1 July 2022

We speak to Stirling East Primary School Principal Jess Moroney to discover how the Future Leaders initiative can help emerging leaders identify leadership potential and fast-track preparation for leadership roles. Plus Jess discusses the importance mentors play and how he’s dealt with the challenges bushfires and COVID-19 bring.

Show Notes

• Future Leaders initiative

Transcript

Teach is produced on the traditional land of the Kaurna people. The South Australian Department for Education would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and pay our respects to all elders, past, present and emerging.

Dale Atkinson: Hello, and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. I'm Dale Atkinson from the South Australian Department for Education. Our guest today is Jess Moroney. He's the principal of Stirling East Primary School up in the Adelaide Hills, with a student enrolment of around 550 kids, and just participated in the Future Leaders program, which provided the tools and resources to reflect on his leadership style and capabilities.

And when he was appointed as a leader, he was also provided with the program's leader advisor service, which helps connect people to experienced leaders for ongoing coaching and mentoring. So, Jess, thanks very much coming in.

Jess Moroney: No worries, thanks for having me.

Dale Atkinson: So you're the principal of Stirling East Primary School. Can you tell us a bit about the school?

Jess Moroney: Yeah. So, as you mentioned, we have about 530 students from reception to year six. We have those spread over about 19 classes. Adelaide Hills, very cold this time of year, but, lovely group of kids and highly experienced and expert teachers. So very fortunate to be there.

Dale Atkinson: So, was it always your intention to become a principal or is this something that you kind of fell into?

Jess Moroney: Yeah, and it seems a very common theme amongst most leaders that I had no ambition in being a principal, sort of started off as a specialist PE teacher for quite a number of years and transitioned into the classroom. And I guess then found opportunities where I was in, acting in leadership positions and quite enjoyed it. It just sort of eventuated that way.

Dale Atkinson: So, what was it that drew you to those leadership positions in the first place?

Jess Moroney: I think it was being able to influence larger and larger groups of students. Initially in a classroom, you have your, you know, 30 odd children in front of you and then through leadership position sort of coordinator roles, you have a chance to work with larger groups and more teachers and more children, and yeah. Seeing that opportunity to improve yourself and improve others, and eventually that has the student outcomes attached to it.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, right. So, tell us a little bit about how the Future Leaders program helped you make that transition smoothly.

Jess Moroney: For me, it was that turning point of realising that I was probably ready. I went down the path initially I was certified as a lead teacher back in 2015 and was really keen on leading from the classroom working two or three days a week in a leadership position. The balance in the classroom was fantastic for me.

And I guess I never really knew that I was quite ready to not step away from the classroom, but to take on a full on leadership position. And I guess the Future Leaders program was one that gave me the confidence.

The feedback that I received was essentially that I was ready and most of the learning now was to be done on the job in a formal leadership position. So, it was almost the kick that I needed just to take the plunge and apply for some positions.

Dale Atkinson: And what's the biggest change that you have transitioning from being a teacher into those leadership positions and being a principal?

Jess Moroney: I think for me, it was quite surprising how similar it actually was in the sense that I guess the difference is rather than having 30 students in front of you, you have you know, a number of staff who require their own levels of differentiation, support, challenge. And so, I guess the difference was working more with adults rather than children. And on a day to day, I guess you often get people when they're emotionally charged, could be, parents could be, students could be adults.

The big difference is probably the end of the day. You're pretty drained. Sometimes you can have challenging conversations from the start of the day, right through to the end. But all for the right outcome.

Dale Atkinson: So, you made the transition in the last couple of years to Stirling East Primary. What year did you start there?

Jess Moroney: I only started there at the beginning of this year. So previous three years at Lenswood Primary, which was sort of polar opposites, it was three classes, 65 children, small community school, but incredibly rewarding place to be as well.

Dale Atkinson: And how have you found it? Because obviously, I would say during COVID 19 times, not the easiest time to transition into a leadership position, how you found that and the challenges?

Jess Moroney: Look, to a certain extent, it was probably not a bad way to start at a new school that everything could be paired back.We talk about week zero and the first couple of days, which as a new leader coming in could be high pressure. At times I just had the opportunity to talk to the staff and you know, this year we had four days to get ready for the hybrid approach to some students online, some face to face. So, we basically took the pressure off and said, get in, get organized, get ready. And I just had the chance to get in and meet the staff and all hands on deck, as opposed to putting on a big professional learning series.

Dale Atkinson: And was the mentoring relationship that you managed to develop ahead of time and throughout the last couple of terms, was that something that was helpful in that scenario?

Jess Moroney: Yeah, I think you mentioned the leader advisor program, which was fantastic when I first stepped into a principal position. So, I was appointed a leader advisor who I hadn't met previously and didn't know a huge amount about my context other than what I'd shared with him. And often I'd see a pop up in my, my calendar as I had a three hour meeting with my leader advisor and thought, what on earth are we going to talk about for three hours? And every time I walked away and just thought, you know how remarkable it was just to have someone to bounce ideas off of and have those conversations where, you know, you're probably tossing up which way to go with some bits and pieces going on in the school and having someone who was sort of non-judgmental and just there to support was great.

Dale Atkinson: And so what are the sort of challenges that you're bottoming out with your mentor?

Jess Moroney: The day to day challenges that you have around certain contextual situations happening with staffing and, and students and families. And I guess just speaking with someone who's been there, done that before, and just knowing that these challenges are real and just being a sounding board really.

Dale Atkinson: That sounds like a really kind of positive thing. And, and not just during those three hours, there's accessibility isn't there, outside of that time as well.

Jess Moroney: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I always knew that my advisor was on the other end of the phone whenever I needed. And he would often just touch base from time to time just to check in and see how I was going and was there anything I needed. I think he was also a good reminder that as a leader, you had to make time for yourself as well. So, he'd often gimme a call and just say, look, if you're still working, put tools down and go out and do something and you know, that was great.

Dale Atkinson: And obviously a sort of different dynamic, different relationship than, you know, the mentoring relationship that you might have with your education director, there's a bit more freedom and flexibility there I'd imagine.

Jess Moroney: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, when I was reflecting on mentors, the leadership team and the education director within that is fantastic, but it was also nice to have someone who probably sat outside of that sphere. And you could just speak completely openly about everything that's going on and ask a couple of those curly questions as they popped up yeah.

Dale Atkinson: It was a bit easy than, uh, sometimes talking to your boss, I guess.

Jess Moroney: Yeah, absolutely.

Dale Atkinson: We're talking about one of the big challenges, I guess, under COVID situations for kids, for teachers, for all of us, I think is being able to manage the day to day work of, you know, trying to lift the academic achievement of the kids, but also supporting the wellbeing of your employees and supporting the wellbeing of the kids. How have you managed to balance those things?

Jess Moroney: Look, we had a bit of a trial run at this, that when I was at Lenswood, we had the Cudlee Creek bush fire sweep through just prior to COVID time. And so that was a pretty challenging time to be a leader and be a teacher and basically be anyone in that community.

I learned from that experience initially of essentially, we just had to pair back anything off of the calendar that wasn't absolutely necessary at that point in time. And that was hugely beneficial for the staff wellbeing, I guess we looked at everything and if it wasn't highly important right then and there in terms of educational outcomes for kids or wellbeing for staff and students, get rid of it for a short amount of time or permanently, and just focus on the things that were really important for us then and there.

So that's then continued through into COVID times and we're still right in the thick of it. And I think I'm finding now more than ever we're finding that staff are pretty flat. We've been working basically running on adrenaline for the last couple of years and ongoing changes that you can't necessarily prepare for too well.

So again, we are just back to, I guess, analysing everything that we do in a school and asking the question, how important is this right now? And can it wait?

Dale Atkinson: And so, what are the priorities that you've landed on for Stirling East?

Jess Moroney: One of the things that's been a true leveller, you know, right through the bushfire time and the pandemic is making sure that, you know, your key priorities remain consistent.

Just having that level of knowing what we're focusing on. We've maintained the site improvement plan, albeit we've given ourselves the capacity to say that some things can wait when we're tracking how we're going. If there's a couple of things that are still sitting in the orange or red for the second part of the year, that that's okay.

But we've probably just narrowed our goals and stuck with our initial goals of what we had on our site improvement plan and keeping everything else aside for now.

Dale Atkinson: Part of that leadership responsibility is deciding what you can green light, what you can red light, how you prioritise these things. And that's part of the challenge, isn't it?

Jess Moroney: Yeah. And I think, even though we are pushing ahead fairly heavily with our site improvement objectives, I think it's also knowing how we can alleviate some of the pressure on the staff there as well. And having conversations with my teachers, making sure that they know that we appreciate them fully, but often actions can speak a lot louder than words.

So rather than just thanking them, we've looked at ways that we can alleviate the pressure on them in a day to day or looking at ways that we can support them through it with additional release time or being a bit innovative to release each other in some of the challenging moments where they're busy writing reports, you know, interviews, assessment, schedules, those sorts of things, how do we help them through that.

Dale Atkinson: Just back onto the program a little bit, obviously it provides you a bit of feedback about your strengths and areas where development's needed, what sort of assessment process did you undertake to look into your strengths and areas for development?

Jess Moroney: And it was quite interesting because this was probably four years ago now. So, prior to coming in for the podcast, I had to look over my feedback again and I just realised how spot on it actually was about me, my personality, my leadership style. So, it was a pretty rigorous process. There was some self-assessments that you carried out a range of different surveys and then there was the day itself, which I probably won't speak too much about because I think the best thing about it was that you didn't really know what you were going into, but it was highly contextual in terms of putting yourself in scenarios that will become your every day to day as a school leader. So, then the feedback, I guess, that came from that was how you observed in different leadership scenarios.

So, for me, I found that the strength that came out were the bits that gave me a nudge to say, yep, you're ready. And the areas to developers, still things that I'm working on now, so it was pretty much spot on.

Dale Atkinson: And so how have you folded that into developing your own sort of personal development plan and the path to leadership?

Jess Moroney: Through the Future Leaders program, a development plan was created as well. So, it gave a few internal professional learning series that were worthwhile having a look at, but then also some external ones as well. So, one of those for me was the Crucial Conversations and Crucial Accountability courses, which through our portfolio, we engaged in. And then I guess I've just kept some of that feedback going. And some of the bits that I knew I had to work on in my PDP each year, with my education director. And so, yeah, I've just been sort of sticking the course with that one.

Dale Atkinson: So, like something that's incredibly focused and detailed. And if you go into it with an open kind of mindset, looking, thinking about what you can do to develop, that's where the richness of the conversation comes in, isn't it?

Jess Moroney: Yeah. And I think we all get into education, you know, knowing that we're always learning. As a principal, I'm always learning that I go back into the classroom and at the end of the day, I'd analyse my teaching and learning. Like I would expect my teachers to then likewise, at the end of the day or week, you have to have a look and reflect on areas where you've gone well and some of the areas that you need to rethink.

Dale Atkinson: What are the next stages for you four years in? How does this develop as a program for you?

Jess Moroney: For me, I think, as I just mentioned, I'm still, you know, still learning that I'm fairly early in my principalship. So, I guess it's just taking the time to look at what are the areas, where, and I think you have to celebrate the success along the way.

So, you take the time and look at the areas where you think you've done reasonably well, but conversely, the bits that you still need to develop as a leader. And when I look at the feedback from the future leaders, the areas that were highlighted are still things that, that I'll be working on for a number of years to come.

Dale Atkinson: So, what are some of the things that have surprised you about going from being purely a teacher in the classroom to being a principal.

Jess Moroney: I think, initially how similar some of it is, obviously contextually it's different, because you spend a lot more of your time working with adults than you do children, but the skills that you're required to be a quality classroom teacher or a teacher in, in any area are still very relevant as you move into leadership.

Probably one of the biggest surprises I had was how many interruptions you have in a day, and high quality and important interruptions. You'll often sit down to do something at nine o'clock in the morning, and it's still sitting there untouched at the end of the day, because they've been really pressing things that you prioritise ahead of whatever you had planned for the day.

So, I think I learned very early that you never leave anything to the last day to get it done, because that'll be the day where you have children needing your staff, needing your parents, needing you. So that's probably been the biggest challenge is to probably prioritising your time and managing that.

Dale Atkinson: I think one of the things I've observed about principals is their ability to segment the day into very effective, productive 15 minute segments is an incredible skill.

Jess Moroney: Yes. Yep. And, and very needed.

Dale Atkinson: Jess Moroney, Principal of Stirling East Primary School, thank you very much for joining us and talking about the Future Leaders program.

Jess Moroney: No worries at all. Thank you.