February Blog - Máire Ní Bhróithe

I am very new to blogging and have just discovered my first error – this is actually called the February blog but it tells the story of the past month – January 2016! My other New Years’ resolutions have gone a little bit by the wayside but my determination to write a monthly blog has not gone away.

January has come and gone and has been a busy but really exciting month for us. We have spent much of it in Athlone (with the floods) and have made good friends with Frank and his team in Athlone Education Centre. Thank you for looking after us!

Preparing for our first national event on January 12th /13th took up most of our days in the New Year. 135 established post primary and primary principals attended our mentor training session in the Sheraton Hotel in Athlone. It was an excellent venue and the views from the 10th floor of a flooded Athlone were spectacular. This was the first of two training sessions we are offering. We spent some time discussing mentoring (its origins and best practise in mentoring around the world) with the principals and then spent more time practising the skills of listening, questioning and giving feedback to mentees. It was these practical sessions that the participants liked the most and they are looking for more practice in this area when they return to us next month. It was not all hard work, there was some laughter and fun as the group began to bond together. Next month we will present to our mentors (with the help of Anthony Kilcoyne and his PDST leadership team) how this mentoring programme will fit into and complement the new Misneach programme for all newly appointed principals in 2016.

Ultimately we expect to have approximately 70 post primary principals trained as mentors and I can only say that that the new principals of 2016 will benefit enormously from this. Many people commented that they would have liked this programme to have been around when they started in their role as principal and one person summed it up like this “ I would have loved that critical friend to have helped me develop and progress as a principal in my first year” . We are certain now that we will have enough post primary mentors to work with all the newly appointed principals. At primary level, we are preparing an extra training session and we would hope to have almost 150 trained mentors. They will mentor the new principals in the greater Leinster area in 2016 and we expect over the next two years to expand this service to the whole country. We are amazed at the generosity of the established principals who are so willing to give up their time to help their future colleagues. While the mentor training was a highlight for us this month, we attended some exciting events and met some new people who are supporting us in our journey.

Last week we attended the IPPN conference. As my own background is in post primary schooling where there are only 720 schools, I was simply amazed at the vast numbers of principals (over 1,100) attending this event in City West. IPPN are very much to the fore in promoting health and wellbeing in our schools. We attended an excellent symposium also organised by IPPN last November where they had Conor Cusack among others, address us on mental wellbeing. Arising from that event in November a forum on wellbeing has been established and various groups have come together with the Ombudsman for Children to discuss how best to embed a culture of emotional wellbeing across all school communities They hope to develop an Action Plan for Emotional Wellbeing in Schools, at both primary and post primary level.

In last week’s conference IPPN continued to promote health and wellbeing and the highlight of the event for me was the speech from psychologist Shane Martin (www.moodwatchers.com ) who presented us with 6 tips to help us all become more resilient. I particularly liked the 5th tip “Unlearn Helplessness” as it contains a message for all of us school leaders. We celebrate success in schools and we tend look down on “failure”. Some students give up trying when they fail and they don't build the resilience they need. This helplessness is carried with them throughout their lives. However there are many schools out there promoting the ‘Growth Mindset’ which encourages students to thrive on challenge and sees failure as a springboard for growth and an opportunity to stretch their abilities ( See Carol Dweck’s excellent book ‘Mindset : The new Psychology of Success’ ‘) . Such a mindset, will improve the resilience of our students and ultimately improve their overall wellbeing.

Well done to IPPN on an excellent conference. Go mbeirimid beo ag an am seo arís! Our diaries were very full in January and we missed some events that we would like to have attended. One such one, was the launch of ‘Being LGBT in School ‘which took place last week in Dublin. A resource pack has been developed to help prevent homophobic and transphobic bullying and to support LGBT students. Schools can be difficult places for these students and we are particularly pleased to see this new resource. In CSL, we will support school leaders to support LGBT students and thus help make their experiences in our schools a good one.

The three of us continue to attend our coaching course and are delighted that we have undertaken this diploma. It has given us a greater understanding of coaching and we can clearly see how it would benefit school leaders. I regret that I did not do a course such as this many years ago as it would have been very advantageous to me in my role as school principal. Month on month, our own coaching skills are developing, we are reading new books, being introduced to new ideas and meeting people from outside the world of education. This course will help us to grow both personally and professionally. The diary is filling up for February. We are planning for our next training sessions for March , working in close contact with PDST on Misneach 2016 and we continue to work with the Office of Government Procurement on writing tenders for a new aspiring leaders programme (to commence in 2017) and tenders for a coaching service to support school leaders who are experiencing challenges in their schools.

As February dawns we look forward to spring, to the longer days and to meeting more new and interesting people. Our favourite leadership quote this month is from Napoleon Bonaparte:

“A leader is a dealer in hope”

CSL is funded by the Teacher Education Section (TES) of the Department of Education (DE)
This service is managed by Clare Education Centre.