the fact that I was a woman probably was a good start.

Loretta  24:28

You know, though, looking back at that time, I think women were particularly drawn to that educational leadership focus that looked, you know, like the education arena today. It's probably not all that different but. I think now, it's very heavily managed from the central office. We know we've got FISO, and the HITS and FISO 2 but it's not as strong from the regions. So, I mean, I suppose the intent is still the same to improve student outcomes. But if you are giving advice to principals today about how best to achieve school improvement, and at the same time look after themselves, what advice generally would you be giving to them?

Katherine  25:30

I think you're right about the centre, there's more, there's more focus, well certainly from the central office. There wasn't a lot but there was beginning. More focus on resources and support for people around teaching and learning. So, and structures, like, I can't remember what there's, there was a whole project from the center about PLCs, or PLTS. But if I were a principal, I would be thinking about several things. But one of them is I'd want to know, my school and what's happening here, what the content or what the, you know, what the culture is, and who the people were. And so I'd be wanting to get to know my people early, and as much as possible. And using that as a way of developing some sort of personal analysis, but also engaging them in that exercise. I'd be really, really concerned as a, as a principal, it's a concern for experienced principals. How do I hold focus? How do I get clear what my what our focus should be? But how do I hold it because the demands on principals are unbelievable. And you have to have, you have to have that, that theory, that idea that you don't have to do everything that head office says. Because if you have that idea, you're going to fall over. And the way I think of it is there's people in little units all over head office, and they're all working busily on their stuff, and they want the schools to do it, and it comes out and someone's deputy said, yeah, it's a good idea, we'll get the schools to do it. So you have to be able to make those judgments. So focus, really strong understanding of your local context, culture and your people. And holding that word that I value around respect. So you're respecting what people are doing. And building on that to develop a mental model. It's not, you know, we've got to chuck it all out with the bathwater. I mean, some schools we've had to close and reopen, because they were such, you know, a basket case. I'm not saying don't be responsible about that. And it's about I suppose, creating an environment where people will work together, challenge each other, and also get some recognition and joy from each other. And remember that you've got the best job in the world, because it's kids and you're creating the future. I think the other thing that's really important for principals is to not go it alone. I think they need to build if there's not a network that they naturally feel comfortable in, you need to build it, particularly as you're starting. Build your network of mentors and supporters and people who you can trust and people who you can ring up and say, Look, I'm stuffed, if I know what to do about this thing that just come out, it's not going to work for me, what do I do that kind of relationship, and you need as a principal, I believe to be building those relationships, yourself, taking on that responsibility with your colleagues, because it can be, as I said, it can be a very lonely role, despite the fact that it's it's a very demanding role around people, children, parents, department, the world.

Loretta  28:52

And that's the advice that I to give to my colleagues. Make sure that you've got a strong network of people around you be able to pick up the phone, have a chat to them, go for a coffee, whatever it is you need.

Katherine  29:07

I don't think we can underestimate there's plenty of things that principals do almost daily that I'm not sure I could do. But just that handling the range of people you've got to deal with. And then some of those people in almost every school, inappropriately badly behaved. I mean, might be parents, might be kids, doesn't matter. I mean, it's just high pressure, and not fully understood by the world. And you just really need to be able to back each other up and have some people you can call on and say help I'm going under. That's how you're feeling because you won't be alone in that feeling from time to time.

Loretta  29:51

Katherine, that's great advice. Thank you very much. I do remember your time as a regional director. And I remember also seeing that slide that you talk about the one that John Hattie put up. And I think for, for us in the north, I think probably the most confronting thing that we ever experienced was the first time that our data was actually put up. And our data wasn't great back then. And it was, it was a horrible feeling to know that there was a strong possibility that our school data might be shown to everybody and what will my colleagues think of me? Today, data goes up, we don't even think about it. We're so used to it. So we've come an exceptionally long way, in terms of student achievement. I guess the demands of the job haven't really changed that much. If anything, the the job is now more demanding.

Katherine  30:54

I think that it was such joy for me working in the region, because I think not that everyone's perfect, or even that everyone's good, but en masse as a group, culturally, people who work in schools are lovely people. Because you can't be a saddist or sort of brutal person now and run the school, it's, you know, you just used to be able to when I was at school as a kid, and so you have to be a combination of these things. They generally like kids and want to do and want the best for the kids. They have good capacity for relationship. And it just comes together to me as a lovely, lovely group of people to work with, and also a highly skilled group. So it's a special thing, I think, to be in a relationship with a whole lot of school principals.

Loretta  31:44

Oh, that's, that's a great vote of confidence. And I know the principals and the assistant principals listening to this will greatly appreciate your words. Katherine, where to now?

Katherine  31:58

For me I'm involved in work which I'm really enjoying because it connects me to schools again. And ultimately I hope it supports schools in a really good way. I like, I love work and where to now apart from that, you know, whatever you do when your 73 (don't put that in the podcast!)  I haven't got used to the idea that I'm supposed to stay home and you know, make scones or whatever. And I don't intend to ever get used to that idea.

Loretta  32:34

Well, Katherine, thank you very much for your time. Thanks for your insights and the great stories of when you were regional director and best of luck with the Menzies Foundation and all the great work you're doing there.  Thanks for listening to this latest episode of talking out of school, where we cover topics and dilemmas associated with the ups and downs and even the downright curious of the school leaders' job. Want to know more? Then visit me at shaping leaders.com.au But for now, here's to staying ahead of the game.

My 'partner in crime' opens up about his somewhat problematic relationship with the Department of Education. But he will always be authentic and honest because that is the person he is. This philosophy has stood him in good stead because after many, many years as a school principal, he goes to school every day and continues to give it his best shot.

Transcript

Loretta  00:03

You're listening to Loretta Piazza experienced school principal, mentor and coach. And together we're talking out at school. You will hear from leaders who have lived and breathed so many experiences, good and bad, agonized over decisions, and of tossed and turned through countless sleepless nights. These are the people who will help you stay ahead of the game.

During this series about the principal just doing their job, we covered quite a few topics, and heard several heartbreaking stories. But today's story is an uplifting one. And sometimes just a little bit irreverent. My guest is Berwick Lodge, Principal, Henry Grossek. I'll let him tell you how long he has been a principal. Yes, he's outspoken and a critic of education policies. But he's been around long enough to know the job inside out. And he understands its complexities. But most importantly, he's living proof that the job doesn't have to destroy you. I have great respect for Henry because it takes courage to publicly voice your opinions, especially when bitching in the corridors is a much safer and easier option. As series two comes to a close, let's not get too hung up with glass half empty issues. Let's do what we need to do to stay ahead of the game and to keep ourselves healthy and well. Henry, it's now over to you to wrap things up.

Loretta

Henry, welcome to Talking out of school.

Henry  01:46

Hello, Loretta. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

Loretta  01:49

How long have you been a principal for?

Henry  01:52

I'm now in my 37th year in total at three different schools

Loretta  01:58

as principal? 37 years? Geez, you must have been in nappies when you first became a principal because you're a very youthful looking man. What makes you youthful and energetic?

Henry  02:14

Well, the truth is that I wish I had been in nappies when I became a principal because I would have been another 20 or 30 years younger than I am today. But so thank you for the compliment. Look, there's there's a number of reasons. Obviously, one of them is I think, your genetics come into it. To some degree, you're born with a particular physiology, my parents were healthy, vibrant sort of people. So that was a good start. My lifestyle, I've always bothered to keep fit. I've been a very sporting person for much of my life as well. And I've tended to look after myself, of course, at uni a few times, we all go to parties and come home, worse for wear but have basically looked after myself. And I think to a large degree, I've been fortunate again, in inheriting my mother's spirited attitude. My mum had a tough life. She was a migrant, came from Europe after the war with dad out here and she went through a lot but my mum had a very upbeat approach, can-do approach to life. And I think, and I witnessed that in my family upbringing. You know, my parents were very supportive and positive people and made sure that the kids, myself included, I was the eldest of five, that we accepted responsibility for what we did, and that we didn't waste the opportunity that they gave us by migrating to the other end of the earth. That's another one. Balance in my life, and interests have always got something going on in my life that keeps me wanting to get up in the morning and challenge myself.

Loretta  03:57

How many hours a day would you actually spend doing the job? Whether it be at school, or at home?

Henry  04:06

It's a good question, because I don't actually keep a record of it down in a diary, and perhaps I should, but I would say on average, I do somewhere, depending on the day is somewhere between eight and 10 hours a day.

Loretta  04:21

So it'd be fair to say that you work around 50 hours a week?

Henry  04:26

Yes. I'd say that it'd be fair 50 hours a week. Look, it's an interesting thing. I listen to some of my colleagues about how many hours they do and I know some colleagues devote 60, 70, 80 hours. I've been very fortunate in my life, Loretta and I know I've chatted with you about this before. I've been blessed with having great mentors throughout my life and Barry Burns when I was an assistant principal at Chadstone Park, he was my principal there, and Barry had an attitude of when you pack up and go home, there's always tomorrow to finish off what you didn't do today. You don't have to get everything done every single day. Prioritize, get the things that matter done, go home, take a break. So I've been, I've been able to discipline myself that way that, yeah, sure, I sometimes think about things that have happened or might happen. But by and large, I switch off when I go away and I'm confident that when I come, the next day, if that some days are cloudy, some days sunny, but the sun does come up sooner or later,

Loretta  05:33

We often talk about that emotional roller coaster that we experience as principals, when it could be a personal attack from a parent or a staff member or something like that.  And I think while we're dealing with the technical, that's one thing. But it's that emotional roller coaster that's very hard to get off. How do you keep all of that in perspective?

Henry  06:01

Look, for the main part, I'm quite successful with that, partly because I'd say one of my skills is my social skills. I'm a fairly chatty person and a sociable person, my people skills are fairly good. So I'm able to share what I'm feeling about my work with with some of my senior colleagues, even junior colleagues, you know, having chats with people it's, it's a very reassuring and cathartic experience to be able to speak about things. The other one is, look, people see me as a pretty confident guy, and in many ways I am, but I'm like everybody else. You don't parade them, but I have my self doubts and my demons. But I think one of the things that some people sometimes get a little surprise at the end of the day, Henry's quite human, because humility about your strengths and weaknesses is so important. And I remember that, at the beginning of last year, I'd had a particularly tough time of it with some very challenging parents. And at the end of the school year, they were not happy with the measures we had in place regarding COVID. And I got some fairly strong criticism for what I was doing. And I remember going home and I didn't feel well about that I, I switched off over the holidays. And on the first day back, I always have a chat with my staff, and we will share stories about how was your holidays. And I opened up to my staff about how I really struggled at the end of the year, it had been a tough year for everyone. And personally, I found it tough. I rely very heavily on the people I work with the children at the school. And my colleagues, some of my colleagues, I'm close to a few colleagues. And my family too, I couldn't get through things, if I didn't have that support. And to have that support one has to be authentic. And if the going gets tough, and you're struggling with it, don't pretend I mean, let people know, I think I've learned very much is that most people are pretty kind, Loretta. And when they see you're struggling, and you share a little bit about it, rather than pretending to be strong or lock yourself in your room and be aloof, when you share that most people are pretty empathetic. And I think also, a couple of my staff came back after that meeting, and they said, Gee, Henry, it makes me feel better about myself, you know, when you're the boss and we sort of see you up there a little bit to see that you struggle makes us feel better that you know, struggling is not necessarily a sign of weakness.

Loretta  08:59

That's a lovely story.

Henry  09:02

Yes, a true one too.

Loretta  09:06

I suppose, you know, thinking back also, to my time as principal. The highs for me have always been being able to build those strong relationships, not just within my school, but with my colleagues in the network and within the department as well. What's your relationship? Well, what's it like with people at region and within the central office?

Henry  09:36

Look, that's a mixed bag. I've I've been a very outspoken person on educational policy for much of my career. I think the Building Education Revolution was probably a peak in that where I had a very high national profile and my view to this day; I wrote a book about it as well. My view to this day was that public schools got the raw end of the deal. That was my, my perception of it and I railed against what I saw was injustice from it that that burnt a few relationships with with bureaucrats and politicians. And there's been other times when I'm in the media, I remember one time when Phil Gould was the minister in the Jeff Kennett government, and this was way back early days in perhaps the early 90s, about '93. And I was a fairly young principal and an Age reporter was doing a report on teacher striking. And I said, Yes, I think they should have the right to strike Well, I got called into the regional office. And I was told in no uncertain terms that in my contract was in front of me, you can speak out publicly and if you want to speak out publicly go to the MCG. And you can do it over a pint of beer. And I said, Well, my father came here. It's a story I've told a few times Loretta, when my father came to Australia, he was trying to escape totalitarianism in his homeland of Poland. And my father was a learned man. And he he, he often said, you know, I'm, he quoted a quote, attributed to famous, famous philosopher. And it was, I might not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death, your right to say it. Well, of course, as a teenager, when I was arguing with dad a couple of times, I quoted that . Didn't go down too well! But I remember saying to the senior bureaucrat at the time, I said, Look, what sort of society do we live in? My father would turn in his grave if he felt that he'd come to Australia, land of relative freedom, etc. And his son's being threatened with the sack for speaking out in support of public education and something which was the law. So I've always maintained that and I think it's burned bridges. I mean, I've I've over the journey, a long journey. And there's been many things I've spoken about, I think, I've had a few death threats along the way. I've been threatened with the sack, I've had people call m  self seeking, media tart, and all sorts of things like that. But on the other hand, a lot of people have also said, Henry, you speak on behalf of many people who are too frightened to speak. And it's a good thing that you do it. And I look at today, and by and large, I'm pretty comfortable with all the things I've said, and the causes for public education that I've fought for. And nobody's sacked me yet. So clearly, you know, I must be running a reasonably good school. I must be a little bit on the money in which way I'm talking about a bit. I just, I just couldn't not do that for very long. And so I'd say, I have a somewhat problematic relationship with the people who are bureaucrats. I wish it wasn't so. Look, to their credit, I think they've got an invidious job, because they're the they're the ham in the sandwich between the schools and the government of the day. And so mainly they're messengers of the government policy of the day and I understand working in the public system that we have to implement government policy. But at the school level, were the ones that are, you know, at the at the coalface and I think feedback to them from the coalface may not change anything other than upset them a little bit, but it's a message I know, they would take back to the Minister. So from that angle, I would sum it up as I said, it's it's been problematic for most of my career.

Loretta  14:07

Why do you think there are such low numbers of applicants for principal jobs?

Henry  14:14

Because the job's not attractive to people in the way that it was perhaps 20 years ago, I can remember being on selection panels for principals. For good schools, they'd get between 20 and 40 applicants and then we'd spend a week shortlisting them, then you'd interview seven or eight of them and they'd be they'd be two or three and you'd have the panel spending hours debating over three outstanding candidates. Now, if you get if you get five applicants, it's almost cause for celebration. People are not applying and and I think the bottom line is people don't want the job because the I don't see it as attractive for a variety of reasons. I presume I can continue with what those reasons would be in my...

Loretta  15:08

look, please do because I think, you know, it's the challenges that that principals face. And, look, I mean, you'd know the research that Mark Thompson and I did, and we did it in 2014. So that's, that's eight years ago. And it was back then that the assistant principals said, We don't want to apply for jobs. We look at our principals, and we don't want to be like our principals, stressed out. So we knew that eight years ago.

Henry  15:48

Absolutely true. It's, it's one of the things that really frustrates me is that successive governments have poured a lot of money into what they call principal well being and welfare. I think the current government, I might be wrong here, correct me, but I think they've been saying they've put over $50 million into it? Well, look, I see a lot of good documents, training programs. But at the end of the day, things aren't getting any better for principals. And I think that comes down to several reasons. One of them and it's its workload, obviously, it's extremely onerous. And I think one of the areas where the government I think, has got things a bit out of kilter at the moment, in attempting to assist this is, in the area of accountability. We've now spent a lot of money on building regional support teams and Central Support Teams is a lot bigger bureaucracy. But what I see coming out of that is those people have jobs, they write policy, they monitor the policy, they work with this. There's so many policies out there, and we're chasing our tiles, ticking boxes all the time with these people. And I think there's an awful lot of churn in there with the best of intentions, but at the end of the day, it's adding to our workload. So workload is one of them. There's one that's difficult to measure. But I think it's, it's at the hub of a lot of things. And there's a it's a bit of a cliche, and I know that some people in the department won't want to hear it. But if you don't want to hear what people say, then you will never be able to address it is my view. And I hear more than a few principals say, you know, don't be too controversial, don't do anything too, too different. Stay in the square, keep your head down. Because if you don't, you'll be hung out to dry by the department. Now, the extent to which that may or may not be true, you'd need to do some serious research. But it's say that that is a perception that is shared by too many colleagues. And I don't think it's a perception that to date, the department has been able to counter now, whether that's right or wrong. That to me is a serious issue, that people are saying that because they feel like they're walking on quicksand all the time in their jobs.

Loretta  18:38

Do you think, Henry that the principals who hold that particular perception are the ones who are fearful of speaking up and therefore tend to keep everything, you know, inside or may just have a bit of a chat with a colleague, but generally, are not the ones that are speaking up? What do you think?

Henry  19:03

look, that's probably probably quite true. I would say, though, and I learned this a long time ago. Most principles don't speak out anyway, for a variety of reasons. And one of them is fear of the consequences. And there are anecdotal stories of that all the time that we hear from different principals over the journey that you'll get a call from somebody to say, hey, you know, we didn't appreciate that. The implication being, you know, don't do it again, type of thing. They don't speak out. So it's an interesting one too, because teachers are teachers and principals are leaders of in schools. That doesn't necessarily translate into the skill of being a public writer. Or if you like, an opinion person on television, and the The media has its agenda too in fairness to people. And my view is, look, if you don't speak out, nobody hears it, and someone else will fill up that space. And I know you know it, you'd hear it, we see commentators about education, who are not in the schools, they might come in, do a bit of research, or they might have some indirect connection to schools. And we rail against what we see as misrepresentation of the issues in schools. But but by not speaking out, that just continues that trend. So I think I think there's fear of how you might be portrayed this fear of what the department or the minister might, the view they might take in speaking out. The other one too, is that I think a lot of principals haven't got time to speak to busy. Me too. I mean, it's not like I'm sitting around every day, right? You know, wanting to say something or write something, my plate is full, I go to school, like everyone, and this is both the beauty of the job and the the challenge of the job, I go to school, have a morning with a plan. And by lunchtime, I'm alone, my plan has changed 10 times. And I get home at night, and I generally have only got two thirds of what I wanted done in the day, and been sidetracked with a whole lot of generally, people issues, you know, so speaking out. And then the other part about it is I think, to be to speak out, you probably need to have some runs under the belt, you need to be confident that you're doing a great job in or good job in your work. And that what you've got to say, actually make sense. So it's, and then at the moment, I think, you know, I think about half our schools on any given day, have got acting principals in them. And a lot of young principals were in a watershed time. I didn't speak out as much when I first started as a principal. I, those days, I I spent time working on regional boards of education and working with the Victorian Principals Association on committees and lots of those things. It's only as I progress through. So I do think speaking out that it takes time. And I think there's a there's a great lesson to learn for all of us. And that is listen, take some time to listen, listen, learn and then speak.

Loretta  22:45

Yeah, I think you've made a really good point there. And it's a great message to put out there that if you are going to speak up, and you are going to speak out, and perhaps even be a tad critical, it's absolutely imperative that you've got your own house in order, and you are squeaky clean. Here's a hypothetical for you. You become minister for education. What's the first thing you'll do?

Henry  23:22

What would be the first thing I'd do if I was the Minister for Education? Well, I would and again, I I'm apologizing to our minister if I've got this wrong, because I don't know what, who and what he says. And it's far from me to be judgmental about it. But the first thing I would do would be to go and have some really deep and meaningful discussions with the different stakeholders out in the schools, principals, teachers, kids, parents, don't just do tours, but actually have them. And the challenge then is to say that those discussions, the people with whom he talks can see action coming from it, not just what many politicians do. And we're in the middle of an election campaign at the moment. Yeah.

Loretta  24:27

And they have their own entourage and media....

Henry  24:30

take notes.  And here's another message. And again, I apologize to the minister if he's already doing this. But I do feel at times talking to colleagues and looking at policies that we are confronted with that the influence on the Minister is more by a smaller group of stakeholders than by stakeholders, per se. And, you know, I think as the Minister it's the same as ours, if you're alienating sections of your team, and we're part of the minister's team, you don't get the best out of them, you know, we go to work and we're all professional, we say this all the time in sporting teams, if if there's a bit of disharmony there, a bit of fear, a bit of whatever, people turn up, and they do their best in the circumstance in which they feel. And if you're not feeling that good, in whatever way we've already discussed this, then you're doing your best with one arm tied behind your back, or a lack of zest, or you're just exhausted. And so your best isn't the best that you can do if the environment in which you were working was was different. So I think that would be my advice, with all due respect to the minister that me Henry Grossek, giving him advice. But it's so eas when you're up there, you're a busy person at the top of it as we are, you know, yes, to be to be a little bit in an ivory tower.

Loretta  26:19

Yes. And you can draw some very distinct parallels between being a principal and how you come across to your own staff, and your own community, you can come across as a little bit removed. Which brings me to another point that has come up over and over. And that is around support. And it's often said, and it's it's a very, you know, common thing for principals and assistant principals, and so on, to say that we're not getting enough support from the department. And yet, if you speak to the people at region and in the central office, they will say, the support that we provide schools and principals is huge. What's going on there? Do you think?

Henry  27:22

Look, I think they're telling the truth, in from their perspective. They're working hard. They're delivering on policies, and they have their own KPIs like we do. But the problem it gets back to something I said a little earlier, the problem is, is a mismatch in my opinion, at times with the support we need, versus the support we're actually getting. That, I think is the the most fundamental problem that we've got. And with principal health and well being, for example, I think on the one hand, yes, they've got all these policies about how to look after yourself. And there's someone there to talk to, and there's a helpline, et cetera, et cetera. But then when it comes to the pointy end of it, a lot of that support is if you like, I'll use a metaphor here, palliative support.  I think in the centre, and I think this is a massive one, I'd like to see more people with school experience working in the centre. I think, over the last 30 years, we've seen a complete change, in 30 40 years, we've seen a complete change in the spread of people within the bureaucracy, the senior bureaucracy, again, talented people, but we too often think you people aren't part of the...... you've never been in the schools really, when you're making policies on our behalf. We don't know who you're talking to. Because these policies don't really neatly fit into our needs. So yes, they're working hard. Yes, they can be developing lots of policies, but they're, they're not school people to the level that used to be and I think, and again, perhaps people don't want to go there either, as I said earlier, but equally, there's lots of people in very important positions, who's only linked to schools as they went to school once. Well, I, I wouldn't pretend that I could go and be on a board for you know, Coles or Woolworths although I'm a customer, but I wouldn't think I could tell them how to run very well in a management level, even though I have managerial experience. I don't know the culture of of the retail world. So I wouldn't think I was the best fit for that. And I think there's a lot of those people who are career public servants. Great at managing, great at that sort of work, but not necessarily anywhere near an understanding of how schools operate. So that's where I think, with the best of intentions, a lot of mismatching comes. I also think governments come and go. And I think it must be awfully hard for the bureaucrats too because each government comes in and they have a completely different agenda. And you've got to pivot, as they say, very rapidly from here to there. And that's the, the public system is a big system. And it's a bit like the Titanic, I don't think we necessarily can pivot too quickly. And yet, there's pressure on us to be pivoting at rapid rate all the time, another pressure.

Loretta  30:49

After all these years as a principal, so knowing what you know, as a very successful principal with many, many accomplishments under your belt, what advice would you be giving to the less experienced principals and possibly even those who do have a number of years but are struggling a bit and trying to get that balance? What sort of advice would you give them about keeping well, and looking after their health?

Henry  31:24

I think one of the first things you've got to do is be kind to yourself. Everybody suffers guilt about what they could have done, should have done, might have done things in life, don't always go right for any of us. If you can go to bed at night and think, Well, look, I did my best today, I tried hard, not not everything worked. But I can put my head down. And I know that I did my best. And tomorrow when I get up, I'll do my best again. Whether things go right or wrong, don't be a perfectionist. That's a good starting point. Have a life out of school. Now I see too many people. And it's admirable in a sense, the commitment they put to their job is phenomenal. They work longer hours than me. I think some of them perhaps, could be more efficient in how they work. But let's just say they work all these long hours. I don't think that at all is healthy. From what I gather, and I know from my own personal experience, I need downtime. Where I don't think about school, my brain just gets too tired when I'm consumed with my work. So the more hours I put in, the more hours, I'm consumed with my work and I'm more tired. So find something, have, you've got to have hobbies or interests outside your work. And you've got to make time for them. People say I haven't got time, I haven't got time, I've never bought that one. Because if it's important enough to you, you'll find the time and the people around you will accept that. But but you've actually got to be strong and do that. There's an incredible sense, I think among a lot of principals of an aloneness, which leads to a lot of the other issues of which I've been talking about. And I think that's one of the things that is a big challenge for pins under the current regime. I know in a few places, principals are shown the initiative, and maybe we all need to do it more, you know, find a time where half a dozen of you get together or three or four on a regular basis. And it's it's part of your work time, not your weekends, which should be I think away from school. That would be something that I thought that there would be several of the things I think are most important in terms of advice, but the biggest one is Be kind to yourself. I'm not perfect. I'm far from perfect. I'm not saying anything. That's extraordinary in saying that, but at the same time I I do take the time to say well, Henry, I'm proud of this. I'm proud of that, too. And if I mucked up on something, I'll fix it up as best I can with support from other people.

Loretta  34:29

And really, that's fantastic advice. Thank you very, very much. I can't get over how you've been a principal for 37 years. That's a very long time.

Henry  34:40

I'd like to think I haven't just survived in principalship for 37 years and I think the message to everyone and it's different for everybody Loretta. Whatever you're doing in life, you've got to give it your best shot. And when you're no longer enjoying giving it you your best shot, find something else to do that you want to give it your best shot. Now, after 37 years as a principal, I'm still enjoying giving it my best shot. And I'm getting feedback that my best shots are still good enough. People can if I can see that people no longer feel my best shot is good enough. Then that will also be a message won't? Time to pull up stumps, Henry.  But well, they're not giving me that feedback. Or I'm not giving myself the same feedback. So you know,  I'll keep going for a little while longer. It's another friend of mine gave me some advice. He said never retire. He said just transition. Use the word transition Henry never retire. Well, at the moment, I might just transition from day to day in the same job. It's, I suppose, a new day, and we'll see what it brings.

Loretta  36:06

Henry, thank you very much for your stories, for your advice, for your insights, and the hypotheticals and all of that.

Henry  36:15

Thank you, Loretta, and I just want to applaud you on what you're doing. I know that you have been an outstanding principal for many, many years. You shared the highs and lows, like all of us. But post principalship I think what you're doing is outstanding work. And I'm just honored to think that you think I've got something worthwhile to share. And so thank you for that opportunity too.

Loretta  36:44

Thanks for listening to this latest episode of talking out of school, where we cover topics and dilemmas associated with the ups and downs and even the downright curious of the school leaders' job. Want to know more? Then visit me at shaping leaders.com.au But for now, here's to staying ahead of the game.

Are we on the verge of the next paradigm shift with the building of wellbeing in people? Active resilience is the 'looking forward' movement that incorporates taking care of ourselves and focusing our own health. Maria Ruberto talks about neuroscience, resilience, the healthy brain, and much more....

Transcript

Loretta  00:03

You're listening to Loretta Piazza, experienced school principal, mentor, and coach. And together we're talking out at school. You will hear from leaders who have lived and breathed so many experiences, good and bad, agonized over decisions, and who have tossed and turned through countless sleepless nights. These are the people who will help you stay ahead of the game.

In this continued interview with psychologist Maria Roberto, we hear about some of her work in Melbourne primary and secondary schools, and how resilience is taught. Maria believes we are on the verge of the next paradigm shift with the building of well being in people. Did you know the teachers were the only group to demonstrate a rise in resilience during COVID?  Maria provides us with some plausible explanations as to why this might be the case. This is exactly what active resilience is all about. It should also be noted that resilience is much more than our ability to bounce back. We now know that it's also our ability to bounce forward. When we understand the neuroscience components of a healthy brain, the function of each one of these components, and we learn the corresponding behaviors, we are on the right path. And let's not forget the most important element of active resilience. It's the replenishing of self care, and looking after our own health and well being.

Loretta

Okay, let's talk about resilience and the work that you're doing in a large secondary school in Melbourne.

Maria  01:49

Yeah. So first of all, I want to talk to you about well, where it started was that, and I have permission to talk about this. So there's a principal out at Diamond Creek East Primary School, his name is Robert Rostolis. And Robert and his AP Stephen Campbell. In in one of those leadership conferences that I gave that you that you were present at, Robert was also there. So probably about six or seven years ago. Now Robert came to me and said, I'm really interested in this brain stuff. This is how principals normally come to me, they go this brain stuff. I'm interested in that. And I think this is great. Do you want to come and talk to my staff, like, you know, like you did? So So I did that. And the feedback was, Wow, this is very interesting. But it also helps me motivate towards wanting to do things differently. So then Robert said, Can you come back? And I did that a couple of times. And then Robert said to me, what if we were to teach this to primary school children? And I said to Robert, I don't know about that. Robert, this stuff is really heavy. We're talking about brain parts. We're talking about prefrontal cortex, anterior singular cortex, we're talking about the insular, we're talking about the limbic system. You know, we're talking about the parietal cortex, we're talking about big words, the hippocampus, the thalamus. I don't know whether primary school kids can hold this information. And Robert said, Don't under don't ever underestimate the curiosity of children. And I went, Okay, and he said, if you're up to this, I am too, and I went, Oh, yeah, okay, well, let's do this. So what we did is that we created a two day program for primary school children, senior primary school children, and we started with grade fives and sixes. And we ran a two day conference. Now what we did what they did what Robert and his staff did, and they are an incredible school is that they turned their entire library and open area learning into a pseudo conference area. So when you walked into it, it was completely refurbished into what a conference room would look like. They had two massive screens. They had conference tables set up, kids walked in, they had lanyards with their names. They had booklets, they had pins, they had caps, and it was called the brain fitness conference. And for two days, the senior kids sat as conference delegates, and they were referred to as the delegates of the brain fitness conference. And they would have take notes as they would in a conference. And what they did is that they had one massive screen that that showed the delegates' responses as they learned, so these kids had these iPads, and on these iPads in real time, they could type in questions or they could type in feedback and it would come up on one screen in real time. So as I'm presenting information that content, these kids would be asking questions. At the end of two days, these students asked over 938 questions over two days.

Loretta  05:13

So Rob was right. Don't underestimate these kids.

Maria  05:18

So over that time, so what they then did, because it was such a success, and they were given notes to take away, parents said, well, we want to know. So then Robert brought the parents in, and we had sessions with the parents to give them an overview of this learning. Over about six years after the fives, and sixes have gone off to secondary schools, some of these kids have come back to Diamond Creek East to say, I want to come back. And I want to tell you what's happening to me. And these kids have come back. And they've said, I've got friends who are suffering from anxiety and depression. But because I remember the amygdala, and I remember the role of the hippocampus, and I remember what the thalamus does, and I remember all of those things that I should do, in order to keep my brain healthy. I'm not like them. I've actually, things happen to me, but they can happen and I can be okay. So Robert started to realize that we're actually creating generations of young people who can learn this information, and then continue to apply those skills when challenges hit during adolescence. That's really big. Now, unfortunately, for us, we should have collected data, we just thought we were being creative. So that's what we've what we've started to do. Now out of that, then came the secondary schools that heard about that and said, well, we want to do that with our kids. So this resilience first aid, we are now running with a major secondary school in Melbourne. And we are working with all of their staff and teaching them the domains of resilience, first aid and taking them through a two day certification. They, there is an app that adults can use every day to build these skills. The app is incredible. It has all of the research based techniques and skills and tools that are required. It's interactive, it has some AI into it, artificial intelligence, there's a little robot that can talk to you. But there are also skills that you go in and do. And, and it tracks the development of your resilience and well being and we are running that with a secondary school. And the principal has been outstanding, and the assistant principal, who has been incredible at organizing, you know, a staff of, you know, well over, well, a couple 100 people what know well over 100 people to participate. So it's it's an exciting time, Loretta, and I think we are on the verge of the next paradigm shift where we are really looking at how do we build wellbeing in people and sustain that and do that via measures and also via an evidence based program. So I'm, I'm so excited to be alive in this time.

Loretta  08:24

You've got some pretty fabulous Aussie data, haven't you about teachers and, and other employment sectors? Can you tell us about this.

Maria  08:36

So this data doesn't belong to me, it belongs to Yuri. So Yuri Russell is a CEO of Driven. And that is the organization that I'm partnering and consulting with at the moment. And URI is very data driven. And he's a he's a clever young man. And he has just published the National Resilience Australian Index. And the report itself is gobsmacking, because what it's managed to do unbeknown to him, because he was he was collecting and tracking resilience data. And as he was doing that COVID hit. And so he then continued to track this data. And you know, if you go onto my website, you can go on to the links and download, download the report, it's for free. But it actually looks at the comparison of some major industries in Australia. Namely it compares the emergency services with the health care sector with the finance services, and then compares it overall with Australia but more importantly, it compares it to teachers. So the educational sector has has its has its own to stream. And when you go in and have a look, you will see that during COVID, there, there are many, many dips, and also some some rises in the data. But teachers are the only industry that have demonstrated a rise in resilience, as we are moving through and out of COVID. At this time, all of the other industries, the financial, the emergency services, the national average sits, still sits at a lower level, but education is on the rise. And, Loretta, that's incredibly interesting, because we would need to be asking, you know, why is that?

Loretta  10:45

Well, that was going to be my question. What is it about teachers? Is it is it just their personalities? And, and the fact that, you know, with teaching this generally that high level of efficacy and, you know, wanting to be carers and giving,and that sort of thing, is that a personality trait? Or is it about environmental factors? And can we assume, then, that principals and leadership teams and schools are doing a damn good job in looking after their teachers?

Maria  11:24

I think it's all of that. And I also think it's more. So when, look, we don't know why data says what it says we only we can we begin to unpack and we start to look at all of the variables. But you know, in the words of the famous Phil Riley, Professor, Phil Riley, who is one of my, you know, one of my greats that I've been following for a long time. And when I heard that you were interviewing him, you know, I poured myself a very big glass of wine, and I put on my fluffy slippers and closed my eyes and listen to him, because he's, he's incredible. His research is incredible. Phil Riley talks about that the industry in itself invites humanity, it actually invites personality dynamics in people who are, who lean into caring, who lean into empathy and compassion, and who have a sense of, you know, have a sense of transformation, where they really believe that they can make a difference to the lives of young people and be pivotal in that learning and have that gift. So I agree, I think that that's, you know, absolutely part of it. The other part is that, as we see in the report, that teaching is an optimistic enterprise. And when you consider teaching as a vocation, that, with that comes this higher order, meaning and purpose around an altruistic approach that we give wholeheartedly, and that we are part of a larger, I guess, Circle of Life, circle of community, and it is circle of life, because you're holding children in your hands and their well being in your hands, that you are part of that. And that's, that's high, and that's higher order purpose. And so you invite that that mindset. So I think that that all forms part of it. But the other part is really interesting. And this is the other part that people don't talk about, is that there is a difference between saying this is too hard, but doing it anyway. There is a difference between saying, Oh, God, this is so awful, how are we meant to go online and teach over a period of 48 hours? How are we meant to I can't do a curriculum, I can't plan the curriculum online. How can they be asked to do this? And do we have the technology? What are we doing? We don't even know we're doing with our PD, to even get iPad into schools. You know, if I was a teacher, I needed 12 months of PD before I even knew what I was doing. There's a difference between saying that and appearing like I'm complaining about it, but then behaving in a proactive and in an industrious way. So teachers have a way of going, Oh, that's really bad. But then being able to be resourceful and use their resources to do it anyway. So it's almost like there is a part of the teaching that the teachers in the teaching profession that just go that's so hard, that's awful, that's crap. And then the other part of them going well, I'm actually so committed to this highroad. And I'm committed to these kids, I can't just abandon these kids, these kids need to be taught. So I've got to do it. And what they do is that they bring the values that they live by, and then access their resources. And even though they, they don't like it, and they're complaining that they feel that they're not that they're not that they're being done hard by which they have been, because who does this, and yet produce this incredible curriculum, be available to students? And I'm not saying that the curriculums and the learning plans were perfect. That was actually beside the point. The point was, they stay online,

Loretta  15:43

we were flying by the seat of our pants,

Maria  15:45

you were. And you did that with fervour, you did that with belief. But you did that, because you knew that these kids relied on you. You knew that it actually, it wasn't almost about what was being taught. It was about not abandoning them.

Loretta  16:04

But I'll tell you, even more so Maria, I think as principals and and I can speak for principals because we discussed this over and over. We had no choice. Any fear or any negative thoughts that we had, and believe me, we had lots, yes, we have to put all those aside and think now how are we going to make this happen? What's the first thing I have to do in order to get the staff on board? What do I have to do for them, and then to make them feel optimistic and, and hopeful, and you know, positive about what that next stage was going to be for them, and to manage their fears, and their insecurities so that they could then do it, what they need to do for the kids. So it all started at the top.

Maria  17:01

And all of that Loretta, everything that you have just said, forms the basis of active resilience. That's what resilience looks like. That when it's hard, we don't focus on what we can't do, we focus on what we can do. When the challenge when the adversity is in front of us. At that time we go, we need to roll up our sleeves. And we need to think about this clearly. And we also need to appraise the situation in a way that involves hope, but also involves forward movement, not going backwards. And so everything that you've spoken about is active resilience. That's what resilience looks like. However, however Loretta, stopping replenishing, and self care has to be part of that. And so, resilience is very much now a part of focusing on our own health. And this is the part that resilience First Aid also brings in, because resilience for a long time has been just thought about perseverance and tenacity and optimism and hope and, you know, rugged reasoning, clarity of thought and, and we thought that that was just what resilience is. But the the model of, of resilience, it's been created here by Driven in Australia. It is the first model of resilience that incorporates taking care of ourselves. And it incorporates a really big focus on our own health. Because if we don't focus on our own health and take care of ourselves, we're actually not able to continue to be active in our resilience.

Loretta  18:36

You know, Maria, there's been a very large number of principals who are either on leave, or who have retired as a result of two years of COVID. And now a third year of COVID. And the uncertainty around it, who puts so much effort, so much emotion, drive, who puts so much into getting their schools functioning and getting everybody through these uncertain times. And now they say, I can't do it anymore. Is that because they didn't replenish? They gave so much. We're resilient, but failed in that very important part about looking after themselves. Is that what's happened?

Maria  19:37

I think that that's a part of it, Loretta, I think that when the job is so big, and when you have been asked to lead this transition from face to face to online, and all of the challenges that have come with that, the challenges of not just managing the technology, as you would know, has been a huge challenge for schools, managing who has laptops, who doesn't have laptops, who's got access to in the internet, who has, you know, all of that, not only managing that, but also managing that, also also managing the staff, that that are moving through the change, that feel so unprepared, that takes an enormous amount of resource. And then on top of that, managing the systems change, how suddenly new protocols need to come in, and then having to transfer that to staff. And then on top of that, parents coming in and going, how am I going to do this? Don't you know, I've got three kids that in the in the home, I've got one in secondary school, I've got two in primary, I've got one who's who needs to be playing the drums, someone who needs to be in another room, I've got a girl in one of my daughters is in the toilet that's doing the, you know, an online classroom. Do you know how stressful this is? So principals were managing entire communities. And then on top of that, and I think this needs to be spoken about, is the system. And as a principal, you belong to the Department of Education system. And if the system is not well established to support you in a way that you need support, then you're going to feel like you're doing it on your own. So it becomes a cultural issue, and a systemic one, rather than just personal resources. You know, you can be the most resilient person. But if you have a system that you don't feel is holding you in care, then it begins to wear. And, you know, you, you begin to question your capacity, your intentions, your motivation. So I think there are many factors at play.

Loretta  22:10

So how do principals look after themselves? And how do they replenish?

Maria  22:18

I think the first thing Loretta is that we learn, we need to really learn about what resilience is. The old... you know, Andrew Fuller, who is a, you know, fellow psychologist, and who has done some magnificent work in schools. For a long time, he talks about the the concept of bouncing back that resilience is about about bouncing back. And and I think we need to continue understanding that. However, neuroscience says that resilience is now so much more, it's not just about bouncing back. But when you are resilient, you're able to bounce forward. And bouncing forward does not mean that resilience is about going back to where you were because any challenge in any adversity actually teaches you new ways, new skills, it teaches you new methods in order to manage something so you can never go back. But with resilience, you can actually bounce forward. And that's the concept that we look and teach in resilience first aid, where we look at what are the neuroscience components of a healthy brain, know what they are, know what functions they play. And now let's have a look at the behaviors that are required and the techniques that are required. And they are broken up into six domains. And they are explicitly taught. And they are taught in a way where we not only learn to be resilient ourselves, but in resilience first aid, we're actually taught how to support other people's resilience. And I think this type of community collaborative approach is where we have an opportunity to do that. So doing it explicitly. You have a certification, you then have a tool box that you walk away with. And what it does is that it even informs the language and the way with which we constantly think about what we're doing, this idea that there is this negativity mindset is probably one of the biggest risk factors. However, it's erroneous to humans have capacity to have the most optimistic, the most forward thinking mindsets, and we need to encourage people to tap into that.

Loretta  24:50

That's fabulous advice. If anyone would like to know more about the resilience work that you do, will they be able to find that on your website,

Maria  25:01

please do please go on to our website and have a look at all of the information. But Loretta, we have a mind fit retreat that we're running in May this year. And I'd like to extend an invitation out to all of our listeners to come and join us. It's two days at Hillsville at the Ric V club. And I just want to remind people that the Ric V club in Hillsville, is close to the Four Pillars Gin factory. So Loretta, if you're not going to come to be resilient, you can come to at least taste the gin or, or you can actually do both be resilient, taste the gene and be resilient gene tasters. So look in the flies up on our website, it will be two days of the latest research, it will be an entry into the first resilience first aid program, everyone will receive will receive a resilience first aid kit, which is really exciting they are it is a beautiful kit, if you go online, you can have a look at the resources. And we hope that we get to lots of interest so that we can begin, I think opening up the door to what resilience. In modern day society looks like.

Loretta  26:18

Wonderful. I think of all the great things that I learned from you listening to you talk about neuroscience, and all the cutting edge research that was coming out and you know, your passion and your excitement, it just, it just shows on your face. You know, you're that sort of a person, and you're a great advocate for this, because you're always so positive, you've always got a great smile on your face. And I think maybe a lot of that's got to do with the fact that you're Italian. And Italians are known to, to get excited and throw their hands around and maybe get a bit carried away at times. But deep down, you've given so much to to education. I mean, not only in your early work as a psychologist, but the work that you do now with principals, with schools with with different groups of staff. So on behalf of the people in education, thank you, I applaud this great work and keep doing it. Because this is exactly what we need. But you're one of the people who who is that constant, and will provide us with what we need to move forward and to stay resilient. So thank you, Maria, I wish you all the best.

Maria  27:47

My pleasure. And thank you so much Loretta for having me on and giving me some time to talk about this and, and also congratulations on just an exceptional string of podcasts that you are putting together. And I think you are doing the work that needs to be done so that we have principals coming on board and being validated for the work that they do. So thank you very much for your time. It's been an absolute privilege. Thank you.

Loretta  28:15

Thanks for listening to this latest episode of talking out of school, where we cover topics and dilemmas associated with the ups and downs and even the downright curious of the school leaders job. Want to know more? Then visit me at shaping leaders.com.au But for now, he is staying at edit again.

Additional Resources

Resilience First Aid Certification

What are the behaviours we need to engage in to keep ourselves well? Why are these behaviours so important? Psychologist, Maria Ruberto, talks about her work with the Department of Education, and the impact of teachers that can remain for a lifetime.

Transcript

Loretta  00:03

You're listening to Loretta Piazza, experienced school principal, mentor, and coach. And together we're talking out at school. You will hear from leaders who have lived and breathed so many experiences, good and bad, agonized over decisions, and who have tossed and turned through countless sleepless nights. These are the people who will help you stay ahead of the game.  In this continued interview with psychologist Maria, Roberto, we hear about some of her work in Melbourne primary and secondary schools, and how resilience is taught. Maria believes we are on the verge of the next paradigm shift with the building of well being in people. Did you know the teachers were the only group to demonstrate a rise in resilience during COVID?  Maria provides us with some plausible explanations as to why this might be the case. This is exactly what active resilience is all about. It should also be noted that resilience is much more than our ability to bounce back. We now know that it's also our ability to bounce forward. When we understand the neuroscience components of a healthy brain, the function of each one of these components, and we learn the corresponding behaviors, we are on the right path. And let's not forget the most important element of active resilience. It's the replenishing of self care, and looking after our own health and well being.  Okay, let's talk about resilience and the work that you're doing in a large secondary school in Melbourne.

Maria  01:49

Yeah. So first of all, I want to talk to you about well, where it started was that, and I have permission to talk about this. So there's a principal out at Diamond Creek East Primary School, his name is Robert Rostolis. And Robert and his AP Stephen Campbell. In in one of those leadership conferences that I gave that you that you were present at, Robert was also there. So probably about six or seven years ago. Now Robert came to me and said, I'm really interested in this brain stuff. This is how principals normally come to me, they go this brain stuff. I'm interested in that. And I think this is great. Do you want to come and talk to my staff, like, you know, like you did? So So I did that. And the feedback was, Wow, this is very interesting. But it also helps me motivate towards wanting to do things differently. So then Robert said, Can you come back? And I did that a couple of times. And then Robert said to me, what if we were to teach this to primary school children? And I said to Robert, I don't know about that. Robert, this stuff is really heavy. We're talking about brain parts. We're talking about prefrontal cortex, anterior singular cortex, we're talking about the insular, we're talking about the limbic system. You know, we're talking about the parietal cortex, we're talking about big words, the hippocampus, the thalamus. I don't know whether primary school kids can hold this information. And Robert said, Don't under don't ever underestimate the curiosity of children. And I went, Okay, and he said, if you're up to this, I am too, and I went, Oh, yeah, okay, well, let's do this. So what we did is that we created a two day program for primary school children, senior primary school children, and we started with grade fives and sixes. And we ran a two day conference. Now what we did what they did what Robert and his staff did, and they are an incredible school is that they turned their entire library and open area learning into a pseudo conference area. So when you walked into it, it was completely refurbished into what a conference room would look like. They had two massive screens. They had conference tables set up, kids walked in, they had lanyards with their names. They had booklets, they had pins, they had caps, and it was called the brain fitness conference. And for two days, the senior kids sat as conference delegates, and they were referred to as the delegates of the brain fitness conference. And they would have take notes as they would in a conference. And what they did is that they had one massive screen that that showed the delegates' responses as they learned, so these kids had these iPads, and on these iPads in real time, they could type in questions or they could type in feedback and it would come up on one screen in real time. So as I'm presenting information that content, these kids would be asking questions. At the end of two days, these students asked over 938 questions over two days.

Loretta  05:13

So Rob was right. Don't underestimate these kids.

Maria  05:18

So over that time, so what they then did, because it was such a success, and they were given notes to take away, parents said, well, we want to know. So then Robert brought the parents in, and we had sessions with the parents to give them an overview of this learning. Over about six years after the fives, and sixes have gone off to secondary schools, some of these kids have come back to Diamond Creek East to say, I want to come back. And I want to tell you what's happening to me. And these kids have come back. And they've said, I've got friends who are suffering from anxiety and depression. But because I remember the amygdala, and I remember the role of the hippocampus, and I remember what the thalamus does, and I remember all of those things that I should do, in order to keep my brain healthy. I'm not like them. I've actually, things happen to me, but they can happen and I can be okay. So Robert started to realize that we're actually creating generations of young people who can learn this information, and then continue to apply those skills when challenges hit during adolescence. That's really big. Now, unfortunately, for us, we should have collected data, we just thought we were being creative. So that's what we've what we've started to do. Now out of that, then came the secondary schools that heard about that and said, well, we want to do that with our kids. So this resilience first aid, we are now running with a major secondary school in Melbourne. And we are working with all of their staff and teaching them the domains of resilience, first aid and taking them through a two day certification. They, there is an app that adults can use every day to build these skills. The app is incredible. It has all of the research based techniques and skills and tools that are required. It's interactive, it has some AI into it, artificial intelligence, there's a little robot that can talk to you. But there are also skills that you go in and do. And, and it tracks the development of your resilience and well being and we are running that with a secondary school. And the principal has been outstanding, and the assistant principal, who has been incredible at organizing, you know, a staff of, you know, well over, well, a couple 100 people what know well over 100 people to participate. So it's it's an exciting time, Loretta, and I think we are on the verge of the next paradigm shift where we are really looking at how do we build wellbeing in people and sustain that and do that via measures and also via an evidence based program. So I'm, I'm so excited to be alive in this time.

Loretta  08:24

You've got some pretty fabulous Aussie data, haven't you about teachers and, and other employment sectors? Can you tell us about this.

Maria  08:36

So this data doesn't belong to me, it belongs to Yuri. So Yuri Russell is a CEO of Driven. And that is the organization that I'm partnering and consulting with at the moment. And URI is very data driven. And he's a he's a clever young man. And he has just published the National Resilience Australian Index. And the report itself is gobsmacking, because what it's managed to do unbeknown to him, because he was he was collecting and tracking resilience data. And as he was doing that COVID hit. And so he then continued to track this data. And you know, if you go onto my website, you can go on to the links and download, download the report, it's for free. But it actually looks at the comparison of some major industries in Australia. Namely it compares the emergency services with the health care sector with the finance services, and then compares it overall with Australia but more importantly, it compares it to teachers. So the educational sector has has its has its own to stream. And when you go in and have a look, you will see that during COVID, there, there are many, many dips, and also some some rises in the data. But teachers are the only industry that have demonstrated a rise in resilience, as we are moving through and out of COVID. At this time, all of the other industries, the financial, the emergency services, the national average sits, still sits at a lower level, but education is on the rise. And, Loretta, that's incredibly interesting, because we would need to be asking, you know, why is that?

Loretta  10:45

Well, that was going to be my question. What is it about teachers? Is it is it just their personalities? And, and the fact that, you know, with teaching this generally that high level of efficacy and, you know, wanting to be carers and giving,and that sort of thing, is that a personality trait? Or is it about environmental factors? And can we assume, then, that principals and leadership teams and schools are doing a damn good job in looking after their teachers?

Maria  11:24

I think it's all of that. And I also think it's more. So when, look, we don't know why data says what it says we only we can we begin to unpack and we start to look at all of the variables. But you know, in the words of the famous Phil Riley, Professor, Phil Riley, who is one of my, you know, one of my greats that I've been following for a long time. And when I heard that you were interviewing him, you know, I poured myself a very big glass of wine, and I put on my fluffy slippers and closed my eyes and listen to him, because he's, he's incredible. His research is incredible. Phil Riley talks about that the industry in itself invites humanity, it actually invites personality dynamics in people who are, who lean into caring, who lean into empathy and compassion, and who have a sense of, you know, have a sense of transformation, where they really believe that they can make a difference to the lives of young people and be pivotal in that learning and have that gift. So I agree, I think that that's, you know, absolutely part of it. The other part is that, as we see in the report, that teaching is an optimistic enterprise. And when you consider teaching as a vocation, that, with that comes this higher order, meaning and purpose around an altruistic approach that we give wholeheartedly, and that we are part of a larger, I guess, Circle of Life, circle of community, and it is circle of life, because you're holding children in your hands and their well being in your hands, that you are part of that. And that's, that's high, and that's higher order purpose. And so you invite that that mindset. So I think that that all forms part of it. But the other part is really interesting. And this is the other part that people don't talk about, is that there is a difference between saying this is too hard, but doing it anyway. There is a difference between saying, Oh, God, this is so awful, how are we meant to go online and teach over a period of 48 hours? How are we meant to I can't do a curriculum, I can't plan the curriculum online. How can they be asked to do this? And do we have the technology? What are we doing? We don't even know we're doing with our PD, to even get iPad into schools. You know, if I was a teacher, I needed 12 months of PD before I even knew what I was doing. There's a difference between saying that and appearing like I'm complaining about it, but then behaving in a proactive and in an industrious way. So teachers have a way of going, Oh, that's really bad. But then being able to be resourceful and use their resources to do it anyway. So it's almost like there is a part of the teaching that the teachers in the teaching profession that just go that's so hard, that's awful, that's crap. And then the other part of them going well, I'm actually so committed to this highroad. And I'm committed to these kids, I can't just abandon these kids, these kids need to be taught. So I've got to do it. And what they do is that they bring the values that they live by, and then access their resources. And even though they, they don't like it, and they're complaining that they feel that they're not that they're not that they're being done hard by which they have been, because who does this, and yet produce this incredible curriculum, be available to students? And I'm not saying that the curriculums and the learning plans were perfect. That was actually beside the point. The point was, they stay online,

Loretta  15:43

we were flying by the seat of our pants,

Maria  15:45

you were. And you did that with fervour, you did that with belief. But you did that, because you knew that these kids relied on you. You knew that it actually, it wasn't almost about what was being taught. It was about not abandoning them.

Loretta  16:04

But I'll tell you, even more so Maria, I think as principals and and I can speak for principals because we discussed this over and over. We had no choice. Any fear or any negative thoughts that we had, and believe me, we had lots, yes, we have to put all those aside and think now how are we going to make this happen? What's the first thing I have to do in order to get the staff on board? What do I have to do for them, and then to make them feel optimistic and, and hopeful, and you know, positive about what that next stage was going to be for them, and to manage their fears, and their insecurities so that they could then do it, what they need to do for the kids. So it all started at the top.

Maria  17:01

And all of that Loretta, everything that you have just said, forms the basis of active resilience. That's what resilience looks like. That when it's hard, we don't focus on what we can't do, we focus on what we can do. When the challenge when the adversity is in front of us. At that time we go, we need to roll up our sleeves. And we need to think about this clearly. And we also need to appraise the situation in a way that involves hope, but also involves forward movement, not going backwards. And so everything that you've spoken about is active resilience. That's what resilience looks like. However, however Loretta, stopping replenishing, and self care has to be part of that. And so, resilience is very much now a part of focusing on our own health. And this is the part that resilience First Aid also brings in, because resilience for a long time has been just thought about perseverance and tenacity and optimism and hope and, you know, rugged reasoning, clarity of thought and, and we thought that that was just what resilience is. But the the model of, of resilience, it's been created here by Driven in Australia. It is the first model of resilience that incorporates taking care of ourselves. And it incorporates a really big focus on our own health. Because if we don't focus on our own health and take care of ourselves, we're actually not able to continue to be active in our resilience.

Loretta  18:36

You know, Maria, there's been a very large number of principals who are either on leave, or who have retired as a result of two years of COVID. And now a third year of COVID. And the uncertainty around it, who puts so much effort, so much emotion, drive, who puts so much into getting their schools functioning and getting everybody through these uncertain times. And now they say, I can't do it anymore. Is that because they didn't replenish? They gave so much. We're resilient, but failed in that very important part about looking after themselves. Is that what's happened?

Maria  19:37

I think that that's a part of it, Loretta, I think that when the job is so big, and when you have been asked to lead this transition from face to face to online, and all of the challenges that have come with that, the challenges of not just managing the technology, as you would know, has been a huge challenge for schools, managing who has laptops, who doesn't have laptops, who's got access to in the internet, who has, you know, all of that, not only managing that, but also managing that, also also managing the staff, that that are moving through the change, that feel so unprepared, that takes an enormous amount of resource. And then on top of that, managing the systems change, how suddenly new protocols need to come in, and then having to transfer that to staff. And then on top of that, parents coming in and going, how am I going to do this? Don't you know, I've got three kids that in the in the home, I've got one in secondary school, I've got two in primary, I've got one who's who needs to be playing the drums, someone who needs to be in another room, I've got a girl in one of my daughters is in the toilet that's doing the, you know, an online classroom. Do you know how stressful this is? So principals were managing entire communities. And then on top of that, and I think this needs to be spoken about, is the system. And as a principal, you belong to the Department of Education system. And if the system is not well established to support you in a way that you need support, then you're going to feel like you're doing it on your own. So it becomes a cultural issue, and a systemic one, rather than just personal resources. You know, you can be the most resilient person. But if you have a system that you don't feel is holding you in care, then it begins to wear. And, you know, you, you begin to question your capacity, your intentions, your motivation. So I think there are many factors at play.

Loretta  22:10

So how do principals look after themselves? And how do they replenish?

Maria  22:18

I think the first thing Loretta is that we learn, we need to really learn about what resilience is. The old... you know, Andrew Fuller, who is a, you know, fellow psychologist, and who has done some magnificent work in schools. For a long time, he talks about the the concept of bouncing back that resilience is about about bouncing back. And and I think we need to continue understanding that. However, neuroscience says that resilience is now so much more, it's not just about bouncing back. But when you are resilient, you're able to bounce forward. And bouncing forward does not mean that resilience is about going back to where you were because any challenge in any adversity actually teaches you new ways, new skills, it teaches you new methods in order to manage something so you can never go back. But with resilience, you can actually bounce forward. And that's the concept that we look and teach in resilience first aid, where we look at what are the neuroscience components of a healthy brain, know what they are, know what functions they play. And now let's have a look at the behaviors that are required and the techniques that are required. And they are broken up into six domains. And they are explicitly taught. And they are taught in a way where we not only learn to be resilient ourselves, but in resilience first aid, we're actually taught how to support other people's resilience. And I think this type of community collaborative approach is where we have an opportunity to do that. So doing it explicitly. You have a certification, you then have a tool box that you walk away with. And what it does is that it even informs the language and the way with which we constantly think about what we're doing, this idea that there is this negativity mindset is probably one of the biggest risk factors. However, it's erroneous to humans have capacity to have the most optimistic, the most forward thinking mindsets, and we need to encourage people to tap into that.

Loretta  24:50

That's fabulous advice. If anyone would like to know more about the resilience work that you do, will they be able to find that on your website,

Maria  25:01

please do please go on to our website and have a look at all of the information. But Loretta, we have a mind fit retreat that we're running in May this year. And I'd like to extend an invitation out to all of our listeners to come and join us. It's two days at Hillsville at the Ric V club. And I just want to remind people that the Ric V club in Hillsville, is close to the Four Pillars Gin factory. So Loretta, if you're not going to come to be resilient, you can come to at least taste the gin or, or you can actually do both be resilient, taste the gene and be resilient gene tasters. So look in the flies up on our website, it will be two days of the latest research, it will be an entry into the first resilience first aid program, everyone will receive will receive a resilience first aid kit, which is really exciting they are it is a beautiful kit, if you go online, you can have a look at the resources. And we hope that we get to lots of interest so that we can begin, I think opening up the door to what resilience. In modern day society looks like.

Loretta  26:18

Wonderful. I think of all the great things that I learned from you listening to you talk about neuroscience, and all the cutting edge research that was coming out and you know, your passion and your excitement, it just, it just shows on your face. You know, you're that sort of a person, and you're a great advocate for this, because you're always so positive, you've always got a great smile on your face. And I think maybe a lot of that's got to do with the fact that you're Italian. And Italians are known to, to get excited and throw their hands around and maybe get a bit carried away at times. But deep down, you've given so much to to education. I mean, not only in your early work as a psychologist, but the work that you do now with principals, with schools with with different groups of staff. So on behalf of the people in education, thank you, I applaud this great work and keep doing it. Because this is exactly what we need. But you're one of the people who who is that constant, and will provide us with what we need to move forward and to stay resilient. So thank you, Maria, I wish you all the best.

Maria  27:47

My pleasure. And thank you so much Loretta for having me on and giving me some time to talk about this and, and also congratulations on just an exceptional string of podcasts that you are putting together. And I think you are doing the work that needs to be done so that we have principals coming on board and being validated for the work that they do. So thank you very much for your time. It's been an absolute privilege. Thank you.

Loretta  28:15

Thanks for listening to this latest episode of talking out of school, where we cover topics and dilemmas associated with the ups and downs and even the downright curious of the school leaders job. Want to know more? Then visit me at shaping leaders.com.au But for now, he is staying at edit again.

Additional Resources

Henrietta Cooke's article in The Age about principals leaving the profession

Norman Doidge's books about the brain

Salutegenics Psychology

You're listening to Loretta Piazza experienced school principal, mentor and coach. And together were talking out at school. You will hear from leaders who have lived and breathed so many experiences good and bad, agonized over decisions, and of tossed and turned through countless sleepless nights. These are the people who will help stay ahead of the game.

Introduction

We have all heard and possibly even used the term, it's always darkest before the dawn. In other words, things always seem the worst, right before they improve. It's this hope and optimism that gets us through. But what if there is no dawn? What if there is no hope or optimism, only pain and such an intense pain that you will do anything to make it stop? Today's story is about a man who was a giant in education. He was also my very dear friend and colleague. This story is about Mark Thompson. As I talk to Mark’s son Matt, there's just as much pain for me as there is for Mark's family, even after all these years. Matt shares his insights, at times in graphic detail. And if this is something you are not comfortable with, please stop listening now. What's discussed in this interview is of a deeply personal nature, and may be distressing to some listeners. If any of this raises concerns for you, please seek medical advice or contact Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.

Interview

Loretta: Hello, Matt, welcome to Talking out of school.

Matt: Hi, Loretta. Good to see you.

L: It's good to see you after all these years. Now, today, you produce the channel 7 news. What's your story? How did you get into that?

M: It's been a long time coming since about eight years of age, I wanted to be a journalist. And I worked my way up through local basketball was over a quarter and a quarter announcer and then got into radio while I was at uni, studying journalism did that. And then I worked at the AFL for a while. And then I went to channel seven about a year before the pandemic began. And I went there as the sports producer on the nightly news. And things changed. And somehow I ended up becoming a senior producer on the bulletin. And now quite often on the one that's in the control room, putting the bulletin to air at night. So I'm the producer in the presenters is talking to them through what's going on in the show. And that's obviously a whole day thing, putting all of that together. And we have a great team and there's no one individual it's a real team. First approach. And it's such a great industry to work in. And then particularly the past the past couple of years.

L: COVID Yes, yeah. It's been extraordinary. Yeah, absolutely fascinating. You know, we see the TV people, they've, they've got their earphones or their earpiece, and I often wonder, what are they hearing? So what sort of things are you telling them?

M: Oh, you know, for example, I don't want to date this, but just last night, we had some breaking news and the presenters were already on set, and we got to change the start of the whole bulletin. So you know, it's talking them through things that are evolving while we're on air. You'll remember that there was, we had an earthquake, we had a some riots in the city, when you're on air for that sort of thing, rolling coverage, the presenter doesn't have an autocue with all the scripts. You're literally talking them through what's going on. We're going to this, we're doing that. So that's a big part of my job as well. That's tonight yeah, and it's good because I did a fair bit on camera at the AFL and I've done a little bit of stuff on a channel seven, but I've just for some reason moved into this producing role and I absolutely love it. It's a privilege surely in the middle of one of the biggest stories of our lifetime to be so heavily involved in it.

L: So does that mean that you probably won't go back to being behind the camera?

M: Maybe not. But I won’t say never. But I do like this role very, very much. And I'm kind of on that career trajectory now. I did radio for a long time on and off as well and that's probably my first love still radio so I'd never say never have an opportunity to show up in radio again one day, but right now channel 7’s my home life and hopefully hopefully I'll have a big future there.

L: Good for you. Well, today's interview is really about your dad, Mark Thompson. I met your dad well over 30 years ago, and I've got some absolutely fabulous memories of him. He was quite the joker. And he used to tell the most outrageous jokes about your mother. Are you aware of that?

M: I don't know how mum put up with that, for all those years. She, I think she'd say she really loved it. And he loved her so much. They were a formidable team, the best parents to grow up with and hopefully gave me my sisters, all the values that we have today, particularly things like work ethic, which I think is so important to succeed professionally. Both of them were really excellent parents.

L: Now you're talking about your dad in the past tense. Now, there'll be quite a few listeners who know your dad because he was very, very well known in the education community. But there will be a lot of people who probably don't know what happened to him. On the seventh of December 2014, your dad took his own life. What were you doing? Where were you when you got the news from your mum?

M: I didn't actually get the news from mum, I was single at the time. Remarkably, my life's changed a lot since then, because I've never had a partner and two kids. But back then. I was living in an apartment in Hawthorne. And the night before, we'd been out for dinner for my sister's birthday for Vanessa's birthday, my younger sister, and mum and dad had had a dinner party at home, which was completely separate to that we were out with Vanessa's friends. We had dinner at Southbank. And then, you know, I've had I've had the work Christmas party not for so I had a bit of an early night, I was home by like 10 or 11. And I think they kicked on, as you'd expect the younger guys to do it or not. And anyway, that morning, I had a missed call from my brother in law, Daniel and I thought they wanted me to go and pick them up from somewhere there stayed somewhere in the city overnight or at a friend's house. And then he left home. That was my first thought as to what it was. And it's you know, it's it's a bit of a blur, but from memory, I ran back. And I think Vanessa answered and said, You've got to come home right now. And I said why what's happened? And I could tell no voice that was serious. I said, is it dad? And is he dead and I was in a state of disbelief. And so I hung up the phone, I didn't think I was in a position to drive. So I called one of my best mates and he gave me a lift back out to Greensborough. And on the way I called my other sister, and I'm like what's going on? This is Emma. And she was kind of still a bit in the dark as well. Anyway, all of that preceding couple of hours is a bit of a blur. But I was lucky in the sense that I didn't see the scene of the tragedy. For those that don't know, dad jumped off a bridge, you might know the bridge, the Greensboro bypass because it's a bridge that's become sadly a little bit synonymous with this type of thing. And as a side note, I don't think enough has been done about that. There should be barriers out there. And there still aren't as they talked about, and seven years on, it's been talked about. And Dad wasn't the first and he hasn't to my knowledge, there's been more since.

L: Correct. There have.

M: So anyway, that I didn't see the scene, which I'm forever grateful that I didn't have to have. My sister and my brother in law Daniel did and my mum did from a distance.

L: You know, I'm wondering here, Matt, you actually said to your sister, Vanessa, is he dead? Why did you straightaway jump to something happened to your dad?

M: Yeah. Because of the tone of her voice when she answered the phone . She said you've got to come home right now. And the only indication that I had had was on the fourth of December, which is my late grandmother's birthday. She was alive at the time. We had dinner at the old England hotel. And when we went to order dinner, mum said, Dad's not well, you know, he's had a bit of a tough time at work, but he's going to see someone and it's all under control. But you know, just so you know, tell him that you love him and all that sort of stuff. And I did that. I spoke to him on the Friday night, the Friday before the work Christmas party. He seemed fine. I told him I loved him. He said he was getting help for the work issues. And then on the Saturday I hadn't spoken to him because I knew he was having a dinner party. I explained to Vanessa. Yeah, we don't necessarily speak to him every single day, but I did pretty much speak to him every single day, it's just coincidentally I didn't speak to him on that Saturday. And then yeah. And then, you know, something snapped in his head on that Sunday morning. Mum still has so much trouble on Sundays. And I try to speak to her on Sundays, because Sundays are just horrible, because it's just yeah, I still have the vision of it and the scene, I still have that thing. That idea the concept of what must have been going through his mind to leave the house, run a kilometre, kilometre and a half up to the bridge. You know, you just, it's, it's inexplicable.

L: You know, you're saying that your mum has issues with Sunday mornings. I just, I was with your dad, right up until about 5.30 the day before. He rang me, I was at the farmers market in Bundoora. He rang me. And he asked me, if I had some time, just to go over and take a look at his response. Now we'll go into that in a little bit more detail. So I was pretty well with him the whole day. And you do have trouble because you keep thinking to yourself: should I've seen something? Could I've done something differently? So I can imagine how that's playing on everyone's minds, especially your mum. And my one big regret, Matt, is that your dad and I…I sat in my car with the door open. And he stood there. We were there for about half an hour before I drove off. And I asked him to come with my partner and I. If he and your mom would drive with us down to the coast because I needed to do a little job at our beach house. And I really regret not going back inside and saying to your mum, why don't you and Mark come with us tomorrow? You have no idea how I regret that. Because if we did leave at eight o'clock, like I wanted to, it could have been a different story. But anyway….

M: Sliding doors….

L: Yes. Look, it is, it is and that's something that we all live with. Now, what do you know about what went on prior to this?

M: So I, you know, there's mixed feelings within our family, even there's mixed views, I guess about the significance of what was going on. At school, there was a, you know, the number one thing I can take a step back for a second, one more thing about Dad, the number one thing about that, and mum as well as educators was that their number one priority was the children. Like, beyond any shadow of a doubt, their number one priority was the welfare of children. They love kids, and they loved making a difference in their lives. They were such passionate educators. And you know what, for me, that's such a great inspiration. That's why I'm so passionate about my career. And my job because I learned about that from my parents. So dad would never have done anything wrong by a child ever. But there was this woman who was accusing him of refusing to let the child enrol in the school, because of I believe was autism is that your disability or disability of some description, which was not the case it was it was more to do with the location where the child lived, is from my understanding. But anyway, this woman was taking action. She was relentless. She sent a Christmas card to him which had this horrible message inside. And then the department was effectively taking the parent’s side for some reason. And that's how it feels to us. And I've tried to look at it objectively. I mean, I understand the department has to go through processes and stuff. But there was no support. For Dad, obviously, he was, you know, it was more it was a problem for the department. And he needed to fix it.

L: It was a problem for the department because the complaint went firstly to the minister then to the ombudsman. And there were about another three or four people on that list. And when something of this nature is distributed as widely as this letter was, or this complaint, the department feels that it has no choice but to act on it. So that's the background of that.

M: Well, that's fair enough. I don't actually have a problem with that. But there's just a bureaucracy in place when you can't just… Yeah, it was almost like it to me. I think dad felt that it was he was just being blamed without being given any chance to explain this. It's the circumstances it was just this is a problem, we have to fix it. And there is no system or mechanism in place to actually deal with it as an issue for what it was. It was more than it was a problem about probably worried about it getting into the media, for whatever reason. That's always a factor in government departments I've come to learn is yes and, yeah, that ended there was just no support. It's, it's pretty shocking. And yeah.

L: What went on prior to your dad receiving this letter of complaint?

M: Yeah. So I'm not across all of this. This is where you might know more than me, I'm not across all the details there in terms of what had happened. I know he’d been having a little bit of a rough time, because he was, what was it called a regional network leader. So he had, he did that for five years. And he worked very extensively with Strathuen and that community off the back of the Black Saturday bushfires, and that I think, affected him greatly. And then there were structural changes to the department. And it was decided, mutually I believe, for him to go back into a school.

L: Yeah, he went back into a school because he knew the job as regional network leader was changing. It was going from educational leadership, to a more managerial, you know, managerial focus, which he didn't want to do.

M: That's right.

L: And that wasn't in his heart. Because you said it. You hit the nail on the head before when you said that he was all about kids. And his love was to, to help kids and teachers and be in schools. And so he applied for schools. And do you know what went on when he applied for schools?

M: No.

L: Maybe I do know a little bit more than you. The school where your dad was the inaugural principal. It actually came up as a vacancy once again. Yeah. And he went in there as the acting principal for some time. And they loved him. And they wanted him to apply for the school and be the principal again. And then it just so happened that another school close to your home came up. And as your dad kept telling me, it's only seven minutes away. You have no idea the conversations that we had.  I said to him, Mark, take the other school, you know it. Okay, there might be a few crazies out there, but you know them, you know the people, you know this school, you're familiar with it. But he accepted the offer. And the rest is history.

M: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think that the school that he went to, had great potential, it was in a great area. And I think part of that only seven minutes away, to give you an insight into his thinking would have been that he would have wanted to have been spending more time with mum. And mum at that stage was the principal of a not a founding school, but a school that had relocated and reopened on a new site. And mum was doing, like extraordinary hours. And he was such a great support to her.

L: Yes, he was.

M: And I think he wanted to be around more to support her. And I think he thought that the school he was going to have the ability to, you know, just fit in a little bit more than his lifestyle as he was kind of he was heading towards retirement and, you know, eventually and he did obviously complete his doctorate with yourself, which we were so proud of.

L: And it was, you know… it normally takes people six years, but it took us nine. It was hard going but we got it done.

M: And you know, and I felt that he had so much to offer and that he could have, you know, semi retired and worked with you and help teachers of the future and principals of the future. And, you know, all of that is sadly lost. And you know what, it's lost for mum now too, because mum has so much knowledge. And now she's lost to the system as well. Because she just can't, she just doesn't want to do it. And that's really disappointing, because she's a very, very smart, talented educator. And yeah, she went back to school for a while, but it was just too tough.

L: It was a big pain that she carried. She still carries. Looking back were there any signs?

M: Oh, I really don't think so. There was no sign that something this drastic was gonna happen. Like, you know, I'm always ….what I don't like living in the past. As a person. I don't know why. I just never really have. I'm always looking to the next challenge. I think Dad was a bit like that too. But he, you know, Dad always dealt with things. He was always the one I went to for advice. Like almost daily when I was having, you know, you have issues at work or whatever. And you know, that's something that I've missed for the past seven years. But yeah, was there was never ever, ever any indication that something this dramatic or drastic would happen.

L: Did you talk about this with your mum after the fact? Or was it too painful?

M: You know, you have to go through the phases of grief. And we all had counseling and stuff. But, you know, I think we did. We were always there to support him, as he was always there to support us. I don't think I don't have any regrets in that sense that, you know, I could have stepped in and done something. Because there was just no indication, like, you just wouldn't, I just couldn't imagine that a man as intelligent as my father, could one Sunday morning, have something snap in his head, that while mum’s in the shower, he leaves the house and runs to the top of a bridge and jumps off it. Like, you just can't, I don't know how anyone can see that coming in a second.

L: Look, Matt. And that's why I look back because I spent a fair bit of time with him in the lead up to his death, and I keep looking for signs. And, you know, I get goosebumps to think, did I miss something? Could I have done something differently? Could I've said something? So if you were to give advice now to the department, what would you say to them about this?

M: Well, I don't think that's, I think the approach they need to consider the fact that there, there are always two sides to the story. And to be honest, the way life goes these days, there's five sides to every story. You can't just lay the blame on the principal of a school, particularly when parents these days have this expectation, like the respect for teachers and principals compared to what it was 20 or 30 years ago is out the window. Now, that's not to say that the practices 20 or 30 years ago, were excellent, because there were probably some practices of teachers and principals that these days would be considered completely inappropriate. But we have all sorts of regulations and processes and policies and procedures that teachers have to follow these days that they didn't have to follow back then. And they're all following them. And I'm not saying that every teacher or every principal is always going to make the right decision. But there can't be an attitude of blame from the department before there's been any kind of reasonable level of conversation or investigation. It was just, I think that he felt like he was just being persecuted. And that they were just taking the side of this parent who wasn't actually even apparent at the school. I don't think she had another child at school. She was just trying to get her child into the school. You know, and this, this permeated around, obviously, in his head. I mean, I know he was worried about it. But I think that it was a combination of other issues too, most likely, you know, like, potentially the I look back and say maybe, you know, the Black Saturday stuff, maybe that took a greater toll on him than I thought it did. I just thought he was heroic. And he received that award from the Premier for something outstanding. That was just such a pivotal role in a time of great distress. But you know, maybe that, maybe that was part of what got to him. For some reason. He couldn't rationally deal with this because he felt like he was being persecuted by the department.

L: When I sat down with your dad, Saturday afternoon, the day before, he opened up his laptop, and I expected to see his response to the minister, his version of events. And you know what he had written in huge font across the screen of his computer?

M: No.

L: Discrimination. I couldn't get over it. And it was in his head and he couldn't get it out of his head. Because he was being accused of discriminating against that child.

M: Yeah.

L: And for him, that was the ultimate insult. And it was it just went against everything that he stood for.

M: Yep, and I hadn't actually thought of that word for a while but I do remember now that that was at the heart of it. And he believed so strongly and doing right by people. You know, and it's just really sad, isn't it that he had to that these final days he was dealing with this. And he couldn't rationally do anything to get that accusation. and all that out of his head. I don't know, when none of us know what actually might have happened next, if it had got to the department and someone there maybe had have looked at it rationally, as opposed to looking at it as a problem that needed to be fixed.

L: Look, I have no doubt that once the department got his response and investigated, he would have been cleared, no doubt at all. Because the mother who wanted to enrol her child, she lived outside of the zone. And she was asked, like all schools do, to show proof that she was living within the area, that's all.

M: Yeah, no, that's not, it's not ridiculous.

L: So he didn't do anything wrong. And yet, I think this was probably more about how, how can somebody accuse me of this, it's just not true. And he just couldn't, he couldn't deal with it.

M: And there's got to have been reasons for that. And I think those reasons go back probably years, and they go back to the department and the way the department helps principals, become leaders and deal with this sort of stuff, because principals are dealing with more rubbish now than they were dealing probably with what dad was dealing with 10 years ago. Yeah, it's sort of odd.

L: I think so that, look, the department has got a lot of processes, a lot of programs in place. And they're very helpful with the technical. But managing yourself emotionally and mentally is a totally different thing. And this is why we tend to rely on our, on our colleagues a lot, you know. We form those strong networks, and you know, we go see a psych and, you know, do all those things, because the department doesn't know how to help us other than to say, you know, you can have six free sessions with the psych, you can go to the doctor, you know, and have a health check, which most workplaces do these days. Yeah, that's great. Look, that's great. But it probably doesn't go enough, not not in this job.

M: It's a box ticking. That's, you know, it's largely that's, that's for them. And that's for organizations to tick a box and say, well, we want to, we offer all this, although all these things, but I don't think that there is…. you can tell me if it's changed, but I don't think Dad’s circumstances and mum's problems for that matter as well, there was practical, real practical support available. And I think to a large extent, that's what the regional network leader’s job that dad had, did provide to principals, he did such a great job with that. And then when he needed that sort of support, there was no one there for him.

L: His colleagues were there. That's about it. You know, the rest of the department, they were working through a process. And look, the other side of that is that it's all confidential. So really, he wasn't even at liberty to ring up his closest mates and say, Look, I need, I need to get this off my chest, because officially he wasn't allowed to. And that's a real downside of all of this too, when you actually need to talk to someone in the hope that they'll give you that moral support. Your hands are tied. What would you tell principals about looking after themselves?

M: Trying to have work life balance, I think is really important. Have other interests. And try not to, try not, you know, it's it's hard though, because dad's job was his life and that, you know, his kids and his, his wife was too. But, you know, they say in my industry, journalism is a lifestyle. As much as it is a career. You know, I live for my job. I follow the news all day, every day, whether I'm on holidays or not, because I'm interested and I want to know how it works. I want to know what's happening. And that's probably something I get from dad and dad was a bit like that with his work. So yeah, I guess, work life balance is one thing. I think that's really important. And a legacy that I hope my dad leaves is just don't forget what the main aim is. And that is the kids that he's that he's helping, you know, the kids of today become the leaders of tomorrow. And I know that sounds cliche, but it's that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to help kids get the best start in life. And that's a pretty important job.

L: How were you and your siblings coping after seven years? Has it gotten easier?

M: No, just it's further, it's further back in the distance, but it's doesn't get easier. I still live with them. I live with the thoughts that the same thing might happen to me that I might one day become sick like that. And that's actually quite frightening.

L: Absolutely.

M: It's not something that the rational me would ever consider doing. But he was, you know, he was, to my knowledge, you know, a very rational, sensible guy as well.

L: And if you were to disclose something like that, to your dad, what would he say to you?

M: He probably would have said that that's ridiculous. You know? I know my mum has, I've told her that I have that fear.

L: Is it because it came out of the blue with your dad? Or is it because you actually do feel those emotions? And those thoughts?

M: No, I don't feel those thoughts. No, I think it's because it came out of the blue with that. Yeah. And that, you know, that, could there be something genetic about it, you know, that mental illness becomes a thing as I get older? Yeah, it's just something that I have to be really conscious of, I think. But can you imagine like, it's, you might say, that's an irrational fear of mine. But it's, it's real. It's just there in the back of my head that something might go wrong in my life, but

L: It's not different to say a parent dropping dead of a heart attack. And you saying to yourself, well, is that genetic?

M: Exactly.

L: Will that happen to me?

M: That's it. Yeah.

L: Or will it happen to one of my siblings? You know, or one of my kids?

M: Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it is genetic, by the way.L: But you know, I guess the really big question here, Matt, is that we didn't see your dad suffering from depression and, and sometimes from depression comes suicide. Look, I'm not a doctor, a psychiatrist. I don't know how all this works. But with your dad, it came out of the blue. And I'd really like to follow up, not with you. But you know, medically, we've had many people who commit suicide, does it just come out of the blue? Because it's, it's just so hard to get your head around?

M: Because it's an extreme, isn't it? Like, on the whatever it was the Thursday, you know, he went to the doctor. He was getting help, he was going to see a counselor like there was he was in the process of getting help. So he's following all the right rational steps that someone in that situation would. So that's what doesn't make any sense. How does that happen? One Sunday morning. Just one Sunday morning, in December, when you're looking forward to Christmas with your family. And Vanessa's birthday, was a couple of days away, like, and our lives changed forever.

L: And how's your Mum? How's she coping?

M: She's got golf. And she has all grandkids now. She's got four grandkids.

L: And unfortunately, your dad missed them all being born.

M: He would have been a great poppy. And the kids, my kids know. There's photos around the house and they know that that's their poppy. Yeah, she's doing okay, but it still hurts.

L: And do any of us ever get over this?

M: Well, no, you just learn to live with it.

L: Yeah, I see your mum from time to time. And I asked her if she would talk to me about this. And she said, No, I can't do it. No, no, I just cannot do it anymore.

M: Yeah, she has done one interview in particular that's available online. If people who are listening to this want to know more about the story from her perspective.

L: Is that the article in the Age with Henrietta Cook? Yeah, what I'll do….I have actually downloaded that and I'll put the link in with this interview on my website's blog if anyone's interested. Well, look, Matt. No, can't take back what's happened. And I think the fact that you tend to focus on the future, that's a very, very positive thing because you can't go forward if you keep looking backwards. So that's a really good philosophy. You've got two gorgeous kids. You've got a beautiful partner, your siblings, you know, you've got a lot of people there to support you. And you know, and you've been extremely successful in your work. And I know that, as you say, that comes from the very strong influence of your parents, both mum and dad. So I'd like to say to you, thank you very much for your time. Now, I know you've shared some really personal things with us and you know it's not easy.

M: No, it's not easy. But I guess the final thing I'd say is that I think my dad would be proud of me speaking about this sort of thing. Because if me talking about this, which I've done a couple of times before, can help, particularly in a targeted podcast like this, which is going to be listened to by principals, and teachers is, is my story and dad's story and our family's story can help just one person, then yeah, that's, that's a good thing. And that's kind of his legacy, I guess.

L: Absolutely. I wish you all the best to you, your mum, your family. Take care.

M: Thanks.

Thanks for listening to this latest episode of talking out of school, where we cover topics and dilemmas associated with the ups and downs and even the downright curious of the school leaders job. Want to know more? Then visit me at shaping leaders.com.au

But for now, here’s to staying ahead of the game.

Additional resources

Henrietta Cook's article published in The Age 20 October 2016

Lynda Thompson's story

You're listening to Loretta Piazza experienced school principal, mentor and coach. And together we're talking out at school. You will hear from leaders who have lived and breathed so many experiences good and bad, agonized over decisions, and have tossed and turned through countless sleepless nights. These are the people who will help you stay ahead of the game.

Introduction

Last week’s episode with Professor Philip Riley, the founder of the Principal Health and Wellbeing survey, really only scratched the surface.  In this episode, we get to the heart.  Phil shares his thoughts about our education system, the unmanageability of the principal’s role, how it affects our health and the need to have conversations nationally where there are high levels of collaboration and trust. We finish the interview with Phil providing us with three key points and a strong message as to how principals can stay healthy and sane in the unpredictable world of the school leader.

Interview with Professor Philip Riley

Loretta: Going back to about 2015. So it's a number of years ago. It was part of Mark Thompson's thesis, which he put to the department. And he, and I continued that research the following year after he'd already well, after he passed away, I actually published that. We specifically looked at assistant principals and they said, You know, I've been in the job for a long time, so I certainly have no intentions of being a principal. So the longer they had been assistant principals, the less likely that they were to step up to that next job. But what we did find also was this small group of very energetic and enthusiastic young males who couldn't wait to get into that job. I'm wondering what's going to happen to them?

Phil: Oh, that is the big question. And, um, one of the things that has worried me all the way through the survey and the more I've, um, learned about occupational health and safety is that, you know, stress kills people. And, um, it's often heart disease that creeps up. No symptoms, no, um, real indication that things are bad for you until suddenly you have a massive heart attack and either survive it and have to change your lifestyle hugely or don't survive it. I mean, you know, the classic sort of story of somebody who, um, is in their mid fifties or early sixties, who just keels over to the massive heart attack that nobody knew was coming. And they, they were thought to be fit and healthy and things. And this is clearly related to stress in the workplace and the literature is getting more and more convincing that this is a huge problem. And I do worry about these young principals who are in that highly stressful situation and think they're coping well. And if you, yeah, which clearly, um, the vast majority of them care a lot that makes you more vulnerable. So, they have to be, um, I think new structures about how these sorts of, um, particularly large schools are being run and a more seamless connection with departments, so that a lot of the administrative work that is really low level, um, can be taken away from the principals so that they just concentrate on the important bits of keeping the school running, which is the relationships between teachers and parents. And teachers and kids and all of that. And then making sure that there's, uh, an exciting curriculum that's meeting those kids each day. That's more than a full-time job.

L: Isn't it? Is there a difference, um, between male and females, how they approach the job and the repercussions of the job?

P: I don't think so. Really. Um, when you, you look at it, the people who there's a difference between, um, primary and secondary, more than between male and female, I think. And people always like to say, it'd be easy. You know, women have a more caring and males are more, um, cold and aloof or whatever. But I think that the, um, the reality is that, well, there are very few males in primary schools any more, which I think is a tragedy. We need a much better mix of males and females in both primary and secondary school. But we need to also have a societal structure that allows male caring to be seen as strong rather than potentially weak. And there's a bit of that kind of stuff. I think in society still the good male principals couldn't care less about that, but there's probably mythology out in the community that that is, you know, it's better for women to be doing the nurturing stuff. Well, actually it's not, it's really good for males to be doing nurturing stuff as well. So yes, that's a very long winded answer to say no, I don't think there's that much of a difference. It's much more, you know, personality differences, much more important than gender difference.

L: What about principals in low socioeconomic schools? Do they face any different sort of health issues?

P: Uh, we haven't looked at that in, in very broad terms where we can, but, um, my suspicion is there's not going to be that much difference. I think the types of stresses tend to change with socioeconomic status, but the, the level of stress is pretty constant. So it's a very stressful job. You're dealing with it in different ways and probably different levels of SES. If you know you're struggling with resources and things versus your struggling parents who are very pushy and want, you know, all sorts of other things added into the curriculum versus parents who are, you know, invisible or most. Yeah. And, and I noticed also it's the principals in the government schools also who have greater issues with their health.  Compared to say Catholic and independent.

L: Why do you reckon that is?

P: Yeah. Well, that's, that's interesting. I mean, part of that is if you look at it by year level at sort of prep years, or, you know, the early years of school, there's virtually no difference. And gradually what happens is both the Catholic system and the independent system are allowed to jettison their most difficult students. And they all end up in the government school system. By the end of, um, secondary school, the gap is really quite large, but it's, it's a kind of manufactured gap, um, that has happened through the years of schooling. So that's, I mean, it's a really tricky one. I, you know, I think we should be pushing for like Finland did in the 1950s and sixties that every child should really be going to their local school because of each school is as good as every other school where we have this kind of competitive system of, um, private versus public. And then, you know, add in a Catholic faith based system as well, as well as other religions too. Um, it's just a recipe for disaster in terms of how the society functions. And Finland has proven that because when they, they, they had a system like ours currently, um, with private public and people spending, you know, long time traveling from home to school to avoid particular schools and things and when they decided to revamp their system and said, you know, our greatest resource is our people. Why don't we invest in them? And then every school. Should be the best school in the area. That problem just basically disappeared. But I mean, look, it took a long time, but they decided to be completely bipartisan about education. Policy and education has never been, as far as I know, has never been an election issue in 20 elections or something since brought in those policies.

L: So is that the answer for us to take politics out of education?

P: Oh, I think so. I mean, the question is how, because we, with a federated system, I mean, we've all been introduced, I guess, in, during COVID to how powerful the states are. And the education system is no different in that, you know, the states really all technically legally can run their own race however they like. And the idea of a federated system is you know, it's, it's by consensus rather than by, by rule. But I think if we had a proper federated system that, that saw the, the peak of the system as being the school, rather than the department, and, you know, you flip that pyramid from top-down school, back to department and departments had a, a kind of, um, a service delivery model management, rather than command and control. We we'd have a lot of improvement in the system, I think because just as an example, you know, it's not the same being a principal of Borroloola in Arnhem land, as it is in north Fitzroy, even though you both have, um, a really relatively high indigenous population, it's not the same sort of.

L: Prior to this Labor government, we had the Liberals in power and their policy was to put all the authority and funding back into schools, individual schools. And I think on paper, that sounded absolutely fantastic, but it then meant that we didn't have a bureaucracy. We had nobody in region. There was hardly anybody in the central office and when we needed support, whether it was with, um, money or advice, or whatever, it just wasn't there. And that didn't work either.

P: No, and I may not have made myself clear, I don't mean that the system should be like that. I think the system should be, um, optimized so that, um, things like legal branch is available to everybody at any time. You know, those, those technical sorts of things that you need, the administrative load is taken away, taken away from schools so that, you know, salaries and all that sort of stuff, they don't have to think about, you know, in Queensland, the principals in remote areas have to manage all the housing for the teachers. Um, it's ridiculous. Um, but the principals should be able to spend the bulk of their time on the curriculum and how the relationships are going in that school, in their own context and working under a national plan of well, you know, everybody should be able to read and write and be interested in science and art and music and drama and phys ed and all of the other things that, you know, are in school. But they, they are weighed down by the really basic stuff of NAPLAN results and, or Year 12 results. If it's a secondary school, rather than what's a broad education, really look like what's the outcome of a good education. Not everybody can be a university professor, which is sort of the way, um, you know, curriculum seem to be written. Is that the only true success is that you become a professor in a university and we know the systems work properly?

L: So, how do we fix the problem? How do we make the survey results better? What are the answers?

P: Well, I think it's a slow burn thing. We have to have national conversations about the big issues, and we don't seem to do that. Everything is politicised. Conversations that really become meaningless, but we need to decide as a country what it is we want from our education system, and then handover the trust of the delivery of that to the professionals who are in place. I mean, the de-valuing of, of, um, teachers’ work and principals’ work has been just huge over the last 25, 30 years. And if you, if you listen to how some bureaucrats talk about principals, they describe them as, as something that sounds like a recalcitrant child, rather than, you know, a highly qualified professional person who is, um, doing their best to run their organization with probably far less resources than any other organization of a similar size would be provided with. So we've got to have a conversation. You know, we need some national drivers of this, some, um, energetic people who are going to drive this conversation and not give up when, um, it, it reverts to, you know, literacy wars or something silly like that. Um, and, and keep pushing away at it. And I think there'd be lots of support.

L: There's got to be a change of mindset also that you mentioned. What's that change look like?

P: Um, I think, well, a lot of it is probably around trust, you know, as a society, I think we've lost a lot of trust in our institutions. And, you know, probably for good reason, but if you, if there is no trust in the system, it's very hard to then give people the free reign, they need to run it properly. And, um, how you build that trust back up is, I guess, through deeds, we, we have to draw a line in the sand at some point and say, we're going to trust you to run this the way we expect it to be run and knowing that there'll be some failures along the way, but they'll also be certain successes and there'll be some unintended consequences and there'll be some intended consequences. And, um, we're going to support the people who, uh, need extra support and we'll probably take the foot off the pedal a little bit for some of the others who seem to be going okay, and can provide their own resources. You know, the money's never going to be huge. So I think we can better target who needs the help. And as long as it's presented as help, rather than management. Then principals can trust the people coming in to help them to, rather than saying, you know, why are they watching over my shoulder? What's wrong with me rather than, you know, the other thing. So, you know, it's not very nice, you know, there's no easy solution. That's going to take a lot of collaborative effort and a lot of working together and a lot of trusting in the professionals who are already there and valuing their opinions about what does and doesn't work. And then some of those people who, you know, maybe 25, 30 years into the job and are a bit cynical about how departments might have managed. So pull back a bit and go so well, I'll just leave my cynicism at the door here for a little while and see what we can do better. Yeah.

L: You also talk about that professional support and, you know, having been a principal for a very long time, I can honestly say that what principals want from the department is not always the sort of support that the department can offer. It's not that they don't want to, that they're not able to. So I think there is a real mismatch and a misalignment around what that support is, what it looks like and what the expectations are.

P: Yeah, that's absolutely right. And, uh, that's a very difficult, I, you know, I don't know how you solve that one because often when principals are looking for a big level of support from the department, they're at a desperate stage and they're probably not thinking as clearly as they might. If they're a bit more, um, you know, a bit less under the pump, um, and I've, I've found that working with departments over the years, that that's particularly true of, um, legal issues where, um, lawyers will often give them a, a kind of, well, there's this option, then there's this option. Then there's this option and you'll need to decide. The principal is really going, I just want you to tell me what to do. I've had enough with this family or with other one. Um, and they can't do that. Of course. So, yes, that's always difficult.

L: If you could give, um, a couple of say tips or solutions about how to make the principal's life better so that they don't become so unwell because of their job. So just a couple of things. What would they be?

P: Uh, I think the big one for principals to, to monitor themselves. Uh, are you sleeping well, and that means, are you sleeping enough? Firstly, I've, I've met… I don't know how many hundreds of principals over the years, over the years who, um, would say, oh, yeah, I sleep pretty well, but I only get four or five hours a night cause I'm working till 11 or 12. And then, you know, I'm up again early, so I can do a bit of exercise before I go to school. That's not a healthy lifestyle. You need to have your proper amount of sleep and you need that sleep to be restful. So if you're waking up at two in the morning, oh, I forgot to do this. And you know, all that sort of stuff, that is a really good indicator, that things aren’t right. And you need to do something about it. So you need to discuss that sort of stuff for the GP. So, you know, like they say in the airplane, when the oxygen mask drops down, put it on yourself first, before you go and help other people while it's really, that's got to be, the mantra that we all hold look after yourself. First, you have to be a model for, uh, for others. Principals have to role model healthy living in a school environment to the teachers coming up so that every teacher in that school wants to be a principal as well. So the next crop of them coming through can be good and healthy and, um, switched up. So that would be the first one. And I've, and one of the important things about that is being able to switch off. And it's much harder in an environment where you've always got your phone with you or has got a computer by you. You can always be doing a bit more work. Even if you're sitting at home work beckons, you have to find a way to mentally switch off. And as I've often said to principals, problems are very helpful. They'll wait for you. So they might disappear if you stop thinking about them. So they would be my two things on the personal level. And then the, I guess the third one at the systemic level is get to know the principals around you and get to know some of the departmental people around you and get a good relationship with them. No matter how much, how difficult that is. Make it happen because this is a collaborative game. And, uh, even though principals, uh, can be pretty isolated inside their schools, there is a lot of support out there. And, and principals generally speaking are very, um, collaborative when they're able to be so. As a new principal, particularly make sure you, you use that collaboration. It'll be very useful to you and it makes you kind of keep your ear to the ground a bit to you find out what's coming down the line, which can be useful to you as well. And then enjoy the job. Enjoy the kids. Enjoy working with the teachers. Don't be overwhelmed by the problems. Sometimes it's a good idea to just shut your office door, label the problems there and then wander around the school.

L: You know, it takes a fair bit of courage to be able to do that and say no to the department. And I think the more time we spend in the job, the easier it is for us to be able to do that. But the really one good thing is, um, even though burnout and sleeping problems and all those sorts of things, you know, are really huge for principals, the self-efficacy is well above the general population. So that says a lot about principals and the people who are running our schools.

P: It does. Yeah. They're a very important group and they're pretty, pretty much. They are, um, people who've chosen the career for all of the right reasons, they might make mistakes, but they've, they've done it for all the right reasons. nAnd I think at a very deep level, a lot of them know that. And that's where that self-efficacy, I think comes from, I can muddle my way through this and I will, you know, so there's a determination there as well as self-efficacy to get the job done.

L: So how long are you going to be running these surveys?

P: Well, it always depends on funding. So there's a funding application in to keep it going for another three years at the moment. We haven't heard the results of that yet. Um, but hopefully, um, for quite a number of years yet, because there's still a lot of work to do. And there's still a lot of, uh, information that, you know, needs to build up to potentially sway those in, um, power to. Think of it as a, uh, an important issue, an ongoing issue. I think without the survey, it would, uh, going into the background a bit blocked up in the process.

L: But I think it's very heartwarming to know for us here in Victoria, that our education department has introduced a number of initiatives to support principals and our aspirants as well to get them ready for the job. And I think that's, that's a very, very positive thing. And if any, if your survey has really helped bring all that to the fore, then we are very, very greatul. So on behalf of all the principals and assistant principals and aspirins, Phil, thank you very, very much. And on behalf of our parents as well, because we're doing a damn good job for their kids.

P: Well, thanks. It was good to talk.

L: Well, thank you very much. This has been really enlightening. Um, I wish you all the best and as you start to wind down, but don't wind down too much because you know, you're very skilled. You're very knowledgeable. You bring so much, you know, to this area.

P: There's a very, there's a very good team behind me who, who are continuing that work and will into the future. So it's, um, there's good news. There's lots of good things in the background.

Thanks for listening to this latest episode of talking out of school, where we cover topics and dilemmas associated with the ups and downs, and even the downright curious of the school leaders job. Want to know more?  Then visit me at shapingleaders.com.au

But for now here’s to staying ahead of the game.

You're listening to Loretta Piazza experienced school principal, mentor and coach. And together we're talking out at school. You will hear from leaders who have lived and breathed so many experiences good and bad, agonized over decisions, and have tossed and turned through countless sleepless nights. These are the people who will help you stay ahead of the game.

Introduction

I don't think there's one principal in Australia who hasn't heard of the Principal Health and Wellbeing survey. Given that it's been around for more than 10 years, every principal I know completes a survey every year. What makes this survey particularly valuable is the fact that each participant receives in depth feedback in relation to their own personal health and wellbeing immediately after completing the survey. Professor Phil Riley, the initiator of this survey is my guest today and he shares insights into how he began his career in education, then transitioned into the field of psychology. We also discuss how the survey came into being and the impact of the principals’ work on health and wellbeing.

Interview

Loretta: Hello, Phil, welcome to Talking out of school. All right. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Phil: Well, I was a teacher for a long time. And then I was a principal for quite a long time. And then, well, let's step back. When I was a teacher, after about four or five years teaching, I realized I didn't know anything about how kids learned. I knew I did this sort of dance. At some point, they did these other movements at some point. And then one day, they would know something that they didn't know the day before. And I kept thinking, What is going on here, I don't really understand? So I went back and trained as a psychologist, if not, in between, you know, all the other things I was doing, and realized that I'd learned a whole lot of things in my psychology undergraduate degree that I should have been taught as a undergraduate teacher. And, and then sort of that led to leadership positions and became a principal, and had a big falling out with a school I was at, and decided that I was ready for a career change. I was probably actually a bit burnt out, I think, too.

L: At the time, how long were you a principal for?

P: I was principal for about five years, sort of acting, and yeah, be about five years. And the school that I was at, was going through a lot of turbulence at the time, as a lot of schools do, of course. Anyway, the opportunity arose to take a break, and I had been starting my PhD. A year or so before that all happened, actually, probably a couple of years before that happened. And was offered some teaching at the university. And I thought, Okay, it's time for a change, and then went and did that, and really like that. And one thing led to another around that when the PhD kind of really focused me on the teacher student relationship, and how crucial that is to the functioning of schools and then sort of looked at it, that expanded to staff, to staff relationships, leadership too, you know, when there's power imbalance, all of those sorts of things, and just got fascinated by all that. And we won a contract. I was at Monash at the time, and we won a contract to do, provide mentoring support for all the newly appointed principals in Victoria. And I had been developing this mentoring program through my PhD and had got to know a lot of principals around Victoria through that program, because they'd all come to and these were very experienced principals. I think the average age of the average level of experience, but the people who I'd worked with previously in this program called mentoring matters, was 27 years experience. So you know, working the kind of the cream of the cream in the sense in Victoria, and got them back to do the mentoring of the new principals when we won this contract at Monash. And we got them all together in because it was people from all over the state. We all met in a hotel in Brighton on a Sunday, and they were going to start their mentoring on the Monday so that the way we're going to do some run through stuff And then their their new principals who they were going to mentor. Were going to arrive for dinner on Sunday night, we'd start the whole program on Monday morning. Anyway, in the breaks, all of these principles were talking about, Oh, am I that person I'm kind of mentor is so young I don't think lasted, that, you know, the job is so hard now there was really a kind of outpouring in all the breaks between our sessions of how tough the job had become. And this was 2008, I think, yeah, would have would have been 2008. And I was really, you know, because I've been out of schools for a while at that stage. And at thought, you know, I knew things were tough, but things seem to be a lot worse. And when I started digging into it, of course, I'd turned up that the report that the Victorian Department had done called The Privilege and the Price.

L: That's on my list to talk to you about actually,

P: Yeah, well, that was an absolutely eye watering document. And I thought, why is nobody done anything about this, and in fact, you know, four or five years later, the situation seems to be worse rather than better. And yet, nobody's done anything about it. And I was chatting to various academics and other people, and they said, look, the only way you're going to get this out and acted on is to get it into the media. And the only way you can do that is to have it researched independently. And roundabout, that time, I went to what they call the research accelerator award at Monash, which was, you know, they picked their, what they thought were their up and coming good researchers and gave them a head start in terms of money to do a substantial research project. And so that's how the principle of Australian Principal Health and Wellbeing survey started. So it was funded by Monash and we, you know, the rest lead from there, all those years ago.

L: So the first Principal Health and Wellbeing survey was in 2011?

P: So it took me a year to work out all the principal organizations. I didn't realize him, there were 63, I think, at the time, principal organizations around the country, and just getting to know everybody and introducing myself and all those sorts of things, that took a year and it took a year to design the questions and consult with people from around the country, and in fact, also from overseas, about what sort of things we should ask. And so just discovering all that in between, you know, was full time teaching at the time as well. Took a couple of years. So yeah, the first rollout was 2011. And it's still going,

L: I suppose to maintain the integrity of the survey, has it undergone any changes between 2011 and now?

P: Yes, we've added and subtracted Look, it's a very long survey. And that's one of the criticisms, of course of it is principals are busy and you're asking them to spend probably nearly an hour completing at least the first time that is survey and probably 40 minutes or so for subsequent years. But we've been really careful to use the most robust instruments that are generally accepted around the world as being the best self report measures of occupational health and safety. And that has been a bone of contention amongst the research team, because really, we, you know, we'd all much rather ask far less questions to get significant answers. But of course, then the veracity of the of the research is so good, where we're branching at the moment into the area of artificial intelligence to mine through all of the answers that we've got through so many people's responses, various countries now and multiple years of responses to try and see if we can come up with ways of with using modern technology to help us ask less questions, but still be confident in the answers that we were getting back, which will make it easier for principals. And yeah, you know, so it's, this is early days, but I've got a very smart set of researchers who I'm working with them very keyed up into in this area, and they're looking at that. Despite being a fairly lengthy survey there is a very high participation rate. Yes. And there's a very very high return rate, which is sort of extraordinary. In general research turns we get, you know, 90 plus percent return rate. And that's unheard of in in ordinary research where you're using surveys people go, Yeah, I've done it once that'll do that, because we give very detailed feedback. And that was one of the things that I was very keen on when we first started that the individual should get something for their time. So everybody who fills out the survey gets a very detailed report about their own personal health and well being and their occupational safety. Yes.

L: Now, you mentioned The Privilege and the Price. Now that was released in 2004. And I remember doing that survey. And I also remember, remember having a conversation with my colleagues, and asking, where the hell has that survey and the results gone? We haven't heard anything. And then we heard on the grapevine that the results were so damning, that the department decided not to release the results for some time. Yeah. So they came out in 2004. And,

P: and they went up on their website for about 10 minutes, I think. And then they took it down again. So they said they could release it. But luckily, I was able to get a copy of it.

L: Yeah, I've actually got a copy of it too, because I used it for my own research. But I think something like 50% of the principals who filled out that survey said that they'd had a medical diagnosis attributable to their work. Yeah, so it was either, I don't know, headaches or, you know, whatever it was. And the other really interesting thing that I thought that came out of that survey was that 93% of principals considered themselves to be educational leaders. But in reality, 80% said that they were managers. Yeah. So what's changed from 2004 to now?

P: Very little. The problem with Department of Education, and probably departments of all sorts of things, transport, health, all of those is that they're full of people who don't understand necessarily what the job involves. And you wouldn't expect them to, clearly but they don't tend to be people who are inquisitive and want to listen about how the job works, and how we could make things better. They tend to be more command and control type people. They're often lawyers, because they're dealing with legislation and policy, you know, at a high level. And there's nothing wrong with it, except that you need some educators to explain what the ramifications of these policies and changes to legislation mean. So, in some sense, things haven't changed much, because of the way the whole departmental system works. I mean, to do very well, in the public service, you need to spend your time in education, transport and health, to get to Treasury. And Treasury is where, you know, the big game. And there, there was a time in Victoria, where there were a lot of school-based people in the department at pretty senior levels. And in one sense, that was a good thing in another sense, you know, that's led to all sorts of other difficulties, because they probably weren't as skilled as they could have been in other areas that are important to running a Department of Education. But in terms of what it's like on the ground, I think things have gotten worse, because parents particularly are far more aware of their rights, but they're not nearly as willing to own up to their responsibility for bringing up the kids

L: nicely said.

P: And so it creates a lot of conflicts that we've just seen, basically exponential growth in offensive behavior over time. So and that's really sad. I mean, it was I was shocked at the level of it when I first got the first year's results, and it's got continually worse since then.

L: And I think social media does not help here.

P: Absolutely, and we I mean, that's one of the changes in the survey over time is we, we've added questions in about social media to see what's happening there. And at a very kind of light touch level. But yes, it's terrible. And so, you know, social media is terrible in all sorts of ways. I mean, extraordinarily difficult for parents, very difficult for kids. It's affecting in Australia, particularly it's affecting teenagers sleep hugely. That's like it you know, when teachers go on camp, they sort of stay with an ear open in case, a reason to intervene. Well, apparently teenagers doing something similar with their phones, they sort of keep an ear out in case their phone goes off. And they feel like they need to answer it doesn't matter when the message comes through. So yeah, there are there are a number of issues that have made life more difficult. But I think the kind of key elements of Canada, the Department really trusts the principal, to run the school with some sense of autonomy. I don't think that's changed much. And until that changes, I don't think many of the other things will change.

L: I was interested in the number of, well, actually three out of 10 principals received a red flag email. What's all that about?

P: The red flags, we developed a system of basically, an early warning system for people that look like their health was under serious threat. And that was the red flag. Now, there's sort of technical aspects to that one of them was, we've simply asked a question that came from the Australian Quality of Life Survey, which is sort of the gold standard of that type of, you know, quality of life instruments, and that is if you felt like harming yourself in the last week. And then at what level? No, I haven't thought about it at all. It's crossed my mind, right up to I think about it all the time. And if people are saying, I think about it often, or I think about it all the time, that's a red flag straightaway. And we, we then generate an automatic email and the system that goes out to that participant to say, you know, some of your responses indicate that you may need to seek some help. And you know, and we give web links and all sorts of things, and people can look at it and do it rather than a phone call, which would be you know, very invasive. Then there are calculations from suites of answers, which is, you know, maybe 30 or 40 answers, we calculate a total for that, and then say, this person is showing serious risk. And that would generate a red flag as well. And when we started doing those ones, people would get back to me and say, I must have made a mistake. So I must have ticked the wrong box, you know, don't worry about it, I'm fine. And I got suspicious about that. And so the Australian Quality of Life Survey had been normed against a number of top clinical populations, as well as the general population. So one of those populations were women with postnatal depression, and Vietnam veterans with post traumatic stress disorder, and various other ones. And the pattern of responding for those two groups, particularly women with personality, depression, and Vietnam vets with PTSD was exactly the same pattern of responding as these principals who are saying, don't no, no, it's not me, everything's fine. Just change my answers, which means they're in denial about how bad things were, or, you know, potentially. And so we've probably, over the years become more proactive about saying, you know, we strongly recommend that you take these results and discuss them with your GP. And I've had lots of feedback over the years from people, often they would get a red flag and say, actually, I knew I was in trouble, I'm going to do something about it. Thank you very much, or I didn't know I was in trouble, but thank you, I will go and discuss this with my GP. So I think it has been useful in that sense for people but the percentage is pretty scary. And in the, in the, the qualitative part of the survey, where we just ask people, you know, is there anything else you want to tell us or sometimes principals will email me with a story about, you know, why their results are like they are. And they are often describing sort of classic symptoms of PTSD. So an incident has happened at school, which has probably not been huge, but that's just been the straw that's broken the camel's back and they, they kind of can't do their, or they can't perform in this in the way that they'd been performing. Every time they go passed their school they break out in a cold sweat or whatever. So it's pretty nerve wracking stuff.

L: Some of the areas that you look at in the survey for principals is burnout, sleeping troubles, stress depressive symptoms, and so on. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a principal who didn't have any of those symptoms, even at a very, very low level.

P: Well, it's a stressful job. And that, you know, even if the departments around the country in the world supported principles, absolutely, as well as they could enjoy a very stressful job, because of the human interaction, and the very high levels of emotional engagement with both parents and kids that are just a normal part of the job. And I think principals sign on for that. I don't think that's a great surprise or anything, I think, other great surprises that what surprises them is the amount of sort of administrative workload or the level of threats that they supposed to deal with, without a lot of support, and things like that, but I think, you know, people choose that job, relatively speaking with their eyes open, and they do it because they love it in the same way that, you know, nurses choose to be nurses and police choose to be police and whatever, you know, they kind of know what they're getting in for so. So that's okay. So I think, and there's, there's pretty good evidence in the, the literature about people who choose the helping professions are a little bit more vulnerable to these things anyway. And you know, the more you care, the more you can be kind of vicariously hurt by what you see around. There wouldn't be a principal in the country that hasn't heard terrible stories of kids lives outside of school and things and who feel for them and want to do more to help them. And yet, you, you know, you can undo so much. So you're right, that that I think there would be some elements of that.

L: Why is it that experienced principals and you know, we're looking at 21 plus years’ experience, they've actually got lower levels of burnout and stress. What's going on there?

P: That's actually reflected in the population at large, too, that happens to everybody. It's a function of age, you get to a certain point where you think, Well, I actually don't care that much about what other people think about me, I believe the good life or I haven't, or whatever.

L: Old age is really liberating!

P: Exactly. So I think that is probably what's going on here, too. So it's just a normal part of the aging process where you you basically just get a bit more comfortable in your own skin, I think.

L: And I think one of the things that you looked at in one of the last report was around the number of principals who plan on retiring.

P: Yeah. And I mean, it's always hard to know, because the economic circumstances change quickly, you know, COVID, comes along, whatever. So what people's intentions are, and what they actually do is often two quite different things. But certainly, anecdotally, COVID, has been an interesting one in that a number of principals have said to me, I'm going to get the school through this and get them going again. That's it. I've had enough, I'm going. I've done my bit can't do any more. And that would make a lot of sense to me, because they've been treated pretty badly. And I mean, so have a lot of people don't get me wrong, but you know, it's like, a week's warning to take a national education system online. And then offline, online, you know, with very little warning, and then, oh, well, you can just do hybrid classes. And, you know, half your kids will be at home, isolating and half will be in the room, and you'll be able to just manage all at once.

L: The hardest thing with all of that getting a week's notice was the fact that you're a principal in a very low socio economic school and more than half of your kids don't even have computers.

P: Yeah. And I heard I mean, there was I heard about a school in New South Wales, where I think it was very high indigenous population, maybe 90% indigenous population. And the principal had said to the Department, I don't have a single family with a computer or internet access at home and you're expecting me to go online and they said, Don't worry, we'll supply every family with something. Well, that stuff the equipment arrived after the lockdown was over. Yes, true. The equipment arriving is not enough. You've got to set it up and make sure it works and you know, help with technical help and all that sort of stuff. So

Phil's interview is so informative and special, that it deserves to be listened to in its entirety. Tune in next week as we go deeper with Phil into the Principal Health and Wellbeing survey, what it says about principals and a pathway to better health.

Thanks for listening to this latest episode of Talking out of school, where we cover topics and dilemmas associated with the ups and downs and even the downright curious of the school leaders’ job. Want to know more? Then visit me at shaping leaders.com.au. But for now, here’s to staying ahead of the game.

Resources and points of interest

The Privilege and the Price was the Department of Education and Training survey for principals and assistant principals conducted in 2003, but not released until 2004 due to the damning nature of the results.  As Professor Riley mentions in our interview, the survey results 'disappeared' from view very quickly.  See the survey results here. The Privilege and the Price_2004

The Principal Health and Wellbeing Surveys from Australia and other countries can be accessed from this link: https://www.principalhealth.org/au/

Transcript

You're listening to Loretta Piazza, experienced school principal, mentor and coach. And together we're talking out of school. You will hear from leaders who have lived and breathed so many experiences, good and bad, agonized over decisions, and tossed and turned through countless sleepless nights. These are the people who will help you stay ahead of the game.

You're listening to Loretta Piazza, experienced school principal, mentor, and coach, and together we're talking out of school. You will hear from leaders who have lived and breathed so many experiences, agonized over decisions and have tossed and turned through countless sleepless nights. These are the people who will help you stay ahead of the game.

Introduction

No principal should underestimate how important it is to have the right support, not just to manage the technical aspects of the job, which we know can become overwhelming at times, but support to help manage their health and wellbeing.  Yes, it’s vital to have a network of trusted colleagues, but it’s equally important to have the Australian Principals’ Federation stand beside you.  If something comes out of left field, and if you’re in the top job long enough, it’s not if, but when. You will need the strength, advocacy and knowledge of this bipartisan organisation that represents only principals and assistant principals.  In this episode I talk to Tina King who is the president of the Australian Principals’ Federation.  If you are a principal class employee and not a member, take note of what she has to say because it could mean the difference between flourishing and drowning in emotional despair.

Interview

Loretta: Hello Tina. Welcome to talking out of school.

Tina: Hi, Loretta, thank you for the opportunity.

L: Now you're the President of the Australian Principals’ Federation, affectionately known as the APF. So could you tell us about your role, how long you've been doing the job, those sorts of things.

T: Thanks. Yes. Um, the APF is the industrial organization that represents, um, Victorian government school leaders, principals, and assistant principals. We are not compromised in our representation because it is exclusively for school leaders. We do not represent teachers or education support staff. I have the honour of leading the Victorian branch. Um, and I bring to the role having been elected into this position in 2021. Um, I bring to the role over 27 years experiences as a school leader, I've had 15 experiences years as an assistant principal. And I had the great honour and pleasure of leading a government school, a primary school for 12 years. So it's one of the prerequisites of the role. You must be a practicing principal. And, um, it is a great honour to represent and advocate on behalf of our members, a membership base that is ever increasing, because unfortunately we are finding more and more, not, uh, people in need of industrial support, but they also need advocacy and representation because of the increased number of complaints and investigations against school leaders, particularly principals. And we do a lot of that work in standing alongside our members to guide them, support them and navigate the challenges that come um, when you do have a complaint and at times a subsequent investigation. It's an extremely challenging and emotional time when a principal is facing these sorts of matters and they really do need someone there to take the emotion out of it and really support them through the process.

L: There's another organization, the AEU that represents principals, it represents teachers and lots of other people as well. So what's the difference between the Australian Education Union and the principals’ union?

T: I guess the main differences we are not compromised in our representation. It is exclusively and only for principals and assistant principals, so that when matters come up, be they before the Merit Protection Board, be they a complaints and investigation that a principal has to lead, we do not represent the teachers. Our representation is completely and solely um, to that principal or assistant principal. And it is exclusive. It is uncompromised. And, um, we, when I say we, the, the staff that work at the Australian Principals’ Federation, know the job, we have our finger in the pie. Um, we are practicing principals ourselves; may have been, we may be on leave of absence, or we may be recently retired. So we get the job, we understand the job and we provide that uncompromised support and advocacy.

L: When you say uncompromised, has that got anything to do with government funding or not receiving any sort of funding?

T: We are a not-for-profit organization and our memberships pay the operations in running of our organization. So absolutely there are no investments from any stakeholders in terms of monetary investments into our organization. We are a key for voice around the table when we are engaging with department personnel or be it the Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority or whatever. We go into those negotiations with complete openness and transparency, because our commitment is solely to our members.

L: Tina, do I take that then that the APF has absolutely no affiliation with any political party? T: No, we are bipartisan, no political, no political affiliation with, um, any party. Or as I said before, any stakeholder or group. We are completely independent. We're completely bipartisan. And, um, our conviction and purpose is solely for our members.

L: I have been on state council for about 14 or 15 years. I was elected back then. And I only meant it to be a short stint just to, well, I wanted to do a favor to a colleague who rang me up one day and said, I can't do this anymore because I've taken on a new job. Will you step in and just fill in for me? So I thought, oh, well, here I can do it for six months, 12 months, and 14, 15 years later here I am still on state council. And, you know, it's, you know, I've got to say I have learned so much. And one of the things that I have learned more than anything is what not to do. I just thought we could use some of our time for you to elaborate on what are some of the really, really big issues that face principals, if they don't necessarily know about until it happens to them.

T: That's a really big question because when we look at the job of the principal, it is so diverse and it's so wide ranging. There's so many components to the role. There's the aspect about running the school. And all the demands that come with that in terms of, uh, curriculum and policies and operational matters. And then you have the role as the principal from the Department's point of view. You are the representative of the department at the school. And with that comes obligations in relation to implementing policy and supporting policy and guidelines. You have the demands of the community. And as a community leader, you need to be there supporting, and listening and linking in with, um, the key stakeholders, the parents, um, students and staff. And what we are finding is because the role is so diverse and it's so complex and it's so challenging, you have so many aspects that come across your desk, that if you don't give things due diligence, you may do something with all good intent in purpose but it can be against policy. And that is not necessarily, um, an intentful and purpose action that you fail to implement policy. It can be because of time constraints and so on. So we find the basis of most complaints and particularly those that are upheld are when policy has not been followed because when you have to answer to something the first thing the independent arbitrator will do is look at what this policy stipulates. What did you do? What did you say? How did you act and does that comply with policy. Now sitting alongside of that is the, is the values and the conduct that is becoming of a person of that stature and that position. And too often, sometimes people may fail in meeting those obligations because they may not be aware of it. How many people actually know about ministerial order 1068? Used to be ministerial order 199? And how many of us as school leaders actually unpack that with our staff? So when we deviate from policy and when we don't attend to those matters, that's when we can find ourselves getting into a little bit of hot water. And the main areas we're talking about is, you know, and that's been big for the Department, particularly of late, given IBAC findings relate to conflict of interest. So managing and disclosing conflict of interest. And sometimes acting in a manner, particularly in custodial situations and challenges between families where one parent may be aggrieved because the parent has deemed the principal to act with, um, a particular bias to the or the other, um, parent, they tend to be two major forms of complaints that arise from members of the public and the immediate school community. So we always say to principals, if you follow policy, if and when the time comes that you may be questioned about a decision or a particular act, then you are backed up and you can be supported to say, this is what the Department requires you to do, this is what I did to the best of my knowledge and intentions. And that's fundamental. You just, you can't know it all. You just need to demonstrate an awareness and a commitment, and that you acted with the intent purpose and impartiality. If we can stick to those things, I think, you know, um, we  well to support members, to, to navigate those challenges of complaints and investigations.

L: With the conflict of interest now, every principal every year, uh, gets on the website and fills in all the, you know, the required areas and to demonstrate how they mitigate any potential or perceived or real conflict. Now, how many principals actually don't fill that out?

T: So if there's a really good question, um, I would say given the training and the professional learning around this very few, maybe five years ago, it was an evolving landscape. It was new to many of us. And, um, probably a large proportion didn't feel it applied to them. So they didn't proceed. However, given where we are, you know, five, seven years later from when all this came out through IBAC, um, there is so much in the way of resources. There is so much professional development that has happened in, particularly from the employee conduct branch as well. They've gone out to network meetings. Um, if someone did not. Adhere or the policy requirements around conflict of interest. It would be really hard to plead ignorance in this space at this very moment where people get themselves into trouble in this area is they may feel that there is a conflict of interest and often what happens is you may go to a trusted colleague to get support and information because either exists. Because often when you pick up the phone and you ring a colleague, you know, they're there, they answer immediately. You don't have to go through the switchboard, you know, the 1800 number and so on. But sometimes that can work against you because a colleague might tell you what you want to hear. But also a colleague may not know the information as well. So we always say it is best to get the advice and support either from regional staff or the department, and always make note of it. The date and time and who you spoke to because one of the things about the Department is they've put increased resources and supports for principals in particular, whether you take the, um, the Principal Support Unit that, uh, Brian Wheeler heads and Frank Sal, um, you know, they're there to provide that advocacy and support on a needs basis, um, and we have seen a reluctance in the past for principals to reach out to the Department. And that's the space that we fill as well. Or we get many calls around this area and we support people, navigate them through, you know, conflict of interest, um, and, and other matters. So we also provide professional learning in this area to networks and individual schools and things. So going back to your question, more and more people are filling out the requirements as per edupay and through your declaration of private interests. Whereas rewind to five, six years ago, we were required to do that. And it was like, what's this? Why do I need to do it? And probably didn't give it the due diligence it needed.

L: What are some of the issues that you represent principals on?

T: Look the greatest issue and the greatest concern is when you have fractured relationships at the school level and the staff, are, pitted against the leadership of the school. And sometimes that can get really, really nasty. Sometimes the strategic campaign can be launched by staff in particular, the sub branch to out the principal or assistant principal. And when those things happen, it can be career ending. It can be damaging to one's reputation. No principal goes to school to make life difficult for their staff. The principals we deal with and support in this space have good intent and they have good purpose, but for whatever reason, some people, some teachers in particular are reluctant to change, to grow, to move and develop. And when they are challenged outside their comfort zone they bring other people on board and they take umbrage to the challenges brought upon by the school, the leadership. They misinterpret that as bullying, they lodge complaints. They lodge harassments. And they’re becoming very, very clever and astute and aware of where they can lodge those complaints. They don't always go to the region. Sometimes they go to the Institute. Sometimes they go to the Auditor General's office. So we're seeing more and more complaints coming against principals from stakeholders outside of education. Sometimes it's the Commission of, um, the Children's Youth Commissioner and things like that. And obviously when these complaints come and particularly those that come from the minister's office, it is a very top down approach that puts undue pressure on the individual and they have to answer to a lot of claims, often false and unsubstantiated yet the professional integrity, the commitment and, you know, um, the day-to-day work and decision-making is questioned. And as I said, at the beginning, it often comes from aggrieved staff, not just parents. And that is a really, really difficult situation when you have such fractured relationships in schools that result in these sorts of matters. So we're seeing increased staff opposition and complaints being lodged against principals in particular and that really concerns us because we know, we know that the way to, you know, for schools to function and effectively and be the best is to have a strong culture that's built on mutual respect and trust. And when that is broken, then when that is fractured and people become aggrieved, there are no winners in that. And the biggest losers are not just people who can have life-ending career moments, but most importantly, the kids.

L: Hmm. I've had two investigations against me. The first one was because I had a disgruntled staff member who was very, very unhappy because I did question he's teaching and he felt that I was targeting him unnecessarily and bullying him. And that went to region a couple of times and turned into quite a big investigation. And the second one, which I must admit, I can't begin Tina, to tell you how that affected me, but a student and a parent made an allegation. Um, and it was a very serious allegation, a very serious allegation, and that went to the police and that was a police matter for about six to eight months. And when I look back on it, I think, I don't know how I went to school every day. Continued to do my job with a smile on my face. My confidence was completely gone. And I had to pretend that everything was okay when in actual fact it wasn't. How don't we, as, as principals reconcile, something like that, knowing that we're effectively sitting ducks?

T: To be truthful and honest, Loretta, we can't reconcile something like that. And, and like yourself, I've been the subject of an anonymous complaint, um, which I deemed to be vexatious at the time, but nonetheless still had to go through the process and the process is timely. Even though there are the principles of natural justice that says this will be done within a particular timeframe, um, it can take up to 18 months. And during that time, you front up to school every day, you put a smile on your face and because people see you at school, they think, oh, she's doing okay. It's fine. Whereas inside it's still there. You're not, it is still there. It's at the back of your at it's always at the back of your mind, it is that sickly feeling in your stomach. And unfortunately that's why we're seeing more and more people taking leave. Accessing, um, medical intervention and support, and at times work cover, prolonged work cover. Um, we have individuals who have been subject to the nature of complaints that you just talked about similarly to you. And they've had to step aside from their role. They've had to enjoy months and months, if not years of medical intervention and support and counselling, and then go through the arduous process of work cover, having to explain themselves to seek a work cover claim. Um, and it's taking an undue toll on people. There is a problem with our process that allows it to go on for so long and doesn't allow for the system to call it out as unsubstantial unsubstantiated and vexatious from the onset. And I've had principals say to me, I will never go down the path of taking a teacher through the performance review process because it is there to challenge and grow people who are not performing to the expected levels. But often what happens is when you start a process with a teacher, it ends up in a complaint against you. You're deemed to be a bully. You're been to be unfair. You're deemed to be unreasonable. And your expectations do not marry with the perception of how the person is performing and they take umbrage to that. And it can, it's, it's, it's a tool of deflection. It's a strategy that a lot of teachers use, um, and it's costly and it's taking a personal toll upon our leaders. There's absolutely no doubt about that. So how you managed to front to school after the subject of two intense investigations would have come at a personal cost and would have come at come at a personal price. And I bet you to this day, you're still carrying those scars.

L: Look, I am. And even though I can honestly say I've had a lot of great support from colleagues and the APF, because the APF was very, very, um, supportive and provided me with all the advice and the information that I needed in a very timely manner. As my SEIL, my senior education instructional leader said to me, as he sat down with me because he visited to make sure I was okay, he said, Loretta, I could sit here and provide you with, you know, help and, and whatever. But he said, I'm going to walk out the door. You know, you're the one at three o'clock in the morning who wakes up and can't go back to sleep because all these things are still on your mind. And that is absolutely right. So that takes me to my next point. Tina, it's something that comes up a lot with principals where they say, why can't the Education Department be more supportive? I wonder though, what sort of support do we, as principals expect and want, compared to the support that the Department believes it's providing us?

T: So that's, uh, that's a really good question. And I think the best analogy I can make to you about this is, think about when you were a principal and you had a complaint about, against a teacher. Now, I don't know about you, but I always say to my staff, I will support you 110%, but when you get it wrong, I'm going to tell you, and I want you to fix it. So when I had that parent meeting and people were heard, I would sit there and back the teacher, but when it was just him or her and myself, I would say you got that wrong because we all have, we all have times when we get things wrong and no one, you know, for the vast majority of the profession and you know, our school leaders, you do not make intentional decisions or exclusions and things like that to cause harm or hurt or neglect and things like that. So when we're dealing with complaints against teachers, we have a tight timeframe that we work alongside of. Unfortunately when complaints come against principal class members, they are not afforded the same privilege of having it dealt in an expedient and timely manner and particularly investigations, they can go on and on and on and on. And we know there have been some inroads in this space because when external investigators are bought in, they actually now tell you when they aim to have their process of the, um, investigation concluded. But problem we have is when the investigator finishes their report, it goes back to the Regional Director who sends it to Employee Conduct, who sends it to the Legal Unit. It gets thrown around within DET before it finally lands back with the Regional Director with an outcome that then is provided to the person, you know, under investigation. So what we hear is when these matters arise, principals want to know they have the support of the department. And in your case, you had a SEIL who came to you, who asked you how you are, um, how are you going, who checked in with you. That doesn't always happen. And the other thing they want is to be heard and for it to be resolved in a timely manner as per the principles of natural justice. And unfortunately those two elements don't always happen. So they want to know they've got the support of the employer. They'll accept, and I know people will accept when they've done something wrong because this is let's not forget when you go through a complaints process and an investigation process, if there's an element of your conduct or the way you've executed your role and responsibilities that needs attention or needs enhancement, um, you know, that's a positive and you know, um, you take that onboard. You learn from it, you grow from, from it and you make sure it doesn't happen again, but you want to hear those people that represent you, ie, the employer are there to back you up. And sometimes simple words like, Loretta or Tina, we know this isn't you. However, we got to go through this process because we've got to validate, you know, and, um, and hear the complainants concerns and reach a point of resolution. We get all that. But you often felt alone. You've isolated. And you're told that this matter is confidential and you can't discuss it with anyone. So that even precludes you from picking up the phone and talking about it with your colleagues and often you vent to your partner or your loved ones who bear the brunt of it all. Or that's where we have a key role to play, where you ring us up and say, this is going on. And, um, and I've often had calls from people on a Sunday night who are sick to the stomach because they're going through an investigation process and have to front up at school the next day and pretend everything is okay when they're dealing with this in the background. So we need, we need a process that is fairer, is probably a little bit more transparent, a lot more support of principals and I'm in a process that lets principals know that they have the backing of the employer.

L: I wonder if we do have the backing of our employer, even though the Department says, no, no, we're very supportive, we're providing you with these resources. They say, go look at these, read about that. Go there. Look up… I think we're grateful for the Principal Health and Wellbeing initiative that is now available to everyone where principals can tap into psychological service, get, um, medical health checks and so on. Is that a band-aid though Tina? Is that just the government saying, oh, yeah, no, we're, we're supporting our principals, just in case someone decides to take it further in terms of, um, you know, making it a legal matter?

T: Yeah. Look, I think we're part of a big system. There's no doubt about that. And I truly believe in, I've seen this stepping into this role, the intent of the Department, the employer is a positive intent, it truly is. And I think we're fortunate in Victoria in particular, we have greater supports in any state across Australia. There's no doubt about that. And if you look at the Phil Riley survey results, that was actually acknowledged the inroads that we've made in Victoria. Is it a band-aid? The issues are very vast and, um, and the need varies. So what we need to do more is listen to our leaders and, you know, they often have the answers. They often have the answers and the solution isn't necessarily one that requires money, um, and more funds to be poured in the area. The, um, if there was time taken for individuals to actually sit down with the professionals and have some open conversation and discourse around this as school leaders will tell you what's needed. So to hear that and take that on board, rather than having people in the centre, thinking this is what our school leaders need. And, and I guess that's the critical role the stakeholders like ourselves have to play in those stakeholder meetings and conversations with the various department heads and bodies, because we listen to our school leaders. We know what they need, we know what they want. And we funnel that information up to the powers to be. I just wish there was a little bit more, uh, round table discussions. Um, not with a selected few, but, you know, from cross representation, um, across our state. Of principals and assistant principals who can sit down, share their stories, tell what they need and hear the roaring motion that has come from not just work debates, but situations around complaints and investigations as well.

L: If you were to sit down with some young, inexperienced principals, what advice would you give them about what not to do and how to look after themselves to make sure that say in 10, 15 years, they're still on top of their game?

T: Oh, well, um, when you step into the role as a leader and you're, you're newly appointed, there's a lot you don't know. And sometimes it's a good thing because you can plead ignorance particularly in your first five years. Um, but we talk about shielding and buffering staff and you need to shield and buffer yourself because the workload is relentless. Your accountability is immense to so many stakeholders and groups, and you really need to be on ball and on top of your game and you can't do it alone. You simply cannot do it alone. And it's fundamental you establish, and, and I know there are factors that prohibit some schools from doing this, um, because of financial resources or sometimes staff opposition, but it's really, really important that you establish a team around you, a trusted team around you within your school that has that distributed leadership model that spreads the workload and, um, you know, makes it sustainable because you cannot do it alone. The other thing I would say is you need to connect with your colleagues. You may be in a community of practice or a professional learning community because your network has put you into that. But alongside of that, gravitate to people who you trust, other principals, other APS, who you trust and you feel a connection with, because I can tell you in my leadership, the most valuable experiences of support I received was from my trusted colleagues who I could pick up the phone and I could say, I am struggling with this. I need help with this. How did you do that? And they share with openness, they share with trust. And most importantly, they share with no judgment.

L: That is really, really good advice. I suppose it's easy for us isn't it Tina because we've been principals for a very, very long time. I hope this message makes it to the less experienced principals. So having that support and that advice and those trusted colleagues around them to guide them and just even sometimes to lend an ear is absolutely vital.

T: It’s very hard as a young leader to sometimes push back. And, um, and sometimes that strength comes from talking to others that you have a really trustful and professional relationship with, because sometimes you just need the okay from someone to push back and then that could be your SEIL for example, there's nothing wrong with saying, look, I'm being inundated, I'm swamped. I cannot do this at this stage. I will get to it. Um, one of my Um, well, wouldn’t say favorite, but one of my strategies, whenever I was asked to do something and I may have missed a deadline or a timeline, or maybe I didn't see need or purpose to do this within the school and put it on the. And you'd often get the phone calls from town saying, oh, you haven't done this survey, or we've asked you to be involved in this pilot. And we haven't heard from you. And I'd say, yeah, look, I did see your email, but thank you. I don't wish to pursue it, but there was this inadvert pressure to participate and I'd always finished the phone call by saying, are you instructing me or are you advising me? And of course they can’t instruct you. It was always advice. And I would finish off by saying, well, thank you for the advice. I've taken it upon consideration and I've chosen not to participate. So never be fearful of pushing back respectfully. And if you really feel it's in the best interest of how you manage your own workload and that of your staff don't hesitate to respectfully push back.

L: What gold nugget, Tina, are you instructing me or are you advising me? That is gold.

T: And it’s served me in good stead for many years, and I still have a job with the Department, even though I am on leave of absence.

L: Tina. Thank you very much. Your role as APF president and the presidents before you are so important, you give so much advice, so much support and you stand beside your colleagues and that's, what's really important at the end of the day. Having someone there with you, you can't ask for more than that, that that's what's needed. And I think over the years I have survived because of the APF and because of the wonderful colleagues, trusted colleagues that I've had. So hopefully all our less experienced principals and APs will form those very strong connections and those strong collegiate groups, because these are the people who will be there when they need them the most.

T: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, um, you know, as we said earlier, it's really important to feel that people can reach out for support and with no judgment or recourse.

L: Tina, thank you for your time.

T: Pleasure, Loretta.

Thanks for listening to this latest episode of talking out of school where we cover topics and dilemmas associated with the ups and downs, and even the downright curious of the school leader's job. Want to know more? Then visit me at shapingleaders.com.au

But for now, here’s to staying ahead of the game.