“A leader is a dealer in hope”
“A leader is a dealer in hope”
We in CSL have often used the above quotation attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte when working with school leaders. However, it was never more appropriate than it is in the current Covid 19 pandemic. When we as a CSL team met in March, we had no idea that our days would change from face to face meetings with leaders at every level to being at home and scheduling Zoom and Teams meetings on a daily basis. The glorious April weather for me, saw the return of a very inquisitive robin to my patio. He seemed surprised to see me- an intrusion into his territory as I worked away on my laptop and phone. He was busy helping his partner to renovate their nest in preparation for their new family this year. As my colleagues and I planned as to how we were going to support school leaders in this changed environment, I envied my avian companion and his clear focus on what was for him a relatively unchanged environment. But then I remembered Napoleon’s quote, and I realise that as school leaders we have always been called to lead in uncertainty and to be dealers in hope. I am lucky to be leading a team of school leaders who are working tirelessly to scaffold the new learning environment that school leaders are challenged to lead. We are doing this in a number of ways – our daily twitter messages of hope, our advice to our mentors as they stay in contact with newly appointed principals, our linkages with the providers of coaching support for school leaders as well as keeping in touch with our third level colleagues who continue to provide high quality learning for those aspiring to leadership roles in schools and of course our ongoing collaboration with support services and with the two professional associations IPPN and NAPD. You might like to explore these areas of our work here on our website.
And so, to the blog- we have invited school leaders at every stage on the continuum to write a short blog on how they are leading (but perhaps leading differently) during this time. We hope that you will enjoy reading these blogs and that perhaps you might choose to write a short blog yourself to tell us your story. Feel free to email your blog to office@cslireland.ie
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Mary Nihill
CSL National Director
