Friday 13 October 2017

Ken Cock's Story

The path to Principal

Being a Principal was something Ken had decided he really wanted to do. He had, in his term, “grown up through the game”, and understood that being a teacher prepared him for administrative roles in schools. He made an early decision that he wanted to be an educational administrator, feeling that he could do the job better than many administrators he encountered! He knew that was where he was heading and along the way he had learnt to differentiate good and bad educational practice. Knowing his goal, he did a Graduate Diploma in Educational Administration while he was a Senior/Coordinator. From that course he learned about power relationships and the difference between power and authority.

He had several early experiences in acting positions and learned from these that he had skills in working with colleagues. He thought he was a better administrator than he was a teacher. This was reinforced by positive feedback about his performance in acting roles.

His first principal appointment was a promotion within a difficult school. He felt that being promoted within the same school made his job easier because he could see how controversial situations had arisen and already had considerations to ponder how it could be different. The situation called for greater awareness of the rights of individual staff, especially young teachers. It was important to support their learning.

Ken didn’t begin with a powerful vision of teaching and learning but over time realised the need to articulate a vision with the underlying principle that education is for all. He quickly saw that a principal has to be able to support learning not only for students but for teachers, support staff and parents. It was his responsibility to ensure that every individual student, staff member and parent/guardian could participate.

He found there were people around him who did not believe that. For example, some parents  objected to mixed ability classes because they believed their child was brighter than others and should be grouped with only ‘bright’ children. He realised that as principal he had to set the rules but also provide the understanding, otherwise people would work against his direction and vision. The vision was important, but no use without the support to achieve it and the respect for other points of view. The vision with respect and support gave people confidence to change.

Growing in the job
Ken used as a touchstone the difference between power and authority. Key to his growth as a principal was the understanding that, in the role, he was always going to win any argument. He had the final say. Strategically he did not need to override, bully or dismiss concerns. He had seen from experience, as well as study, that people who are treated dismissively or backed into corners by an authority figure work against and undermine that authority. People need to feel supported. He tried to understand other points of view, to bring people around and help them understand. He spent his first few years learning that the principal’s job is about relationships, developing and maintaining them.

When he arrived at his second appointment, in Adelaide’s south, with 1700 students and suspension rates of 10-15 students a week, from the relatively small school in the Iron Triangle, he thought, “My God, I can’t do this job, it’s too big!”. In his experience, it is normal, in any principal’s job to have self-doubt and ask yourself: “Can I do this?”. You are known as the Principal of a particular school and it is daunting. You do, however, have skills and experiences to draw on and you gain confidence and grow into the job.

Excitement!
Managing major change was the thing he found most exciting as a principal. When, after 12 years as a principal in Australia, Ken took a job as principal of a private school of around 300 students in Indonesia, he walked in confident in what he needed to do to improve the school. He had a great time and achieved an enormous level of change, raising the quality of the teaching, he believes, from quite poor to really good. He knew how to go about creating change and how to get people working with him rather than against him.

The worst thing about being principal, in his view, was the feeling that you are working against the tide. He realised, after he left his southern school, that although he had made good and significant improvements for students, there were things he had not achieved, such as improvements in the Year 12 results. There is always more to do and you can always improve your performance.

In Indonesia he planned curriculum change over five years. It took five years to introduce the International Baccalaureate. He understood that he had to get the community teachers, assistants, parents and students committed to it, confident and competent to introduce it. There is no way the school could have done it when he first arrived. With preparation and planning it was highly successful and transformed the school.

Challenging times
When Ken went to his southern suburb school there were 159 staff, many of them highly committed to education and to achieving outcomes for disadvantaged students. Others, however, were less able to identify and address the needs of specific groups or individuals. Establishing and carrying the vision for a unified approach to improvement became a challenge. He needed to get the school community on the same page to work together for a single vision.

At the first staff meeting he explained his vision and then held a series of community meetings to clarify and renew a mission statement for the school. The school community finally unified around the motto ‘Education for All’. This really helped focus the school’s work. When the Chemistry teacher came in to argue for new stools with high backs for the lab, he did so on the basis that kids were being educationally disadvantaged by the old stools and won his argument. The suspension policy was changed so that a school leader who suspended a student, personally took the student home to explain the situation to the parent and negotiate a return program.

Education Department policy at the time decreed that practical classes for Home Economics, Craft, Science should not be greater than 20. This meant that Maths and English classes were around 34 students. After a year Ken decided this was not good enough. Students were not getting enough help in the core curriculum areas. He worked out the school could average class sizes to 24 across the board. He talked to the timetable team. They did a dummy run and it worked. He then explained to the staff that class sizes would be 24. There were arguments that ‘these kids’ needed the practical subjects because they ‘don’t like Maths and English’. The arguments were worked through and extra teaching assistants provided in the practical classes to improve the ratio of adults to students. Ken met with every faculty and then introduced it. The change was instant. Immediately the withdrawal rooms had fewer students removed from class.

This, he believes, was the most successful change he made, and the one with the greatest impact on teaching and learning.

At the same school a group of students went on strike. There was no warning. One recess time about 200 students didn’t go back to class but sat on the oval. It appeared to be an issue of student voice. After a bit they left the school and walked into the local town centre. Ken followed them on foot partly because he needed time to think. When the strikers got through the shopping centre and moved to the local park without incident, he returned to school and got the deputies together. They decided that as long as the strikers weren’t causing problems in the community they would let the strike run its course. They also believed that there were some staff members indirectly associated with the action. They sent some empathetic teachers to make sure the strikers were OK with a reminder of responsibilities and duty of care.

At lunchtime, Ken went to where the strikers were gathered. By then there were reporters and a media helicopter overhead. Reporters spoke to the students and to Ken. After that the students dissipated. Many of them went back to school. The Education Department CEO rang Ken. The Department came behind him and was very supportive. The next morning the admin team made it clear that any students who didn’t return to class would be suspended. About 30 didn’t return and were suspended. Eventually all returned. Ken and his team talked to the student organisers about the impact on the school, as well as their issues.

On another occasion a disaffected parent went to This Day Tonight with a (completely false) claim of “Aboriginal gangs” at the school. At 11am in the morning a parent rang to ask about it because of a promo she had heard for the program. Ken notified the Chair of the School Council, who rang every Council member, all of whom rang the television channel to correct the story. The Council members rang others and the Channel was inundated with parents supporting the school. In the end the story was reduced to one minute on air and the community support spoke volumes for the school. Ken recalls this as an amazing experience. Even so, he didn’t sleep well on Sunday nights for about six years!

Support
Initially Ken did not find much support from principal colleagues. He had, he believes, to stand on his own two feet and get support from within. Ken needed someone outside the school that he trusted and could talk to, be open and honest with. He needed and got his District Superintendent’s support. In his experience, local principal networks were competitive and prone to jealousies and power plays. Deputy principals too, formed a supportive team. Much of his support came from home.

Advice and Comments
Ken is conscious that he is now looking back on his experience from a distance. Had he been asked while doing the job, he may have responded differently. From a distance, his advice would be:

      • make sure you have a vision;
  • make sure you use authority rather than power: respect everyone in the school; be strong about what you believe; be able to explain why and how; don’t back people into corners;
  • recognise and admit you are not always right - you won’t be, and you won’t always be successful; and
  • don’t hold a grudge; have an argument by all means but don’t prolong it and don’t hold a grudge. 


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