Clarissa Farr - The Making of Her - Why School Matters

Headship still is exacting and unleisured – some might say remorseless. But these two women acknowledge that for all that, the quality of humanity is absolutely central: both in being able to create a sense of community for those within the school, as well as at the same time paying attention to your own identity and growth as a person, so that you bring to the job, and preserve within it, an authentic humanity of your own – expressed in your distinct character and personality. Their words remind me that inside every headmistress – and headmaster – under the sometimes heavy mantle of authority, there is a living person following a unique path of development, separate from, yet inextricably connected to, that professional persona.

There are a thousand ways to think about headship and as many ways of doing it well as there are heads. The wisest know they are not good at everything and gather around themselves colleagues who complement, rather than replicate, their particular skills. It is this human dimension which I have found the most rewarding and the most challenging aspect of the job, and which made the prescient words of Miss Clark and Miss Strudwick resonate with me.

When you join a new school as the head, it’s a bit like boarding a moving train. Nothing stops for you: clambering on, you haul up your suitcase, steady your balance and, moving up through the carriages as best you can, find your way to the driver’s seat. Meanwhile the life of the school and its journey into the future continue and you must learn about them and how you want to steer the train while it hurtles along. You may be the one steering, but you can’t achieve much unless you bring everyone along with you – and that means building effective relationships.

Settling in involves watching and listening. Especially you have to understand the mood and climate of the staff and to find out what they are used to. It takes time to work out the exact shape of the hole your predecessor left. In my first week at St Paul’s, I would wander into the staff common room at morning break – usually a rather pressured fifteen minutes where everyone is jostling to get a quick coffee or catch a colleague before going off to teach their next lesson. One particular morning, as I was spooning instant coffee into a mug emblazoned with the slogan ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, the head of science came up to me and said, ‘Nice to see you in here. We don’t normally see the high mistress in the staffroom.’ A small point perhaps, but this gave me a hint about the relationship my predecessor had had with her colleagues and therefore what they might be expecting. My style would be more informal – they were sensing that – and while they didn’t altogether mind, they might take time to get used to it. Similarly, when it came to my first heads of department meeting, the director of studies explained that normally those attending the meeting would assemble and then the high mistress would be collected from her office and escorted to join them. Grateful for the heads-up, I suggested a less ceremonial approach, choosing to be in the room first rather than last, so I could catch one or two people before the meeting and help things begin with the idea that we were coming together to think and confer, rather than that I was arriving to preside. So, by gradual steps, I established my own way of doing things and we adapted to one another in a natural and unforced way.

Small details like this accumulate and are the start of making relationships, winning the trust and confidence of the staff. They are a group, so you engage with them both en masse and also as a collection of individuals. Before taking up my post, I took the advice of a wise former head and learned the names of everyone on the staff from a set of photographs. So much more reassuring to be able to address people by name at once and start forging a working alliance from day one, minimising the sense that because you are a newcomer everyone has to start at the beginning for you. Then there is navigating the uncharted waters of the staffroom. There, a unique dynamic prevails, with professional and friendship groupings a new head needs to assimilate and read, listening, observing, absorbing. Here will be laid out the lines of loyalty and tension that may come to the surface at times of crisis or controversy: the more you know and understand of people’s personalities, priorities and preferences, the more you are able to anticipate and manage reactions in the moment. And because the staffroom or common room is where people relax, it’s not just words but also body language that can be revealing: the small group who always sit together lounging on a particular sofa, swiftly dispatching the Times

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