January Blog - Máire Ní Bhróithe
As I sit here on January 1st 2016 I am beginning to tackle the first of my New Year’s resolutions! I intend to write a blog on a monthly basis about my job in the newly established Centre for School Leadership(CSL). I am particularly nervous about this - this is the first time I have ever written a blog and I worry that I will have little to say and that this will be my first and only blog. It might have been easier to tackle my other New Year's resolutions (to lose a stone, to declutter the home and to learn about mindfulness ) but as this is a new venture for me it is the first priority!
CSL was established on September 1st 2015 and it aims to support all leaders within our schools. Initially the centre will aim to support Principals through coaching and mentoring but as we develop as an organisation we hope to support teachers in all leadership roles in Irish schools.
Late last May I learned that I had got the position of deputy director in charge of post primary school leadership. I was to be joined by my fellow deputy Anna Mai Rooney in charge of primary leadership and our national director Mary Nihill. We met over the summer and immediately bonded. We are all school principals and have also spent many years teaching in classrooms. We were thrilled to have been appointed but also knew that we would miss the daily life of schools and all the interactions with students and staff. Nowadays when we actually get to sit down and discuss ideas over lunch for 45 minutes without interruption we think of the three women who replaced us in our schools and appreciate that they might not have this opportunity very often! Both Mary and I come from the post primary sector and we are very conscious that Anna Mai is currently the only person on our team representing the very large primary sector in this country. The cross sectoral approach to leadership however is very interesting and we have learned much from Anna Mai over the past three months. In September we had the task of initiating the new Centre for School leadership in Ireland. The first 115 days have been exciting for us! We have learned lots and at times have worked outside our comfort zones. We have learned much about procurement and can now speak eloquently about the OGP preparing SRFT forms etc. *. All three of us have embarked on a coaching course with a view to gaining a greater understanding of how coaching can have a positive impact on our school leaders. Ultimately we would very much like to see a culture of coaching develop in our Irish schools. We are currently preparing a mentoring training programme for school principals which we will be presenting in January. We have locked ourselves way from the world for a number of day and have read up on successful mentoring systems operating around the globe in all sectors of life. It is important to us that this training programme is successful because from September 2016 every new post primary principal in Ireland will have a mentor. At primary level there are so many schools that we hope that every new primary principal in the greater Leinster area will have a mentor. We, of course, are thinking beyond September 2016 and are wondering what impact this will have on our new principals of 16/17 and we are wondering how we will measure if the mentoring has made a difference.
We have met many new people on our travels around the country and are delighted to have so many links with other organisations. While we are only a group of three people we do have great support from Pat and his team in Clare Education Centre and our friends in the teacher education section in the Department of Education. Everyone has been so helpful to us and we really enjoyed the consultative meetings that we had in late October. One of the most interesting trips for us was our visit to Scotland to see SCEL (Scottish College of Educational Leadership) in November. Gillian Hamilton and her team gave us a truly warm Scottish welcome and opened us up to new ideas and possibilities. SCEL was established a year before us and they have achieved so much within one short year. They really focus on developing teacher leaders throughout the system and all CPD in Scotland is engaged in through the leadership lens. There are many differences between them and ourselves but there are some wonderful similarities. We hope to welcome Gillian and her team to Ireland in 2016 and know that that first meeting in November in that wet and windy Glasgow was the beginning of a new wonderful relationship between ourselves and our Scottish counterparts. Indeed, I actually got the idea of writing this blog from Gillian who has her own one (https://scelscotland.wordpress.com/). We have also looked at the work of similar organisations in Ontario, Queensland, New Zealand and England and hope to develop links with them over the coming months.
The past three months have been a fascinating experience. We have learned much and have still much to learn and develop. We have many ideas for the future development of CSL and I hope to share those ideas in this blog over the coming months. We are developing our vision for CSL (with our partners) and the process of developing that vision that is very important to us. We will share that vision with you through our website ( www.cslireland.ie) and through our Twitter feed @cslireland.ie
We have developed an excellent relationship between the three of us and have spent a lot of time together all over the country. As with any new job we are getting used to the endless travel, the nights away from home and meals in education centres and hotels and the many meetings in Dublin, Ennis and Athlone. We returned to our respective schools to join in the Christmas festivities on December 22nd and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. We really look forward to 2016 and that possibilities that it offers us. We will work hard and we hope to have fun while doing this!
So happy New Year to you all- I am off to eat some salads, to clean up my untidy office and to spend some time reading my book on mindfulness!
