Kim Hebenstreit's Story

The path to principal

Kim had been teaching for eight years before he received his first promotion. During that period there was plenty of staff movement that provided him with a number of opportunities to serve in acting positions. This enabled him to try out how he felt about leadership. His transition to the principalship took a little longer than some of his peers because of personal circumstances that meant he was unable to take up country appointments, which had accelerated promotion for others. He had several roles as an adviser and applied for open positions as a senior, assistant principal, deputy and eventually principal.

One advisory role that helped shape his beliefs about education was with the Participation and Equity Program. The social justice initiatives that this program promoted left an abiding vision for how schools could play a part in building a better society. He had a very fortunate childhood with a strong state school education and migrant parents who were factory workers with a strong work ethic and who greatly valued education.

Experience as an advisor became a prime motivation for him to want to run a school and do something in this space. He saw the opportunity and the challenge to build a team that would work together to do something special for kids. Having a young family and a mortgage, the extra income was of course another motivator for Kim to tackle the role of principal.

Growing in the job

Kim started his teaching career in a newly built school with a specially selected principal who was able to choose many of his staff other than the 18 newly appointed teachers. There was a high level of excitement within the staff with the camaraderie of a large number of new recruits to teaching and experienced teachers providing excellent role models for them. They guided his growth and provided advice and inspiration. This gave Kim a really good understanding of what quality teaching looked like and set the scene for his own professional growth but also ultimately the standards and skills to which he wanted his staff to aspire.

His first leadership appointment was the antithesis of these earlier experiences but gave him a view of what needed to change to bring about improvement. The benchmark from this first appointment enabled him to see what was done better by principals he subsequently worked with and what he would want to do differently.

Excitement

The greatest thrill for Kim was to demonstrably show that the school had changed and he was able to leave it in a better place than when he arrived. One of the first things he did as a principal with the leadership team was to work with the staff to articulate the graduate qualities they wanted to achieve with their students. These became the sense of purpose for the whole staff as they worked through it collaboratively. This was then translated into what it meant for priorities, expenditure, staffing and so on. 

At the end of his first principal year a number of leadership positions became vacant. A number of well-liked staff were considered for those vacancies from the point of view of what they had done over the previous five years in relation to the sense of purpose. It was evident that some of these had contributed little leadership in this area and had not made a noticeable difference. So they examined the skill set required of leaders who could come in to the school and lead change. This set the trend of making some changes to target what the school wanted to achieve by building a team that would lift the school to the next level of performance.

The school looked for opportunities to promote successes publicly through the local press, working with parents, and opportunities for competitions such as training awards, public education awards and the like. These successes gave the staff confidence that they were working in a direction that was positive and were judged highly by external bodies.

Greatest achievement

Kim stepped into a school that was in many ways disjointed in the way it operated; it had a vocational focus, an academic stream and a new arrivals program for adults. Initially there were about 80 students from a refugee background. Over the last five years of Kim’s principalship this grew dramatically to almost 600 students making that component almost as large as the rest of the school. It coloured the fabric of the school in terms of language, students’ interests and much more.

Kim’s greatest achievement was enabling the school to celebrate that diversity. Everyone played a role in welcoming refugees and the school became the first United Nations School for Global Peace in South Australia. Every staff member could articulate the kind of community in which they wanted to live and how the school would serve that community. The school wanted a community that was characterised by peace, positive relationships and an understanding of sustainability not just of environmental resources but also from a very human point of view. The staff and students had to work together to respect and celebrate difference and involve the great wave of new people coming to our country helping them understand our political and legal systems and join with us to protect the freedoms that we sometimes (but should never) take for granted. The school very much became a village in itself where people could come not only to learn English but also to get settlement advice that included support with Australia’s health and welfare systems. That village characteristic was the greatest achievement and something that has endured.

Challenging times

Generally the most difficult times were connected with managing significant underperformance of a very small number of staff. In a large staff there are at times individuals who are not team players and who can drag others down, but more importantly they can make the lives of students very unpleasant and consequently negatively impact on student learning. In one example a staff member could convey the subject content relatively effectively but treated students dismissively and consequently inhibited their capacity to learn. This person did not characterise the qualities of an effective teacher but it took nine years to convince them that they were unsuited to teaching. Regardless of the efforts and opportunities provided to this person, they didn’t have the requisite skills to be respectful, engaging of students and enabling them to become successful learners.

The other significant challenge was when the government moved to cease funding for any education in state schools for adult students. This threatened the very existence of the school but, more importantly, it threatened the well being of a large number of the students that the staff felt deeply about. The motivation of the government was to reduce education funding with little or no regard to the implications for other government agencies such as housing, health, community support and the long term well-being of the students. By working with colleagues in similar schools an outcome was achieved that all parties could live with.

Support

Kim’s support came from his leadership teams, his family and critically from the small network of

colleagues who provided enormous support. Having greater experience than Kim, these colleagues were aware of issues with which Kim was grappling.

Advice

• Establish a network. 
• Acknowledge that what you know is closer to nothing than it is to everything!
• Work with your staff to develop a united common purpose that is agreed and understood by all and against which strategic decisions can be made.
• Have a comfortable pair of shoes! Visit classrooms, walk around the school, talk with people and show interest in what the staff and students are doing. In short be highly visible.