March Blog - Máire Ní Bhróithe
Another busy month! We have had the pleasure of addressing and meeting with a number of principals and deputies over the past few weeks. I returned last Friday from the beautiful kingdom of Ireland where NAPD Region 6 held their annual Meitheal –their gathering of school leaders. I listened to Anthony O Shaughnessy (www.raphacottage.ie) speak to all about the importance of us as school leaders setting boundaries, looking after ourselves , being present and taking up mindfulness as a daily practise . Just 5 minutes consistently every morning and night, he told us, is better than that a once a week 2 hour session. He reminded us that people will follow us if we have a vision and quoted Martin Luther King who said “I have a dream” and not “I have a plan”. He was followed by Alan Mongey Principal of Coláiste Baile an Chláir who also referred to Martin Luther King. Alan has introduced hour long classes successfully into his school but he cautioned us from jumping in too quickly into curriculum change – as leaders we need to know why there is a need for change . We need to dream! Once we have the WHY clear in our heads, we can then focus on how to implement change and what to do to make this happen. Alan gave us a very good rationale for the introduction of one hour classes at second level. He finished with a great quote from W. Edwards Deming: “The timid and the faint hearted, and the people that expect quick results, are doomed to disappointment “. It was an inspirational Meitheal. Well done to Donnacha O’ Treasaigh and all on his committee in NAPD region 6!
The Centre for School leadership is a partnership between the Department of Education and Skills, IPPN(Irish primary Principals network ) and NAPD( National Association of Principals and Deputies) .Our steering committee meets quarterly and in the spirit of true partnership we had this month’s meeting in the beautiful offices of IPPN in Glounthaune in Cork . Mary Nihill reported on our work in the area of training mentors, the progress made in coaching, the quality assurance work we are currently doing with the PDST in relation to the Misneach programme and the plans for the new aspiring leaders programme which we will launch in September 2017. This programme will be aimed at teachers and leaders in schools who wish to improve their own leadership capacity and who may also wish to become school principals. The content of the programme will be based on the draft standards and domains in leadership and management which are being currently finalised by the inspectorate. It will be a post graduate diploma at level 9 (QQI), delivered regionally and we expect our first graduates in 2019. We are currently preparing a tender for this and we will keep you updated over the coming months.
Our next big task is to improve our social media presence and to develop our website. We have a Twitter account and have 564 followers –we are looking for more followers so if you are not following us yet, stop reading this blog and follow @cslireland. Thank You! When we find inspiring articles about leadership we post them. Sometimes we just tweet pictures of ourselves at various events! Our website clearly needs to be developed and over the next few weeks we will spend some time looking at other websites and imagining the type of functionality we might need to create an inspiring website . We have dreams and plans! We hope to introduce guest bloggers to this section of the new website. We know that there are many school leaders out there who have spent considerable time researching various aspects of leadership .We will look to them to share their insights with us in the form of a blog. I am conscious also that I write this blog from the perspective of a post primary leader. We hope to find a few bloggers out there from the primary sector who will share their research findings with us all. We know we have some very creative people among our cohort of CSL mentors and we will be approaching them this month.
Over the past few months we have been building relationships with other bodies involved in education. We have met with the teaching council, are working very closely with NIPT and PDST on our mentoring programme and this month we forged links with our friends in the JCT (junior cycle leadership team) on a cold and wet day in Monaghan Education Centre. We have much in common with this team – we wish to see our students benefit from new and different types of learning at junior cycle. Like the JCT we too want to support principals through our mentoring programmes to become the best leaders of learning that they can possibly be. “Tús maith leath na hoibre “
I started this blog this month with a reference to Anthony O’ Shaughnessy’s presentation to NAPD and how he had encouraged all leaders to learn to breathe mindfully. He ended his presentation to us with his favourite poem by Mary Oliver (Canadian Poet) called The Snow Geese. Her poem finishes with the following beautiful lines:
“The geese flew on, I have never seen them again. Maybe I will, someday, somewhere. Maybe I won't. It doesn't matter. What matters is that, when I saw them, I saw them as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.”
Enjoy March all!
