\u201cBeing a principal is like cooking Christmas dinner. Every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was the first of many forewarnings a fellow principal shared with me when I started in this role in an Irish<\/a> secondary school<\/a>.<\/p>\n Over time, I have learned through experience how accurate the description is of the everyday role of a principal.<\/p>\n Just like at Christmas time, the principal can expect squabbling siblings (teachers) who feel that Santa (the principal) hasn\u2019t lavished them with enough gifts, nor truly listened to their polite requests clearly outlined on their well-crafted Santa letter. Principals can also expect unexpected guests (incidental Department of Education inspectors) throughout the season who arrive unannounced to dinner and, because of whom, the entire Christmas dinner has to be ditched.<\/p>\n But it is the little hardworking elves who remind this particular Santa why I am in the post to begin with.<\/p>\n Every day is the big day in \u201cbig school\u201d as a principal. It is a multilayered role. In any one day, the principal dons a variety of guises \u2013 parish priest, counsellor, Irish mammy, plumber, PR consultant, financial adviser, doctor.<\/p>\n One principal colleague has a spare white shirt in his office as, several times, he has stained his shirt with the blood of students arising from sporting and other injuries. On one occasion, he accidentally arrived to a parent-teacher meeting smeared in blood. That principal wavered between feeling like a disorientated butcher and Shakespeare\u2019s tragic hero Macbeth who realises too late: \u201cI am in blood, stepp\u2019d in so far that … returning were as tedious as go o\u2019er.\u201d <\/p>\n So how have principals prepared for this role in an increasingly \u201cvuca\u201d world \u2013 one characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity?<\/p>\n Some principals have done a leadership course before taking up the role. Some have not. This is not a compulsory prerequisite and, in my view, the chasm between the unpredictability of the role and the training is too great to render it worthwhile. It is the equivalent of studying how to be a firefighter in the cold constraints of a classroom, while never actually experiencing the heat of fire itself. And there is no training that could equip you for this role, in the same way that no parenting course prepares you for becoming a parent.<\/p>\n And both will involve cleaning up a daily near nausea-inducing mess distinctly not of your making.<\/p>\n I have, however, heard of one written exam on a leadership course for principals that I can see the value in. This exam started in the predictable manner of most fair exams; questions posed arose from the course these aspiring leaders had covered and the exam\u2019s duration was as previously agreed. However, during the exam it all began to unravel as students were suddenly informed of changes to the test. The prospective principals were also handed additional exam questions to complete during the original time frame. The then student, and now principal, who shared this with me had initially been refused a place on the Professional Master of Education\/teacher training course. But he passed this principal\u2019s exam and has proven adept at cooking daily Christmas dinners from scratch ever since.<\/p>\n So how do principals cope with the daily onslaught or, as Hamlet put it \u201cthe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, a sea of troubles\u201d we choose sometimes to \u201ctake arms against\u201d or not?<\/p>\n I have attended group counselling for principals to bolster my personal armour. This was of little help. But it did give me a broader perspective on the reality of being a principal, each of us working in isolation and feverishly managing the same magnitude and multitude of problems.<\/p>\n The group counselling enabled me to see that, outside the confines of my office and school, every principal is a cowboy or girl on a daily virtual Buckaroo horse at the cusp of bucking and bolting if one last weight is gingerly added to their load.<\/p>\n And it made me laugh occasionally \u2013 both out of release and because, as Samuel Beckett rightly identified, \u201cnothing is funnier than unhappiness\u201d.<\/p>\n These sessions were what I imagine AA meetings might look and feel like.<\/p>\n We met in a high ceiling Georgian hotel room in Dublin on stifling summer afternoons and sat in a circle. Each week, one principal was invited to share with the group a problem and each of the principal listeners were allowed to ask clarifying questions, but could not (as is their trained instinct), offer advice nor try to solve the problem. <\/p>\n One smiling, grey-haired principal shared with us during a session that she had a photo of a donkey on her table. \u201cWhy?\u201d we wondered, both amused and bewildered. This was installed to remind herself to avoid \u201cpulling the donkey\u201d because some staff members are so wayward, they are like that trolley in the supermarket with a broken wheel, pulling you in the opposite direction of progress, making inching forward painful.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t pull the donkey!\u201d she beamed.<\/p>\n This opened up a wider discussion on subtle signifiers and symbols in our offices reminding us to stay on course. <\/p>\n Another principal has on his desk an array of prickly cacti. \u201cDo you like cacti?\u201d a participant asked naively. \u201cNo. I don\u2019t,\u201d he replied with an emerging smile. \u201cBut it reminds me that even prickly people can have a beautiful flower.\u201d<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t continue doing the group counselling sessions. But I ceased to continue \u201cpulling the donkey\u201d onward and uphill.<\/p>\n In Michelle Obama\u2019s book Becoming, she expresses that a commonly asked question of adults to children is what they want to be. She concludes this is a useless question.<\/p>\n In the context of \u201cbecoming\u201d a principal, I think the same logic applies. Obama says: \u201cI think it\u2019s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child \u2013 what do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that\u2019s the end.\u201d<\/p>\n The reality of being a principal is that there is no point of fully becoming, no matter how many years you remain in the role.<\/p>\n In the meantime, the best we can do, is in continuing to serve Christmas dinner with a grinch-like grin.<\/p>\n An anonymous principal on the trials, tribulations, exhilarations and frustrations of school life in Ireland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cBeing a principal is like cooking Christmas dinner. 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