Positively Leading

S1E18 - Fostering Nurturing Environments in Regional Schools with Kate Murrihy

• Jenny Cole • Season 1 • Episode 18

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How does one foster a nurturing educational environment in rural and remote areas? Join us as we explore this fascinating topic with Kate Murrihy, the Head of Humanities and Social Sciences and Languages at a regional public high school. Kate shares her journey from a small school outside of Mildura, where community support and structured mentoring set her up for success, to her current role where she passionately implements these principles to support new educators. Kate's early experiences in establishing a literacy homework club for Aboriginal students offer profound insights into creating inclusive educational settings.

Kate reveals her unexpected passion for leading curriculum development in regional schools, particularly those with many indigenous students facing behavioral challenges. Through candid discussions, she shares the trials and triumphs of maintaining high expectations and providing adequate support for both students and staff. Listen as Kate offers valuable advice on managing frustrations, embracing failures as learning opportunities, and setting clear, achievable goals to ensure the success of less experienced teachers. Her commitment to creating a thriving educational environment shines through as she discusses innovative strategies and the importance of flexibility in teaching.

We also delve into embedding Aboriginal Cultural Standards within the curriculum and the nuances of building trust and respect with Aboriginal communities. Kate’s reflections on gender bias in educational leadership and the role of emotional expression underscore the importance of supportive peer networks and self-reflection. Drawing from resources like "The Confidence Code" and the insights of Brené Brown, Kate emphasizes the power of vulnerability and self-assurance in leadership. This episode is packed with practical advice and inspiring stories for anyone passionate about education and leadership.

Did you know there is more? You can access every episode, show notes, links and more via my website Positively Beaming.

Jenny Cole:

Hello and welcome back to Positively Leading the Podcast. I'm Jenny and I'm delighted to have with me today the wonderful Kate Murrihy. Welcome, Kate. Hi, Jenny, Thank you for having me. Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. What I love about Kate is that she has a real social justice, um value of social justice, and that makes her enthusiastic about public education, which I'm also enthusiastic about, particularly in rural and remote areas, and she is currently the Head of Humanities and Social Sciences and Languages at a regional, t hat's a big job, at a regional public high school.

Jenny Cole:

She loves spending time outside in the sunshine with her dog and there is plenty of sunshine where she lives and also with the friends that she now calls family. She will read anything and everything but loves historical fiction, and she's passionate about ensuring that other people have the same positive experience that she did in her early teaching career. That's probably a really great place to start. Kate, do you want to talk about your early teaching career and what made it so positive?

Kate Murrihy:

Yeah, I always knew that I never wanted to work in a city. I'm a Melbourne girl, born and bred well, suburbs of Melbourne, and I just knew that the city stuff wasn't for me. So as soon as I finished uni I applied for what they used to have back then as the Country Teachers Scholarships in Victoria and ended up at this little tiny school outside of Mildura where there was about 350 kids and I sort of I remember driving there on the first day with a friend of mine. Well, when I went for the interview and we were laughing at this little old town that was so different to what we'd grown up with. But the school just had this amazing community feel to it.

Kate Murrihy:

It was almost a bit overwhelming with how generous and nice people were when I first turned up and there was three grads that year and we were the first intake they'd had of like young teachers in a really long time, because it was a bit of a retirement village.

Kate Murrihy:

The kids were beautiful, the staff were amazing and I couldn't have thought of a better place to start my career and I had lots of great people around me giving me really amazing advice. You know the back then we were one of the first groups that had the structured mentoring processes that Victoria's system had put in place, and I really really value what we were offered. Then you know and it's something I've really I've tried to replicate a lot with younger staff or people new to teaching when I've encountered them ever since, because I was afforded such a brilliant start to my career by having these amazing mentors around me, who were very generous with their time and their advice and also not afraid to tell you to pull your head in if you needed it or if you needed to do something a little bit different as well. I hope that I try and replicate that with others.

Jenny Cole:

Did those mentors come from within that school or from elsewhere?

Kate Murrihy:

Pretty much within that school. Wow, it's funny because my mentor now or sorry, my mentor back then was a PE teacher and we just got matched up and his wife lives where I do now, just down the road. So we've all managed to move across the country at different times and you know. Back to my comment around friends that are like family. They've become like family now to me.

Jenny Cole:

And how was that program structured that made it so useful? Because I'm trying to work out what you would get from a visitor.

Kate Murrihy:

Yeah, so it was lots of dedicated time that was set aside within the school structures for you guys to meet, so the mentor and the mentee to meet together and just sit down and have conversations, and I think what I've taken away from that is that time is has been the biggest factor for how successful those programs are, and I know that's really hard in schools to create, but the investment in in that finding that time within our busy days and our structures is has been incredible. Um, and the process that the mentors had to go through as well, like they had to go and do training and a whole bunch of different stuff to make sure that the conversations they were having with us as grads were supportive and going to set us on the right path. I think bigger than that too. The school had really great structures in place in terms of curriculum, development and behaviour, and which all helped as well, because I had really great guidance around setting up those good habits as a new teacher.

Jenny Cole:

And have you carried those through into your leadership career? Some of what you've learnt through that process.

Kate Murrihy:

Yeah, I still, to this day, hear myself saying things that are from my mentor or others that were around me at the time. I can hear their voices very much so when I'm offering support to others. But the time and finding time in your day to sit down and have the conversations over a cup of tea with people new to teaching, I think is really important and something I try really hard to make sure I do.

Jenny Cole:

We might circle back to that a bit later on in our conversation, but that was such an awesome start to your teaching career. Then where did you go? What did you do?

Kate Murrihy:

Yeah, so this school continued to grow in numbers because it was such a great school. Everyone wanted to be there, not just teachers but kids and families as well. I had been there for a couple of years before I got asked to run a literacy homework club at the code school in the town up the road, which is the Currie Open Door Education Settings. They were around for a little bit in Victoria back in the early 2000s. They sort of, you know, had a million reiterations since then too.

Kate Murrihy:

But myself and a maths teacher got asked to head over every couple of afternoons and run this clubs around improving NAPLAN data for kids with literacy and numeracy at a school entirely for Aboriginal students. And that was my first experience being in a setting that was really different to what I'd ever grown up in or the school that I had been working at as well. I was only there for a little over six months but really enjoyed it and really loved the, the amazing group of staff that worked very tirelessly there. I was there when the aged newspaper reported that we're closing the school down before all the staff got told, so that kind of sets up the political environment around that at the time, and so the staff were presented with a whole bunch of challenges, but they just turned up every day and they worked their hardest and did what they had to do right to the end, and it was a great, a really great introduction.

Jenny Cole:

And from there, where did you go after that?

Kate Murrihy:

Then I did the thing of heading overseas, went to Ireland and got myself a job at an inner city school in Dublin. Here's me saying I didn't want to work in the city but this was about as inner city as you could possibly get. It had a really bad reputation and they could not get teachers. And here I was in my 20s going, oh, give it a go, yes, and it was full on. It was really full on.

Kate Murrihy:

To this day, if I meet people from Ireland or who know Ireland well and I say the school I worked at, they all go oh gosh, you were there, like it had a reputation, but again, really a really high proportion of traveler population at this school. Um, education was not a priority for most of these kids and their families. So that was probably my first really big experience in navigating those different values that students and families bring to school compared to what we have and how I had to navigate that as a teacher. I loved every second of it. You know the school. The staff were amazing, admin were interesting. Yeah, it was a brilliant place to work.

Jenny Cole:

And you say the leadership team, the admin team, were interesting. What? What was interesting about them?

Kate Murrihy:

well, the first six months I was there, there was a principal who had never been in education. He was like ex-military or something that talks to what the school was like. Um, we all used to joke that if you wanted to ask him a question you had to put it in writing a week in advance and sit under his door. So he just was missing like absent, really didn't you know. And then the last six months they had a new principal who came in and was on a mission to really change things and improve the school situation. And not long after I left well, for about the last 12 months after I left I was still getting messages from people and it seems like that person really did a great job at changing some of the culture in the school and, yeah, supporting staff and improving morale around the place.

Jenny Cole:

When you got back to Australia. What did you do then?

Kate Murrihy:

I wasn't necessarily planning on coming back when I did, but my old school got in touch with me and offered me my first, I guess, promotional position and I decided to come back and give that a go.

Kate Murrihy:

So I came back into what was then a year, seven year leader position, but in that system at the time it was a mix of behaviour management and wellbeing and working with staff who were teaching those year levels, so it was a bit of a step up from me. Prior to going overseas, I'd assisted some other people in those roles and I always talk about that as being like a fantastic apprenticeship, because I was really fortunate enough to work with a woman who had literally been at that school for like 40 years. Like a fantastic apprenticeship because I was really fortunate enough to work with a woman who had literally been at that school for like 40 years and she was just this yeah, she was incredible in what she knew and how she operated. Um, I still remember like her showing me things like how to keep your files on kids and notebooks and stuff that I now advise I give that advice to others in those roles as well Like she was really good at the day-to-day logistics of how to manage your workload in those positions.

Jenny Cole:

When you said she'd been there for 40 years, internally I groaned, but she didn't. She actually sounds like she was wise. Oh yeah, yeah.

Kate Murrihy:

And I think she was in a position where she probably would have kept going, except for physically she was struggling a bit yeah. And the kids loved her and the community loved her and she was just amazing.

Jenny Cole:

Brilliant. And so you're back in this school that you loved in the beginning and that you got this wise and wonderful person as a mentor or someone to follow. You're back from overseas. How long did you stay there? And then what made you move to your next thing?

Kate Murrihy:

Yeah, I stayed there probably longer than I should because one of my other strengths, but also weaknesses, is my strong sense of loyalty to people and places. You know, and I took on the Year 7 group that came in the year I returned and I sort of had in my head that I would see them through to the end to Year 12. They were the largest group that school had had ever. It was 170 kids. You know I still have shakes around some of the school camps we ran with. Um, but yeah, and I guess admin changed, I came back to a new principal um.

Kate Murrihy:

I came back to a complete, total restructure of leadership as well. Um, and student behavior started to change. I think that was, um, probably symptomatic of the leadership restructures as well. Um, yeah, and I guess, as as off you know, many, many people in education see, schools will have those dips if expectations aren't the same as they once were, and yeah.

Kate Murrihy:

so as the school got bigger it became just a lot harder to manage, I suppose, and as a school I guess we struggled to adapt to those kind of changes in enough time. So, yeah, I decided I was going to go even further away from Melbourne and head to the west.

Jenny Cole:

Fabulous and you ended up. You started off in a teaching role, yeah, and pretty quickly moved to a leadership role.

Kate Murrihy:

Yeah, Coming to the west was meant to be about me stepping back and just getting back into classrooms. I'd taken on those leadership positions and done leading teacher, acting leading teacher roles over the years and this was meant to be about me sort of calming down a little bit. And within six months I had a tap on the shoulder and was asked to apply for a head of learning position. That was only ever meant to be a 12-month maternity position and almost nine years later, here I am.

Jenny Cole:

Here you are nine tumultuous years later. I'm joking because I know that you love your role. It's challenging, but what is it that you love about being a head of learning area?

Kate Murrihy:

It was a bit of a learning curve in that I met for my own confidence in that. I didn't think I was any good at curriculum and leading curriculum development and it's taken me a little bit to go to realise that the curriculum changes I had worked through in my years in Victoria have really set me up quite well to lead that here with a team and I really love it.

Kate Murrihy:

I've realised I feel like that's where I can make the biggest differences and the most amount of changes, not just in my school but in other work I'm doing around Western Australia as well and for me that has been a real kind of revelation because I just always thought I was, it was behavior and that was going to be it for me and you know I can put my grumpy face on with the best of them and pull kids into line. And yeah, the curriculum side of it and leading a team to see through to the vision that you have for what you want classrooms to be running like and looking like, has been really exciting.

Jenny Cole:

You've got really high expectations of yourself and and others. Don't apologize um but that has.

Jenny Cole:

That has led to its own challenges in in leading a team. Um, so you're. You're in a regional school northwest a lot of uh indigenous students, some behavior problems. You know the the issues that we would find in that kind of school and a culture in the beginning of sort of low expectations of the kids and of the teaching. Talk to me about how you, what the problems around having high expectations are and perhaps how you've changed things in your team.

Kate Murrihy:

Yeah, when I first moved to the West, what I loved about the school I'm at is that they never made excuses for having high expectations. Um, it was a really high achieving school and I you know well it still is. But like I remember those first few years, just, oh my gosh, these kids are just phenomenal and the work the teachers do with these kids is amazing and really wanting to continue that going. And yeah, because I'd come from a setting where we were considered regional but at the end of the day, we're still only 400km from a capital city and they were like, oh, our kids are never going to do any good, we're not like the Melbourne people, and I was like, come on, that's rubbish. So, yeah, here, I guess over the years I've gotten better at just not assuming that everybody else has the same level of expectations as I do, and also I've learnt to let stuff go that doesn't matter. You know, um, I still the phrase from an old colleague she used to say argue over the color of the socks with the kids, because if you're not arguing over the color of the socks, it ends up being something bigger and something bigger and some you have to set those. That was kind of her analogy. And so now I've just realized that I'm okay with not arguing on the colour of the socks, but I still want really solid stuff going on in the classroom. So there's how the arguments look like.

Kate Murrihy:

I suppose is what has changed for me. I remember this distinct moment in a classroom a few years ago. I used to be so rigid with teaching rows, seats, don't move, don't talk, sort of business, really traditional. And then I remember this one day where a kid was like he had a rubber toy in some description. He goes what is going to happen if we stick this on the fan and put it up really high? And I went I don't know, let's give it a go. And we did and it flew off and we had a laugh and moved on. But I just I remember thinking, man, I've come a long way because I never would have done that years ago.

Jenny Cole:

What are the expectations you have for your staff and when? I guess I know that you get irritated when people don't have that same sort of high expectations and in quotes professionalism that you do. How's that shown up for you, perhaps in leading your teams?

Kate Murrihy:

In terms of my frustrations? Yeah, possibly. How do you?

Jenny Cole:

manage your frustrations? Yeah, probably not well at times.

Kate Murrihy:

I'm sure there has been times where you know my feistiness comes out and I probably snap more than I should, but over the years I've gotten better and I know I've said it to you before, jenny, but it's definitely through work and conversations you and I have had at articulating my expectations and why I have those expectations.

Kate Murrihy:

I guess I learned by probably failing a lot in terms of not just assuming that everybody has the same skill sets to meet those expectations as well same skill sets to meet those expectations as well. Um, I've realized that in leading teams I have to make sure people have the skills before I. I just let them loose, because otherwise I'm setting them up to fail as well um and that's not fair.

Kate Murrihy:

Um, the one that the phrase that sort of changed a lot for me is the brene brown clear is kind phrase too. That making my expectations really, really clear from the get-go is what's going to get the best out of my staff and out of me.

Jenny Cole:

How have you joined what you learnt through your mentors and that process at the beginning of your career and that expectation and the beginning of your career and that expectation and working with your team? I suppose my question is how do you create the conditions where teachers get to be successful in a challenging school town situation or as a graduate or new to area, because that's the other thing is, you've had a lot of teachers who've not necessarily been experienced or experienced in that learning area. How do you create the conditions for success?

Kate Murrihy:

support but not doing the work for them. So I still remember turning up at that school on my first day. I was teaching English and I got given an A4 sheet of paper and it was like year seven, speaking, reading, writing and there was a list of paper. And it was like year seven, speaking, reading, writing, and there was a list of texts and it went all the way through year 12 and they were like off you go. And I remember going, oh my gosh, like what is this? And I promised from then onwards that I would never do that to others. And so making sure that there's a starting point for everyone who turns up, because, like you said, I quite regularly end up with people out of area having to teach subjects and I do live in a place where turnover is probably fairly high, you know, but we're lucky that it's still an attractive place to work and be and live. But as long as I can give people a starting point.

Kate Murrihy:

I had a new staff member this year come over from a different state and I know she said to me that she was really grateful for the fact that she just moved her whole entire family across the country and I said to her whole entire family across the country. And I said to her I don't want you to worry about your classes. Here's your first week, because they were already there from other teachers and it wasn't about recreating a whole thing all to yourself. It was just like off. You go, settle in, build your relationships with the kids and the community and get your family settled and then if you want to go crazy and change things up, go your hardest.

Kate Murrihy:

You don't have to do that now.

Jenny Cole:

Yeah, and I know you and your team in the past have collaborated really strongly and created common assessments and common tasks and uploaded them and so forth. Would you like to talk a little bit about how you managed to get that happening, which is not always something that happens in a secondary context? You see a lot in early childhood and in primary, but less so in secondary.

Kate Murrihy:

yeah, I mean, I've never understood teaching in isolation and not sharing resources, and that's not me at all. Like lots of people know that if they get in touch with me, I'll be the first person to go. Here's my OneDrive off. You go, do what you want, you know.

Kate Murrihy:

And so I wanted to create that feeling amongst the team and so we started off with bigger teaching teams. So the year seven group would all work together and the year eight group would, and that just kind of wasn't working and it wasn't about the dynamics of the teachers over those years where we were trialling that. It's just that trying to get that many people like if you teach across three different year levels, it's near and impossible to have those the time to do that. So then we moved to some expert groups. I suppose so like the person who was the history expert and their civics and citizenship expert. They would focus on different year level courses relative to their expertise, and that seemed to work fairly well and it gave us a really good base for then having people who really enjoyed certain year levels to take on a leadership within that team.

Kate Murrihy:

And so I sort of realised over the years that as my team has grown um, because you know I started off with probably like seven staff and now we're at 10, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it it feels that sometimes, um, yeah, as the team has grown, almost reducing the number of people making those initial decisions around your programs and your assessments has worked really well.

Kate Murrihy:

Um, others still have an input and they feedback and give advice, but it's reducing the amount of time people have to give to be able to sit down with other teachers of the same courses and that that is working really well and, um, we've got to a point now where we're really just minor changes from year to year. Yeah, but it's also allowed me to focus a little bit more on some vision planning for the future in terms of really strong, like skill-based work we wanted to embed in different year levels or things. Like you know, our focus at the moment is group work, so we backward map skills that we want them to have because we realised in the post-COVID world, young people struggle to interact nicely with each other when they're not behind a screen. So we really yeah, we really wanted to give them some more of those skills within our curriculum frameworks and classes. So embedding stuff and settling that down has allowed us to sort of focus on some more of that stuff as well.

Jenny Cole:

What I really like about that is people with a passion for their particular subject get to write things and then other people benefit from their expertise, but then everyone can go back and have a look at. You know the how, how do we do this? What are the strategies that we might use? But the courses are there and built and on some sort of shared drive for everyone to access. Yeah, yeah, so that people aren't reinventing the wheel, god forbid.

Kate Murrihy:

Yeah, working a bit smarter. I don't know why we all insist in education on doing it ourselves. We're our own worst enemy sometimes.

Jenny Cole:

I think we are. Indeed, I know Aboriginal education is a real passion of yours and you're working hard in your school and across the state for the curriculum authority at the Aboriginal Cultural Standards. Can you share a little bit about what you're doing and how you're embedding that into your work at the school and more broadly?

Kate Murrihy:

Yeah. So again, it's sort of something that's developed as a bit of a passion of mine. Humanities is my area, social science is my thing, so ensuring that everybody has the same opportunities has always been a real, a real key point for me. What I'm doing and by the time I got to where I am now at the school, the Australian Cultural Standards Framework sorry, I just sort of come out and the school was has always been really amazing in terms of the work done in that space. So I was lucky to have walk into a school where there was lots of really passionate educators around embedding the framework across everything we do. And then sort of COVID happened and it kind of like everything stuff got put on the back burner. But through COVID I was approached to be on some committees with SCARSA and in particular around the work that our school was doing in Aboriginal and Intercultural Studies, and all of us on that committee laugh now around the rabbit hole that you go into once you're in that space. And you know it's been about five or six years now my work in that area and oh my gosh, I feel like I have learnt so much but yet I still know nothing. You know because everything's just evolving so much.

Kate Murrihy:

And then I went to a workshop here in town that was run by Statewide Services and the Aboriginal Education Team and it completely changed my view on how to teach ATSI perspectives and cultures in our classes. I've always been of the philosophy that every kid should be able to see what they see them in the curriculum they're teaching. I think in humanities that's really, really important. So I try to incorporate a lot of that anyway. But all it took was a phrase to say embed the ATSI perspectives and culture first in your course and then teach everything else around it. And I was like, oh my gosh, like this is what we're going to do. So we started with the ones that are seen to be a bit easier.

Kate Murrihy:

I suppose in terms of like history and when you start looking into the curriculum, there's actually so much scope for you to be able to contextualise the curriculum for your local area, because that's really important. West Australia is a huge state Huge, yeah and Aboriginal people from one end to the other have very, very different cultures, histories, languages, you name it and so being able to work there has been a bit of a learning curve. I suppose Definitely made mistakes along the way. I always say that to everybody who, whether they're in my team or people that approach me for some support, in this space as well, you are going to make mistakes, but you apologise and you learn from them, and I'm sure, like I still do, you know. Can I ask are you you? You're not aboriginal.

Jenny Cole:

Um, no, not at all, and so what is it like as a non-aboriginal person to be working in that so closely and so intimately, in that, in that space?

Kate Murrihy:

yeah, I definitely had to build the trust and respect of people around me before I could even remotely delve into this space, and I think those first few years where I just went along with what the school was working on in terms of the ACFS was really really important, because it allowed me to build some networks and connections with people in town and it allowed me to do a lot of reading and a lot of learning before I could then make some changes. Yeah, and I didn't ask my staff to do anything I wasn't willing to do myself in this space. So resourcing is really, really hard.

Kate Murrihy:

In an ideal world, you'd only ever want to use Aboriginal authored resourcing to share this content with the kids, and it can be really challenging. It can be really time consuming. It's gotten a lot better. Oh my gosh, in the last two years it's gotten so much better. But I had to acknowledge that with staff before I said this is what we're going to do. You're going to not throw out your courses, but we're going to change them and this is how we're doing. Right, because it's been a really big undertaking and there's still lots of you know, we're still in the middle of it.

Jenny Cole:

And so let me get this right. You took your standard course offerings and you thought how can we start with the Etsy perspective first and then build everything else around around it, rather than how can we? So the wonderful Kevin O'Keefe who's in our system, who has just retired, said to me many years ago we want a curriculum curriculum, jen, where it's built in, not bolted on, and I guess that's what you're talking about a curriculum where those perspectives start first and you build everything around it rather than stick it on the end. Have I got that right?

Kate Murrihy:

Yes, definitely, and very much so, because he's one of the ones who gave me that piece of advice.

Jenny Cole:

Oh, right, yeah.

Kate Murrihy:

It was him and his team and the work, yeah, gave me that piece of advice. Oh right, it was him and his team and the work, yeah. And so then, working on a committee that was reviewing a course at a senior level, I built up some more, I guess, relationships with people that I would then be able to utilise. So even now, I make sure I run everything past Aboriginal people that are in my local community, but also elsewhere, for feedback, because it's not my place to say what's right and what's wrong. It's not my knowledge and my culture to make that decision. I can put what I think down, but I also need some feedback from others around me Aboriginal people and families around whether they're comfortable and they're happy with what's going on.

Jenny Cole:

That sounds like a kind of iterative process the more you share, the more they trust, the more they'll share and so forth yeah. However, that feels a bit scary. As a teacher, I'm sitting here thinking, oh gosh, that feels really hard. What do I do if I don't have the same time and passion? Where would you suggest teachers start if they were looking to embed those perspectives?

Kate Murrihy:

um, yeah, I think I have said to others that it's just going to take one person on your team with a real passion for this.

Kate Murrihy:

Um, if you're just doing it because you think it's what you need to be doing, it's probably not going to work yeah um, you need to be doing it for the right reasons, and our right reasons were to increase engagement and educational outcomes for the students at our school and, like kids that have truanted a whole entire day and then turn up to our classes for the only one like that says so much to me that they want to come into our rooms. It's about providing that culturally safe space for them to be in. I think that's in the world we're currently living.

Jenny Cole:

That's really, really important and I was literally going to say you can't get academic outcomes if they literally don't turn up. And so if they are turning up because they can see themselves in the curriculum, how brilliant is that?

Jenny Cole:

that's sensational literally giving me goosebumps, as you quite often do. Thank you for sharing I'm. One of the other things that we kind of bond over is the, the gender piece, and the um and and some of the sort of the unseen biases in education. How has your gender impacted your leadership or not in terms of your career? Oh, big question, sorry.

Kate Murrihy:

Question without notice.

Jenny Cole:

Oh gosh.

Kate Murrihy:

I might think it was naivety in my early, when I was younger, I just didn't realise, and it's taken maturity, I think, for me to realise how much it does impact. I've also got some amazing colleagues and I share stories with you quite frequently around the other women, heads of learning area, women I work with, and how incredible that they are and how we all are in supporting each other. Yeah, how incredible that they are and how we all are in supporting each other. Yeah, yeah, um, because we, we probably were all feeling things over our career and then it, you know, it's taken a long time to be able to articulate some of those feelings and the impacts that it has. I mean, it sounds ridiculous because we're in education and you'd like to think that that's a female dominated industry, but then when you step into leadership, it's kind of not yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.

Jenny Cole:

Sometimes you just think, well, maybe it's just me, maybe I'm just being a little bit, you know, sensitive to something. I mean you said it took you a while to realize that you know being told you're emotional. Could both? Oh yeah, do you want to talk about that oh.

Kate Murrihy:

Oh, that's like my trigger now, isn't it? I mean, I am an. You know, I am an emotional person also, but it's not a bad thing. No, you know, because I'm so passionate about what I do, because I'm emotional and I remember years ago back in Victoria, a female deputy principal saying to and I was crying over something. I can't remember what it was, but I still remember her saying to me you're crying because you care. That's not a bad thing and I'm like I need to. You know, I do get emotional.

Kate Murrihy:

People do tell me that when I'm they can tell when I'm really passionate about something I'm speaking about in meetings or any situation, because they say they can hear it in my voice. But somehow over the years I've trained myself to still manage to hold my words together. When I get like that, I can still articulate what I need to say, but obviously the tone of my voice or something changes and people can tell. But once upon a time I probably just would have tried to stop that, whereas now I'm like nah, I'm going to be very emotional and you're all going to witness it.

Jenny Cole:

Yes, yes, and you're absolutely right. We don't get emotional about things that we don't care about, and we only care about things that are of value to us, and you've got such a strong value about equity and inclusion and doing the right thing that that even comes across in terms of those high expectations that we talked about, which which allows you to be both consistent and congruent, like they're not. You're not emotional in terms of you're going to get a different Kate every day. You're going to get an angry Kate about something if it's important, and you're going to get the same angry Kate tomorrow if it's still important, but you'll get calm consistency at other times. Are you self-reflective and if so, how do you do that?

Kate Murrihy:

Yeah, very much so and always have been, you know, so it's always. I'm probably that, you know. I wouldn't say I'm a perfectionist, but I like to do things well and that's those high expectations for me. And so along the way, I reflect a lot on how I can be better and how I can do better if I feel like I haven't been my best self that day. Yeah, from a classroom level right up to leadership and my work with others around me. So, yeah, I often reflect with others. Like I said, I've got this great group of colleagues where we're often going. I just need to sound something out with you and talk it through. And you, jenny, you know, yeah, being able to reflect with others, I think, is really important, because getting perspective is always a good thing.

Jenny Cole:

What I always love about our conversations is, occasionally you'll just pop up in my calendar because you've booked a session and I'm like, oh, kate's got something important to discuss, and it's never a grizzle or a whinge, it is just a higher level. Help me sort through this, because I can't in my community, because I can't for whatever reason, and I always love that because it's not just you know. Yeah, you really want to unpick something and help you get your logic out, which is something that I always, you know, really enjoy in our conversations. If you had some tips for new or aspiring leaders, what's some advice that you could give them?

Kate Murrihy:

Probably the classic be reflective, but don't be hard on yourself. Um, it's probably taken me a long time to be okay with messing up every so often, but as long as I own it and go yeah, my bad, like I really didn't do that as well as I could have. I think that's really important. I think that's good modeling for others as well as I could have. I think that's really important. I think that's good modelling for others as well, because it's easy when you step into the leadership positions to think you can't fail.

Jenny Cole:

Yes.

Kate Murrihy:

But it's okay to say oh, I'm sorry, I just messed that up, yeah.

Jenny Cole:

And that's Brené and her vulnerability again, which is, I don't know, sorry, stuff that up, yeah.

Kate Murrihy:

Yeah, because we're humans. Yeah, Any other advice, not taking on board everyone else's stuff. I said before about support, not looking like doing it for others, doing your job for them, and I think that's really important, because the support and just doing stuff for people gets very confused a lot of the time, because often we're in these roles, because we're the doers, we're the ones who just you know like we're busy people, we're used to just getting stuff done and it is easy to fall into that habit of just doing stuff for others. But how are they ever going to learn if we're just doing it for them all the time? And so support looks like sitting with them and talking them through the process and then letting them have a go and if it's not right, then giving them feedback on what needs to change. You know all those things that we all know, but again, just making time to do that yeah, yeah.

Jenny Cole:

How do you find time to do that with your team?

Kate Murrihy:

I think it's probably it's something I prioritize during during the school day and maybe to my own detriment at times, because that means a lot of stuff has to wait till after school hours. But I've always been of the thought that during the school hours I have access to teachers and students, so that needs to be my priority. You know, of course, at times things crop up that you just have to do, but if we're on a dot together, I see that as an opportunity to have a cup of tea and a chat if they feel like they want to, and an opportunity to check in your break times and things like that as well.

Jenny Cole:

And that feels like being available rather than open door, which is I am here if you need me, and yeah.

Kate Murrihy:

Yeah, it's not very often they won't see me, but they know that if they don't see me, that's probably meaning I've got something I've really got to get done that day.

Jenny Cole:

Yeah yeah, and so do you have any favourite books, podcasts, professional learning that you would recommend to others?

Kate Murrihy:

professional learning that you would recommend to others. Yeah, if you're delving into the cultural standards framework, I would definitely look into the professional learning run out of the Aboriginal education team from statewide services. Sorry, non-public sector people, but I just can't speak highly enough. There's a couple that I've done, particularly around culturally appropriate resourcing. That I've actually done more than once because I feel like I learn stuff every time I go back reading. In terms of leadership, I do.

Kate Murrihy:

There was one that you recommended a long time ago. Um, that one minute manager meets the monkey yeah, meets the monkey, because I I love how that gives you a framework to have conversations and I think it's out of that where it's like if it's going to take more than five minutes, then that needs to be a different time where you can sit down and devote the space to have that conversation. It's just some of those little things that I was like, wow, that's yeah, I like it resonated a lot with me. It was quick and easy to read and I got. I go back to it all the time yeah and I'm forever throwing it at others.

Kate Murrihy:

I'm like this is what you need.

Jenny Cole:

I have three copies, so that I've always got them shuffling around. Yes, indeed, and I often say to people don't buy it because your boss has got a copy on their shelf. Go and grab it off their shelf yeah, yeah, yeah, that one in particular.

Kate Murrihy:

But I guess some of my big learnings have come from the confidence code. Yeah, that I got from you again years ago. Um, and some Brené Brown stuff. I think I know a lot of us talk about her, but she, she just hits the nail on the head with stuff and yeah yeah, yeah, I think so too.

Jenny Cole:

Um, any final thoughts, anything you've not talked about that you'd like to share with, with the people listening today. Oh, no, I think I've done my usual trick of oversharing really, oh no, I know you've got a few more secrets in there, kate, but we'll leave them locked up in the box for the time being. Thank you so much for your time and I'm sure that the listeners will get a great deal out of, if nothing else, the fabulous resources that you've recommended and from listening to your journey today. Thank you, kate. No, thank you.