Lead from Where You Are

Laura Cooke, Joel Speranza and Louise Burgman

Learning and Leading

DEPUTY PRINCIPAL

Leadership at St Aidan’s is not a foreign word or concept. From the Year 6 Leadership Day in the Junior School to the Year 11 Leadership Journey in the Senior School, our students are familiar with the term and what it means to be both a leader and of course, a follower. The same can be said for leadership in terms of staff. The saying “lead from where you are” encapsulates how we see leadership at St Aidan’s. One does not need a title or a badge to be recognised as a leader rather, a plethora of attributes are associated with leadership including the disposition to set a direction, create a vision, encourage growth, manage people and be connected… The list goes on.

The leadership structure at St Aidan’s could be perceived as being disproportionately heavy at the top. With a Senior Leadership Team which comprises of the Educational Leadership Team, Heads of Faculty, Year Level Coordinators, Heads of Sport/Extra-curricular and PARs (Positions of Added Responsibility), our model served the school well when we were operating within the parameters set out by the previous OP (Overall Position) system. With ATAR, new processes have provided many staff members with new challenges. All new assessment items, units of work, ISMGs (Instrument Specific Marking Guides), QCAA (Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority) roles such as endorsers and confirmers, have been added to the load of teachers. Adding to the daily role of teaching, nurturing, supervising, professional development, marking, reporting and extracurricular activities, it has been a journey.

Many teachers in the Senior School expressed in the annual Staff Survey of 2020 that the current middle leadership design was no longer fit for purpose. As a result, this year we engaged with ISQ (Independent Schools Queensland) to conduct a curriculum review which consisted of interviews, surveys and follow-up meetings with staff to ascertain what needed to be changed in order to address the new challenges that came about with a state-wide senior assessment change. In addition, with feedback from students and parents via Student and Parent surveys, it became increasingly apparent that the review was timely.

The result of the review came a call for a distributed leadership (Spillane, 2005) model. Distributed leadership has long been recognised as a style of leadership that suits schools due to teachers all having opportunities to lead in different contexts. A model which favours the sharing of the load, so to speak, is what we are transitioning to for 2023. The organisational chart will now have Learning Area Leaders (LALs) who will play a major role in promoting academic leadership of the School. A LAL is a professional role model and mentor to teachers. This role includes special responsibilities for the leadership of staff and provides vision and purpose appropriate to the culture and ethos of the School. Furthermore, there will be Curriculum Leaders (CLs). A CL is equivalent to a middle management position in the organisational structure. The CL has responsibility for curricular and co-curricular activities, the learning/teaching process, administration and the academic progress of students within the subject area.

Adding to the mix, we have three newly appointed roles including Head of Digital Capabilities (K-12) - Joel Speranza, Head of Academic Support (K-12) - Louise Burgman and lastly, a Director of Academic Operations - Laura Cooke, who will be a member of the SLT. This new leadership model acknowledges our exemplary staff who are at the head of the game in terms of their subject knowledge, QCAA process and pedagogical practices that put our students at the forefront. You will not find teachers who are better than the ones we have here at St Aidan’s. They are inspiring, engaging, highly intellectual and model what it means to be a lifelong learner. In conjunction with the revised Pastoral Care Model shared in the previous edition of the Huddle, we are confident that we are not only addressing the feedback we have gathered from our school community but are a leading school in terms of valuing the contribution that our teachers make to the lives of our students both academically and pastorally. As they say, lead from where you are. (Maxwell, 2010)