This summer was my first experience of learning at the PTC (Principals’ Training Centre), looking at assessment leadership in the international school.  The PTC had been recommended to me by a number of colleagues, and the experience did not disappoint – though it did challenge me in lots of ways!  Here are some initial takeaways from this week of learning from the final day:

The problem of teacher ambition

If you’ve read any previous post of mine – or witnessed me attempting to navigate any kind of social interaction – it will likely come as no surprise that the fact of being in a room full of school principals, assistant principals, and aspiring principals.  I am none of these things, as my name badge helpfully indicated, and so for the first 24 hours the familiar imposter syndrome had an absolute field day.  Nothing new or interesting there, and it was promptly stopped in its tracks with a sharp scolding from a friend and colleague.  But what I noticed following sense was the freeing sense of being in a room where nobody apologised for their ambition, and it occurred to me that these are perhaps spaces which teachers don’t often find themselves in.  I have certainly been in schools where teachers’ ambition has been treated with suspicion and cynicism – even implied as being at odds with the appropriate values and priorities of a teacher.  This necessary martyrdom of the teacher’s own goals and growth serves no one, and certainly doesn’t help the learning of the students in our care.  Why is it that we treat ambitious teachers with such suspicion?  I don’t think we would suspect of doctor aiming for a consultant position of not really caring for her patients; would our assumption about any other professional seeking a strategic or supervisory position be that they were overly egotistical, or self-serving?  I’m not sure it would be.  Teacher ambition feels like a unique problem.  I’m don’t think I want to be a school principal, but you better believe there is fire in my belly: I want to know more, do more, be better and better and better.  Ambition is the only word I have to describe this feeling, but it’s an uncomfortable one, and one I have heard used as a slight: “oh god, he’s so ambitious.”  So my first takeaway from my classmates at the PTC was to challenge this attitude, and give myself a sharp scolding: if ambition is a dirty word for teachers in your school, you need to pack that in.

Good leaders are made, not born

Some humbling moments of reflection for me here.  This course has helped me to see myself as someone with ideas and some academic understanding, but so much (SO MUCH) to learn about leadership behaviours and models. I have, in the not-so-distant past been impatient with processes and pace of change; this course has radically changed that for me.  I have so much to learn about managing change and relationships, and I’m taking away a new appreciation for the leaders I work with.

This course also made me re-examine a previous assumption that some of us just have these mysterious innate leadership qualities, and others (hi there) do not.  The story I’ve often told myself is that I’m not [X] enough for that role, and, having spent a week with a room full of inspiring leaders, reflecting and working on their practice, that now feels like an excuse.  The people in this room have been so open and generous with their experiences, their questions and their challenges, that it feels churlish now to dismiss all that hard work of learning and getting better.  As always, the fact that you can learn these things and shape your own path is both a bit intimidating, and utterly liberating.  It makes me think that, whilst I know myself well as a teacher, I really don’t know myself as a ‘leader’ yet at all.  And that’s an exciting thing 🙂