Gaining momentum in women’s educational leadership

Reverend Punam Bent This professional learning opportunity has been made possible through the generous support of former Chair of College Council, Ms Kate Mason. The Kate Mason Professional Learning grant is awarded annually and was awarded to Reverend Punam Bent in 2020. The grant allows Pymble staff to participate in professional learning to benefit students, colleagues and to enrich their own professional growth.

Through the Global Mentoring Leadership Program with Bright Field Consulting, the Alliance of Girls’ Schools Australasia and the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools (USA).

In 2020, I applied for the Kate Mason Professional Learning Grant which is open to all Academic staff at Pymble Ladies’ College. The grant would enable me to undertake a significant professional learning opportunity, therefore, amplifying my learning in the area of School Chaplaincy and using this platform to role-model and help shape the future aspects of global citizenship for girls. Following a successful application, the initial plan to attend a leadership conference called ‘Making Change’ at Harvard Divinity School was thwarted due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a new direction was sought.

In 2021, an opportunity arose for the Global Mentoring Leadership Program. This was perfect timing – even in a pandemic year – as the focus was on the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools (NCGS) guiding principles to ‘inspire the next generation to lead with courage, competence, and empathy’ (Global Forum on Girls’ Education III, 2021).

The Global Mentoring Program is an invitation to delve deeper into one’s own sense of self-understanding and development. The mentoring program is three dimensional (Wigston and Wigston, 2021):

1. One to One Mentoring 2. Insights Discovery Profiling and Feedback

3. A Community Project

The first step is completing the Insights Discovery psychometric questionnaire, followed by four confidential meetings with a mentor. There is also a community project where one is partnered with another mentee to work on a project relating to globally applicable themes in girls’ education. The final opportunity will be in-person or virtual attendance of the Global Forum on Girls’ Education III to be hosted in Boston, Massachusetts, United States in 2022.

The Global Forum in 2022 will focus on nine themes:

1. Girls as Global Citizens

2. Girls as Entrepreneurs and Innovators 3. Girls as Social Activists

4. Girls as Political Leaders

5. Girls as Environmental Champions 6. Girls as Scientists

7. Girls as Inclusive Allies

8. Girls as Happy, Healthy Individuals 9. Girls’ Schools as Educational Leaders

The project should align with one of the Global Forum themes and offer examples, information gathered from research and practical tools that may be applied to educational contexts for girls. The goal is to empower girls to become people of influence and leaders in a constantly changing world.

THE INSIGHTS DISCOVERY PROFILE

The Insights Discovery Personal Profile is a doorway into one’s strengths and weaknesses to assist individuals as they develop future strategies for interaction. It is a psychometric tool based on Jungian psychology and it uses a four-colour model to highlight key personality preferences and associated behaviours. My profile was no surprise as ‘Helper Inspirer’ and it was a challenge to address key strengths and weaknesses with an attitude towards traction and mobility. In the section on personal notes on key strengths and weaknesses, a quote from Jung states, ‘wisdom accepts that all things have two sides’ (Insights Discovery Profile, 2021).

The Insights Discovery Wheel consists of a Conscious Position, which is the Helping Inspirer (Accommodating) and a Less Conscious Position, which is the Helping Inspirer (Focused). The colour energies on a bad/good day further assist in reflecting on aspects of the profile.

One of the most valued aspects of this profile report has been a view into possible blind spots and recognising who our Opposite Insights type could be. Mine is the Observer, which is Jung’s ‘Introverted Thinking Type.’ The Insights Discovery profile offers suggestions for development instead of ‘direct measures of skill, intelligence, education or training.’

The profiles indicate an individualised colour mix of four colour energies: Cool Blue, Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow and Earth Green. The four-colour model approach identifies what personality preferences and associated behaviours are, therefore, offering a way forward in working more effectively with others (Insights Discovery Profile, 2021). For example, my Insight Colour energies as per the report on a bad/good day were divided into the four colour energies:

I am thankful for the opportunity given to use this grant to amplify my professional learning in girls’ education and wellbeing at a global level.

The Insights Colour Energies on a bad day

Stuffy Indecisive Suspicious Cold Reserved

Docile Bland Plodding Reliant Stubborn Aggressive Controlling Driving Overbearing Intolerant

Excitable Frantic Indiscreet Flamboyant Hasty

Cautious Precise Deliberate Questioning Formal

Caring Encouraging Sharing Patient Relaxed Competitive Demanding Determined Strong-willed Purposeful

Sociable Dynamic Demonstrative Enthusiastic Persuasive

The Insights Colour Energies on a good day

THE MENTORING EXPERIENCE

This program empowers the mentee to take a step towards self-awareness, self-worth and self-knowledge leading to personal and professional growth (Wigston and Wigston, 2021). “Our lived lives might become a protracted mourning for, or an endless tantrum about, the lives we were unable to live. But the exemptions we suffer, whether forced or chosen, make us who we are,” wrote psychoanalyst Adam Phillips in his magnificent manifesto for missing out (Popova, 2021).

A student once asked if working in a school was my vocation and professional calling. Having started rather young at the age of 20 in the 1980s with nil lens into a global perspective, education was not exactly where religious practice led me. The niche I was seeking came in 2003 through a school chaplaincy role in Sydney, Australia. The reason I was attracted to the Bright Field Global Mentoring Leadership Program was the mentoring experience tagged with the community project and possibilities for presenting at a global forum which would amplify my own learning and practice relating to all aspects of girls’ education.

#10%BRAVER

#10%Braver is a slogan I echo now with the women who kickstarted the 21st century global educational movement, seeking to unite women from diverse backgrounds in education. It is a safe online space and encourages women educators to be 10%Braver. This is also the title of the book edited by Vivienne Porritt and Keziah Featherstone (2019). The book features evidence-based articles offering practical and applicable solutions to a future for women in education.

If I were to write my own chapter in a book such as this, it would be about the challenges facing girls’ schools seeking inclusiveness and diversity. I would write about encouraging girls to find strength in their own voice, giving visibility to their story and contributing to solving challenges, especially in a pandemic world. I would write on gender bias in the Church and educational sector, as well as encourage safe and thoughtful conversations with young people, especially girls, in my school context. One of the chapters in Being 10% Braver (2019), entitled ‘Concrete Ceilings and Kinked Hosepipes’, speaks of the ‘concrete ceiling’ mentality in education. In 2015, the United Kingdom National Union of Teachers challenged teaching staff to reflect the communities they work in. The union was concerned that “the only black role models were administrative staff, cleaners, kitchen or security staff’ and were worried that this would ‘impact negatively on the achievement of black children as they do not see representations that can act as role models for them ….at a higher level” (Garner, 2015). The writer of this chapter, Sameena Choudhary, argues that the barrier is stronger and far harder to break, and the ceiling for women of colour/migrant ethnic backgrounds is not made of glass, but concrete. The metaphor of ‘concrete ceiling’ extends to require a drill to shatter the concrete which can more often than not be what she describes as an “arduous and almost impossible task” (Featherstone and Porritt, 2019, p.104).

I also encourage girls from minority ethnic backgrounds to find their voices and share their story of courage, culture and empowerment as per the Global Forum III themes mentioned above, to benefit all girls sharing in partnership with others in a world holding space for them. This would challenge the concrete ceiling of which Choudhary is speaking and create a generation of girls evolving into womanhood who are well equipped with constructive ways of cracking this metaphor of the concrete ceiling through empowerment and courageous expression of who they are as global citizens.

Reverend Punam Bent’s mentor in the Brightfield program, Bishop Martin Seeley

A PERSONAL NOTE

As the mentoring and leadership journey began, I was able to reflect deeply on my own growing-up experiences as a young girl in a gender-biased world and how these paradigms have yet to be shifted in our real time. The mentoring with Bishop Martin Seeley, with whom I have been fortunate to have been paired, has been a deep well of experiential learning drawing on self-reflection and awareness and applying to my current role in leadership with girls. On reading Being 10% Braver, a suggestion is made to utilise the support of a ‘significant person’ who mentors and acts as a coach, as coaching and mentoring leads to empowerment and encouragement (Featherstone and Porritt, 2019, p.112). The experience of being mentored by Bishop Seeley has allowed discussion of being a person of influence and authenticity for the communities we work and live in, and aiming to find these places through a deeper awareness of self and others.

This space is the platform of life experience, self-knowledge, self-awareness and deep reflection which harnesses a positive energy and role-modelling of a healthy work practice and resilience, especially when working with girls in education.

The mentoring process empowers women and others to look at opportunity and to engage with steps towards being heard. This leads to taking initiative towards storytelling and sharing which further empowers others. The Global Mentoring Program and its timely presence has meant shapeshifting for me personally and taking a serious look at girls’ learning in a gender-biased world. The themes of seeking to find voice, gaining a wider perspective to life, and venturing out into the unknown to find oneself are core in the program.

In the words of Milan Kundera: “Great storytelling, then, deals in the illumination of complexity — sometimes surprising, sometimes disquieting, always enlarging our understanding and self-understanding as we come to see the opaque parts of ourselves from a new angle, in a new light” (quoted in Popova, 2021).

The Global Mentoring Program with Bright Field Consulting leads one to believe that bravery, which is also known as courage, has its own trajectory and, to be heard, one must intentionally venture into the unfamiliar, taking the risks and facing the obstacles. In my case, I am looking forward to influencing girls with a global wisdom which comes from women of my generation.

To quote from an interview with Susan Ferrier in Ian and Hilary Wigston’s book The Magic in The Space Between, (2018, p.70).

“... women bring people together in a way different from men. My generation of women, compared to my generation of men, we’re more naturally inclusive, so we can bring people together in a way which looks for a collaborative inclusive outcome”.

References

Featherstone, K., & Porritt, V. (2019). Being 10% Braver (1st ed.). London: Sage Publications. Global Forum on Girls’ Education III. NCGS. (2021). Retrieved 27 September 2021, from https://www.ncgs.org/professionaldevelopment/global-forum-on-girlseducation-iii/.

Global Forum III Themes. NCGS. (2021). Retrieved 5 October 2021, from https://www. ncgs.org/professional-development/globalforum-on-girls-education-iii/global-forum-iiithemes/.

Garner, R. (2015). Headteachers urged to recruit more black and ethnic minority teachers. The Independent, 5 April 2015. Retrieved 10 October 2021, from https:// www.independent.co.uk/news/education/ education-news/headteachers-urgedrecruit-more-black-and-ethnic-minorityteachers-10157044.html

Insights Discovery Personal Profile. (2021). Insights Discovery Personal Profile Popova, M. (2021). The unbearable lightness of being opaque to ourselves: Milan Kundera on writing and the key to great storytelling. Brain Pickings. Retrieved 16 August 2021, from https://www.brainpickings.org/2021/08/12/ milan-kundera-art-of-the-novel-storytelling/. Wigston, I., & Wigston, H. (2021). The Global Mentoring Network for Aspiring Leaders — Bright Field. Bright Field. Retrieved 1 October 2021, from https://www.brightfield-consulting. co.uk/our-services/global-mentoring-networkfor-aspiring-leaders/. Wigston, I., & Wigston, H. (2021). The magic in the space between. Ed. 1. Woodbridge: John Catt Educational Ltd. “...coaching and mentoring have the power to transform lives and careers, by raising [an] individual’s awareness and encouraging them to consider different paths from those they assumed were mapped out for them… New untrodden routes and desire lines emerge as quickly as the old ones vanish. Clearly, a new cartography is needed.”

(WIGSTON & WIGSTON, 2021, P.114).