Positively Leading

S2E1 - Transforming School Culture with Heidi McGlashan

• Jenny Cole • Season 2 • Episode 1

Share episode

Send us a text

Ever wondered how one educator can transform the entire culture of a school? In this  episode of Positively Leading the Podcast, we sit down with Heidi McGlashan, a dedicated educator and staunch advocate for often-overlooked students. Through  stories, Heidi shares her evolution from a music teacher to an advocate for students for literacy  She recounts pivotal moments that fueled her advocacy, including a personal story about her son's struggle with reading that will resonate deeply with any parent or teacher.

We also discuss the multifaceted challenges faced by teaching principals, exploring the difficult balance between administrative responsibilities and teaching duties. Heidi opens up about navigating these complexities, revealing how interruptions can  detract from strategic work. Drawing from experience she describes the dramatic turnaround of a complacent school into a high-performing one by setting higher expectations and fostering intentional leadership. This discussion is packed with actionable insights for anyone involved in educational leadership.

Finally, we shift gears to focus on strategic improvement and staff well-being. Heidi delves into the importance of narrowing down improvement agendas, creating middle leadership layers, and providing essential support to educators. Hear her thoughtful advice for aspiring leaders, including the significance of mentorship and the challenges of transitioning from teaching to leadership roles. This episode is a treasure trove of valuable insights, culminating in practical tips for fostering a comfortable and supportive working environment for teachers. Whether you're an educator, school leader, or simply passionate about education, this episode promises to enrich your understanding and inspire action.

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 to Positively Leading the Podcast. My name is Jenny Cole and I'm the founder and CEO of Positively Beaming, and I'm a coach, consultant and cheerleader for educators and leaders everywhere.

Jenny Cole:

Today. It's my absolute pleasure to welcome to the podcast and have as my guest Heidi McGlashan. Welcome, Heidi. Hello, so lovely to have you here.

Jenny Cole:

Heidi is a principal. She's currently on a career break and working as an executive coach and educational consultant. Her career in education spends 30 years in both primary and secondary in southeast Queensland and she's been a teacher and a leader across all levels of schools. When she's not currently supporting schools, she's a dedicated grandmother of one and she tells me soon to be three and she's returned to her hometown after 35 years away. Returned to her roots, a small rural community in western New South Wales. She loves hanging out at the local craft shop and singing with a local band. That just sounds delightful, and Heidi's a storyteller. So, even though I've got questions, I'm hoping that she just tells her fabulous stories and you get to glean some wisdom from them. But maybe you could start with. You told me you had some key experiences early in your career that made you passionate about being an advocate for students. Do you want to share what they are and why you think being an advocate is so important?

Heidi McGlashan:

Yeah, thanks, Jenny, it's interesting. So I've always wanted to be a teacher from the time I was little. I remember having, you know, my grandmother's dolls out on the back veranda and my grandmother as my students, and so I was always going to be a teacher. That was my passion and I was also heavily into music. So to become a music teacher was kind of the logical step.

Heidi McGlashan:

While I was teaching music at a high school I remember I was there were sort of two key experiences that led me down this particular path. The first one was I was supervising a senior English exam, which is weird because I was a music teacher, but I was just supervising an exam and it was what is called in Queensland the English communications. It's not anymore, but that was sort of the lower level ability kids. In doing the English exam I had another head of department. So I was a teacher, had a head of department walk into the room and want to give a message to the physics students and she looked around the room and she said oh, this is an Ecom class, they won't have any physics students, they're not smart enough to do that and walked out of the room and for some reason that stirred up this fire in my belly and I thought that's a big assumption to make you know, just because these kids are doing English communications doesn't mean they may not necessarily be doing physics and really made me feel that those kids didn't have anyone who was standing up for them. They'd been really given a label that these kids weren't our smart kids and so we don't actually have to do anything for them to support them.

Heidi McGlashan:

Now what happened next was I was working in a. It was a large high school in Logan, which, for those people who live in South East Queensland, logan's a really tough area. But those parents are really strong advocates for their children in many different ways and our teachers at that time probably weren't as strong an advocate for the children as the parents were. So we had a lot of behaviour problems. Behaviour was probably our biggest challenge at that school and we'd gone through a process as a school of trying to find a way to better manage student behaviour in order to get better outcomes for our kids student behaviour in order to get better outcomes for our kids and one of the programs that was tossed around was Responsible Thinking Classroom. I don't you're smiling there, jenny.

Jenny Cole:

I wonder if you I know what it is, but yes, yes, so I don't even know if it exists anymore.

Heidi McGlashan:

I haven't heard it for years and years. And you talk to young teachers and they go. Well, I don't know what you're talking about. So Responsible Thinking Classroom was essentially a withdrawal model where we then talk to kids about their behaviour and how we can do better. They were calling for applications for people who wanted to man the classroom and I thought maybe that's what I could do.

Heidi McGlashan:

I could be an advocate for the kids in this way, certainly dealing with, you know, those high need students, and so that's what I did. So I applied for that position and got it and sat in that role for about two and a half years working with those students, and in the meantime, my I guess my passion was also being really heavily drawn to literacy. Now, literacy is something we've talked about in education for years, but we've certainly had peaks and troughs of when it's become. You know we really need to focus on it, and so our school was doing some really targeted work around literacy, and I had an experience with my own child. So both of my children had learning difficulties and both of them have gone on to be really successful in what they've chosen to do, but at school was a really was really tough for both of them.

Heidi McGlashan:

So my son was about probably eight or nine, and we'd gone camping. So we're in a campground, you know, like a caravan park, and he said I'm going to need to go to the toilet so he's gone off to the toilet.

Heidi McGlashan:

He was gone for ages and I thought I have to go looking for him. I don't know where he's gone to. Anyway, we met walking back from the toilet and I said what has happened? And he was really upset. He said, mom, I got into the toilet. And he said I, I got into the toilet and he said I couldn't get out. So what do you mean? You couldn't get out? So there was a sign next to the toilet door that was explaining to people how to exit the toilet, because it was all you know, lock and key and push buttons and whatever and he couldn't read the sign to come back out of the toilet. And as a teacher and as a mum, that just broke my heart and I thought, oh, what am I doing? First, as a parent, but what are we doing in our schools to ensure that our kids can just access things that happen in their daily lives?

Heidi McGlashan:

basic stuff, yeah you know, it was real and it wasn't a hard sign, but it was still a literacy that he just didn't have his head wrapped around. And so my, my passion and my work changed from that behavior management looking after kids model to then well, how can I influence more more broadly still, advocating for students, but perhaps in a learning space? And so that's what led me to my first head of department role in teaching and learning now.

Heidi McGlashan:

I was a music teacher so I had very little experience in literacy very little experience so it was a very steep learning curve, but certainly one that put me on the path that I was then to follow for the next few years.

Jenny Cole:

Oh, that's so wonderful. And when you said so, a lot of people get into leadership because they want to make a difference. More broadly, talk us through your early leadership journey and you know where did you start and what lessons did you learn.

Heidi McGlashan:

Yeah, well, I was really. I think I've been really fortunate to have a lot of great leaders around me through my whole career and I think that's also how willing we are, as you know participants, to accept that leadership modelling around us. But in that school, where I was in the RTC and then also working on literacy, I had an amazing principal and deputy who are really strong advocates for me in developing my leadership and I applied for a position my first head of department position at another Logan school, and it was head of department of teaching and learning. It was one of those fancy new head of department jobs and I didn't really know what I was doing. But I remember before my interview I went in to see my principal and her and the deputy were sitting there and they went right, we've got some things for you, and they just handed me all of these policies and documents. You need to get your head around these before you go for your interview. I'm like, oh, I haven't seen any of these things before. But that was my first head of department position and I was there for a year in an acting capacity and I remember I was responsible for learning, support, indigenous kids, eald kids you know it was called Jigsaw actually, which is interesting because it was all those little puzzle pieces in one but also in rolling out a new curriculum that was happening in Queensland at the time.

Heidi McGlashan:

So my biggest learning there was in day one of that job. I was responsible for all of the teacher aides and I said to the principal do the teacher aides need to come to the student free day? And she turned around. She said you're in charge of them, you make the decision. And walked off. I thought, okay, I now have to actually be in charge of this group and make decisions.

Heidi McGlashan:

So that was probably my biggest learning then, and it was. It held me in great. That's obviously something I've remembered because I remember it vividly. But it allowed me to really take the bull by the horns and go right, what do I need to do to support this group of adults but also the group of kids that we are responsible for supporting? So that was a. That was a pretty exciting lesson. And my next step then was a permanent head of department for middle school, which was in Queensland at that time also a really new thing in a secondary school and again continuing to roll out that curriculum and student well-being at the same time. So I've had some really interesting portfolios in my middle leadership.

Jenny Cole:

Yeah and I'm hearing the willingness to um say gosh, I don't know how to do this, but give me a go and and let me get my teeth stuck into it and see what I need. Um, are you a risk by nature?

Heidi McGlashan:

some would say no, some would say yes. I would say, um, overt no, but inwardly I'm like, yes, I can do that, but I'm going to go away and do some learning about that before I put myself forward One in my very first acting principal position. My principal at the time said you need to remember that you don't need to make a decision quickly In most cases, unless you're in a critical incident, of course. In most cases, you don't need to make a decision immediately, so take the time to think about the decision before you do it, which I think was a really great piece of advice. So do I take risks? I'll have a go at something? Definitely have a go at something, but I want to make sure that we're aiming in the right direction, because I think what's really important in schools is that we have kids in our care for a short, finite time, and so the work that we do in schools is actually quite urgent and important. You only get one crack at it, you know, and before you know it, they're gone.

Jenny Cole:

Yes, and if you waste three years on a new initiative that doesn't work or they've got a bad teacher two or three years in a row, we've wasted a huge chunk of students' learning time, Exactly right. So we don't really have the opportunity to get it wrong, which means sometimes taking fast risks is sort of important. I know that you were teaching like you had a teaching component to some of those early leadership roles. That's a hard gig for those people listening who you know might be a team leader or a literacy leader or even a head of learning that's got a teaching component. What advice can you give them?

Heidi McGlashan:

oh, wow, that's. It's tricky, isn't it like? I remember back to those days and think I don't know how I managed it and I had a young family. You know that that time of your life and your career are all sort of happening at the same time and I think I was really clear in my early head of department days about time I was allocating to my own prep, because you still have to do that when you've got a, you know, a 0.5 teaching load, you still have to do your own prep for your classes and what time I was allocating to my role as head of department.

Heidi McGlashan:

I was very clear in setting boundaries for myself around time at home and time at school, and you know I had a friend who dropped my kids off at school in the morning so that I could be at school myself early, but I made sure I was home in the afternoon with my own children. So I think, setting those really clear boundaries, but also being really clear and this comes back to your leadership team, I think, jenny being really clear around what you're responsible for and what your own KPIs data targets, what is it that your principal really wants from you and what their expectations are, because it's really easy to look a bright, shiny ball and follow that bouncing ball instead of what you should be doing. So being really clear about what my work was and being really clear around my boundaries were two really important things for me.

Jenny Cole:

That's excellent advice, and I love the bit about being clear about what lane you're in, because you know when you're new in your leadership career and you're wanting to make an impression, sometimes you can do all the things and sometimes they're not your things to do or you can just wear yourself out and doing things that perhaps aren't important. Yeah, great advice. I do remember being a teaching leader a small school, when I was a teaching principal and I remember saying to my secretary, who was also part time I'm like some days I'm really good at answering the phone and some days I'm a really good teacher and some days I can be a principal, but some days it never happens all at once. So I wish I'd taken your advice and just allocated time to things and not let people drag me in other directions.

Heidi McGlashan:

yeah, and I think it's really easy to be interrupted by different things and so, being okay with that you know, I don't think I was very good at that. I think that's a reflection, since you know it would be if I was. I watch some leaders and I think, oh, they do that so well. You know, the interruption happens, whether it's a student or a parent or you know a crisis in a classroom, and, as a leader, they accept that that's an interruption to their day, they manage it and then they get on with what they were doing.

Jenny Cole:

I think that's a really great skill that I wish I had have been better at Awesome and you probably hear this in your coaching, but I hear it all the time which is people saying I just never get anything done during the school day, I save it all up till later, you know, which we know leads to burnout and so forth. And I'm starting to wonder if we actually get a little bit addicted to the interruptions and we use that as an excuse not to do the deep work or the things that need to be done at a strategic or leadership level.

Heidi McGlashan:

Well, they're easier, kind of, aren't they?

Jenny Cole:

Then you feel helpful because you've helped out with some behavior or you've opened some gate for some tradesman or whatever the interruption is, and there's a little dopamine hit and you're good to go something.

Jenny Cole:

Tick, tick, tick and you get to the end of the day and you've actually achieved nothing. Yeah, um, I know, in your most, uh, recent school, you led your staff on quite a change journey. It was an average performing school and you got it to a high performing school. Can you share with us the deliberate and the not so deliberate things you did to transform that school over the time that you were there?

Heidi McGlashan:

Yeah, I was. It was and still is beautiful school and it was a large school. So we had about 1,100 students in a primary school on the Gold Coast Really high expectations from our community around education and wellbeing. When I first arrived there, there there was a feeling of complacency, so our kids came to school ready to learn most of them.

Heidi McGlashan:

You know they came to school ready to learn, they were reading at home, they were engaged in different activities outside of school, so, um, you know, being at school wasn't really a challenge for most of them, uh, and our teachers didn't have to work terribly hard to engage them because they came to school ready to learn. What happened as a result of that, over many years of that happening, was that we were accepting that kids getting Cs was good enough. That's okay. What we found is that we had a lot of kids who were way more capable than that, and our teachers were more capable than that. When we've got teachers and kids who sit in this place of complacency, there's a heaviness that sits in that school. You know it's, it's a just becomes a disengagement. I think so. When I arrived at the school that's where we're at we had these good kids, good parents, good school. It's good, um, and my brief had been from regional office, that this is a school that needs a bit of a shake-up. We need to shift it from a good school because it can actually perform a lot better than it is currently performing, and so it was an interesting conversation that I had at the end of my first semester there with my supervisor, who is still a very dear friend of mine and quite possibly the best mentor I've ever had. He was amazing. He's asked me the same question you just asked Jenny. He said what have you intentionally done to get you to this point? Because we were already on a really good trajectory. And I said, oh, that's a really good question, terry. I just do it because it feels right. He went okay. So let's unpack that a little bit, because we need you to be making deliberate decisions rather than just because it feels right. So some of the deliberate decisions that I made we were. We had a very big strategic improvement agenda which I paired back and I sat with our leadership team and said what are the big three or four improvement priorities that we're going to have for the next 12 months? And that's all we talk about. We don't let anything else filter in.

Heidi McGlashan:

Now, at that time, we were what's called a priority support review school. Now, at that time, we were what's called a priority support review school, so that's a school who has been identified as underperforming or some cultural issues. And there were definitely some cultural issues happening in our school and we were definitely underperforming. And so the school improvement board came in and they said right, what's your big improvement agenda? And we chose English curriculum. That's what we chose, and so anything else that came in to try to filter in, I was like the shield that just said no, first 12 months, this is what we do and that's all. And so everything we did had to align to that. That's all. And so everything we did had to align to that. So we created, we started to work with Lynn Sherritt and the Clarity work, and we also worked with HPT schools, so they were the two sort of external organisations that we brought in. And then I went right we need to improve teacher practice, we need to reduce cognitive load on teachers and we need to improve student outcomes, and we're going to do that by ensuring that teachers have what they need in terms of tools and resources, but also the learning that they need, because you and I both know, jenny, that you can't just say here you go, do that unless they have the learning that sits behind it, unless they have the learning that sits behind it.

Heidi McGlashan:

The other part of that puzzle that was really important, I believe, was as a primary school in Queensland. There's very it's becoming more and more prevalent now, but there was no middle leadership layer. There was teachers, deputy principal, that was it. Sometimes you had a head of curriculum, but essentially there's no middle leadership layer.

Heidi McGlashan:

Coming from a secondary school where there is middle leaders galore, I went, oh, there's too much work and not enough people to do it, so use the resources that I had to create a middle leadership layer.

Heidi McGlashan:

So we had I called them key teachers in the priority areas that we wanted to look at that were directly related to that delivery of the English curriculum. So we then had, like this middle leadership layer that would then working on pedagogy in the early years, critical thinking in the upper years, supporting that understanding of what's a learning wall, what's a bump it up wall, how do we give kids student voice around their English work. So we developed this great teaching and learning team that allowed the deputies to lead the strategic direction and to support parents and their teachers and their teams. And then we had this amazing teaching and learning team that were able to go in and model, support teachers in developing their curriculum and their resources. Like really, we've developed that over about two, two and a half years and in the first 18 months we went from what an average performing school to the school with the highest rate of student improvement in the region, which was pretty remarkable.

Jenny Cole:

Oh wow, that's amazing, pretty remarkable, fantastic. And so, as a senior leader in that space, what was your role? If the deputies were doing the strategic stuff and the teacher team were doing curriculum improvement? What were?

Heidi McGlashan:

you doing. I just drank cups of tea, jenny, right, yeah, good, yeah, great.

Heidi McGlashan:

It was really interesting, actually, because my thoughts around principalship are that my job is to a filter out the stuff that doesn't need to come in. So I became really a strong gatekeeper about what I would allow from regional and central office to come in and what filtered through and what I kept for myself and managed. I managed staff. You know. If we had any staff issues, I managed those and I had a really tight process of line management of my team. So I had three deputies a business manager, a head of curriculum, a guidance officer, a support team. So I had a lot of people in my group that I line managed. And so my role I was really clear around was I needed to make sure I had through lines, through all of those people, to make sure that the right stuff was happening in classrooms, and that was the process that I went through.

Heidi McGlashan:

I don't think for myself as principal. My job was to be all over everything. My job was to make sure I knew what was going on and that there was no, you know, lone cowboys. But my job wasn't to do everything. My job is to lead the strategic direction and to make sure that people have the tools and the resources and the learning that they need in order to do the work that they need to do.

Jenny Cole:

I love what you did there, and something that I've become very conscious of lately is that primary schools in particular because they're not used to having a middle leadership level and many of them do now but what I find happens is primary schools often run like families and not like organisations. They don't have an org chart where somebody is the line manager for something. We've still got this ability to be a teacher aid and jump up to the principal if they don't like what's happening in the early childhood. What you explained is you know you were responsible for your middle leader team and they were responsible for the people underneath them, and so that there was both a hierarchy, a chain of command for want of a better word but also communication channels that stuff got shared in. Is that how it worked? Were there ways of communicating within your school that needed to be realigned with your new structure?

Heidi McGlashan:

Yes, very much so. Actually, I remember my very first staff meeting, and so we had the student free days and whatnot, and we came our first staff meeting Tuesday afternoon and it was due to start at quarter past three, so school finished at three o'clock. 15 minutes is plenty of time to say goodbye to your kids, close your door and get to the staff meeting. And I was standing there with two of the deputies and I'm like there's two or three people sitting down Now. We had a staff of about 40 teachers and it got to 20 past three and I said where is everybody?

Heidi McGlashan:

And they went oh, this is normal, I've just gone. Oh my goodness, it's not going to be normal.

Heidi McGlashan:

That's not going to be normal here, and so we started the meeting. My goodness, it's not going to be normal. That's not going to be normal here, and so we started the meeting. I was very clear about my expectations around we're going to be here on time and when we come to a meeting, I expect that we're going to follow these ground rules. So we had some very clear ground rules that we all followed as a, as a, but we had some very different ways of working in terms of how we met and how we collaborated, because initially in one of my first meetings, they were doing PLTs.

Heidi McGlashan:

Plts is something that's, you know, been a thing, but there was no real understanding of what a professional learning team actually was. I was a big and still am a big DeFore fan, but the actual philosophy underpinning that work wasn't evident. They had a 10-week plan week one in our PLT, we do English, week two we do maths and I was like, oh, this is not collaboration at its finest. So worked with the leadership team about what could that look like? How can we use that time in a in a way that's a little bit more structured and there's some accountability there, because I don't want teachers coming offline for an hour and just faffing around talking about whatever they want to talk about. I want some structure behind that, because that's something that we're actually paying for as a time, but we also had our staff meeting time that we then started to devote to team meetings and allowing them to be involved in a team and really developing a strong sense of unity around how do we support our kids not just my kids, not just about my 28 kids.

Heidi McGlashan:

This is about as a cohort. There's six of us here as a cohort, so we've got about 120 students. Our kids need us to be working together. And how are we going to do that? So each team was assigned a deputy, so the deputy was very much leading those teams of teachers and my leadership of the leadership team was around making sure that we had clear expectations, clear lines of communication. So here's our common voice on this. When we leave this room, we're all going to be saying this we can fight it out in this room, but once we leave this room, this is what we say yep, and I was very, very clear about that, because we're not going to do a mum versus dad.

Jenny Cole:

No play one off against the other. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I know I'm going to have Dr Pete from HPT schools on the podcast a little later and I know you said you worked with them.

Jenny Cole:

And what I love about HPT schools is the structures that are replicable all the way from an executive leadership team right down to your PLTs or your team leader level, so that, again, reducing the cognitive load. We know that a meeting is going to look like this, it's going to run this way, it's going to have these norms and to me, that's leadership development, because we're teaching every single person on the team. If you end up in a leadership role, this is how you do it. These are the processes. As you said in the beginning, you weren't just making it up. There was some structure and routine around things. Did those structures and processes help to? Oh?

Heidi McGlashan:

yes, 100%. And you know it was interesting because the acting principal before my appointment she had engaged with HPT to come and work with our school on a student free day. So that was my first exposure to HPT. And so I just because I'm a bit of a rule follower, jenny, no, I don't believe that for a minute.

Heidi McGlashan:

So I kind of just went oh okay, pete says, do this. And so I just have to follow the bouncing ball, yeah, and that's what I did. And so Pete said, use this. I went, okay, and then Pete came in and did some, some workshops with us around how to get the most out of those, particularly those meeting agendas.

Heidi McGlashan:

Yeah, and that was fundamentally that shifted our process, shifted our way of working, our way of being in a team, and I remember we had we've been using HPT for quite a while and often what happens when we use a process for a long time, we become a little bit, you know, lax, a daisy about how to do that, and we found our teams were certainly heading down that path. So we decided to do, as a leadership team, a fishbowl activity. So we set up a bit like a podcast, jenny. We set up a table in the middle of the hall with a couple of microphones so that everybody could hear the conversation and we ran our leadership team meeting in front of the entire staff. Wow, how brave. Well, yes, we might have done a little bit of pre-planning but not much.

Heidi McGlashan:

So the conversations were authentic. We challenged each other, we yellow carded each other. You know, our process was authentic and we'd had a teacher who'd been acting as one of the deputies for a little while in our leadership team and he was back as a teacher and he came and said to us people were saying to him oh, that's a bit you know rubbish, and he goes no, that's actually exactly how they run their meetings. So it was great to have him to be able to say that. But what we wanted to show our teachers was we actually have to take this seriously. We're professionals. We need to be when we're at work, operating as teams, because we all have the same outcome in mind. We all want the best for the kids, and for us to do that, we need to be doing our job, and so those meetings and being really tight around how we collaborate with each other was really important.

Heidi McGlashan:

I guess the other important part about that too is we then. We didn't just limit it to teachers and leaders. We had our teacher aides and even our tuck shop staff, and our tuck shop staff loved it. They loved it. They felt like they were part of the school team. They had processes where they can voice their own concerns. You know, it empowers people to be part of our school community and I just, if I was ever to go back into a school, it is the very first thing I would do.

Jenny Cole:

Yeah, look, I agree, and it's the work that Pete taught me and that I take with me everywhere I go. And I've got a group of teacher aides there's quite a lot of them, about 30 of of them that came up with their own norms and they run their own meetings. They are the best norms. They're the ones I show everybody, because sometimes I don't really understand some of the other norms anyway, um, but I show people them and they're simple. Things like we arrive prepared, we um, and one that they put in was um, if we're too comfortable, we're not learning, because they're a group of ladies oh, so do I, because they all nodded and smiled at each other and then went bitched behind the.

Jenny Cole:

So we just put in some of those things, and I love it. It just means everyone can be included because they know what they're supposed to do, um, and they know how their voice can be heard. Let's get back to. You must have worked with either a lot of middle leaders, but also a lot of aspiring leaders. What's the advice you give to those people who are aspiring to move out of the classroom and into more leadership roles?

Heidi McGlashan:

My first piece of advice and this is advice I have actually given to aspiring leaders is do the job that you are currently doing really really well. Do that job really well. Find yourself a really good mentor and be clear about what it is that you're passionate about, because what you know for me, it was initially behaviour and student advocacy. Because what it you know for me, it was initially behavior and student advocacy, and so that was really an easy way for me to then go oh, that can be my next leadership step. But, being really clear in your mind, I remember having a conversation with one of my deputy principals when I was a teacher and I made a meeting time with her and she said oh, what can I do for you, heidi? And I said I'd like to be a deputy. Now I was a teacher, you know. And she went okay, have you got a time frame around that? Yes, when my daughter, when my daughter, reaches school age. So I've got three or four years. What do I need to do now?

Heidi McGlashan:

I probably wouldn't advise anybody having that conversation, because it's it's not about being a, because it's not about being a deputy, it's not about being a leader, it's about doing the work that you're really, really excited about, because leadership is tricky and there's some beautiful, beautiful you know celebrations and acknowledgements that comes with being a leader, but the work is hard and it is tough, and particularly when you're moving from teaching role to leadership role in the same school.

Heidi McGlashan:

I think that's one of the trickiest things to do when you, when the people that you work with, become the people that you're leading, and how that relationship changes. But yeah, so my advice is be really good at what you're doing and be really clear about what it is that you want to do, so you're not just applying for every single leadership position. You want to be developing your skills, maybe seeking some professional learning around those aspects that you're really passionate about, but you don't need to be applying for the literacy coach, the numeracy coach, the behaviour management support. Be really clear about what it is that you want to be doing, because the work's going to be challenging. You need to be excited about it.

Jenny Cole:

And I often get really disappointed, though, with people who've become an expert in something. They're the literacy expert, and they want to become a deputy so that they can let everybody know about their literacy stuff, and I think that's going to be about this much of your job. In fact, you're probably going to have to get rid of some of that, except that knowledge stays with you, and it's brilliant but you're not going to actually just be able to do that a hundred percent of the time.

Jenny Cole:

So it's about who do I want to be when I become a leader and we talked about processes before, but I know that you're really good with people. You need to be able to bring people together and you need to work it out, you know, because people are the ones that'll get you down.

Heidi McGlashan:

That's right, that's exactly right, and the and the leading people is the actual part of leadership. Having something that you're passionate about and knowing a lot about is super important, but once you get into that role, if you are just the person who's ramming you know science of reading down everyone's throat they're going to be very hesitant to take on board anything that you tell them, and so being able to lead people is the key part about leadership, and that's why doing what you are, what's your role currently and doing that really well maybe supporting some other people to also do their work really well is in is a is a good step, um, but certainly that step from teacher to middle leader is probably the hardest step to make yeah, yeah, I think was certainly my hardest.

Jenny Cole:

Yeah, when your um, your friends and colleagues become people that you lead and we know that one of the biggest mistakes is, you know, not having the hard conversations because they're a friend or that's a really tough transition and I've yet to work out if it's. I think it is hard in your own school, particularly if you're younger and you've got older colleagues, but it's also difficult when you get into a new school and all of a sudden you don't have those people who love you and know you. You've got to re-establish yourself. Yeah, they're both tricky. I think you're right If you're really passionate about something, then you're solid in your confidence in that and you can learn the other things.

Heidi McGlashan:

Yeah, I do think it's really important for aspiring leaders to gain some insight, learning into how to lead people yeah so understanding who you are as a leader, but then understanding what leadership can look like and maybe having a couple of different mental models around leadership to consider, because we don't we certainly don't get taught that as a teacher.

Jenny Cole:

Yeah no and teach. But yes, exactly, and you've talked a couple of you that you've had a couple of really good mentors. Um, have you had different mentors over your career, or coaches or networks? Talk to me about who supported you.

Heidi McGlashan:

I've had it, I've had, like, some really great ones. Very early on in my career I had a deputy principal who kind of took me under her wing and she now well, she's now retired and she lives in Tasmania and she's a very dear friend of mine who was always asking me hard questions. And then, you know, as I moved through my leadership journey, I got to Terry, who I spoke about, and he was also great, and still is great, at asking me hard questions, and both of them actually. I remember Terry telling me one day he was really impressed with some work I'd done and he said this is great, first order change. And I went oh thanks, terry had no idea what first order change was and walked away and he just sort of smiled and nodded. He said I can't wait to see what you do next. So he was celebrating but also giving me this thought piece to walk away with.

Heidi McGlashan:

So as soon as he left, I'm Googling first order change. It's actually not that great, it's not that important. So okay, terry, I see your point. So now I need to move to second order change. And then I went right, now I need no know what I need to do. Um, so I think having those mentors, but people that ask you really challenging questions so you know celebrate when you're doing some really great stuff, um, but they walk the journey with you yes, they don't do it for you, they walk alongside.

Jenny Cole:

Yep, yeah, yeah so important um any professional learning that you've done.

Heidi McGlashan:

That's really stood out over your career obviously all HPT stuff has been, you know, amazing uh. But I did one piece of professional learning years ago and I don't even know if they exist anymore, but they were called Impact and it was a pedagogical framework that had been developed in Queensland by two specific people. And I remember going to that particular professional learning and it was a pedagogical approach that we then took on board at our high school and I was a deputy at the time and I was just like so disappointed that I wasn't a teacher because I thought oh this is something I can really get my teeth into, but it gave me a really good language to be able to support teachers.

Heidi McGlashan:

So that impact training was some of the best training that I did. You know it was critical thinking, how to, how to use the values of inquiry around, getting kids to think and not just know stuff. That's the new. That's how what our kids are going to be doing when they leave school is how do we get them to be able to critically think and analyse and look at things through different lenses and different perspectives other than just their own?

Jenny Cole:

Yeah, I know that many of the schools and communities that you've worked in despite your last school being sort of pretty normal in inverted commas, you've worked in some really complex and challenging schools and that can take a huge personal toll. What have you learned about wellbeing and what key messages would you like to share about wellbeing with teachers and leaders?

Heidi McGlashan:

I've learned some really interesting and tough lessons about wellbeing, jenny, and I think my biggest lesson is about setting yourself boundaries.

Heidi McGlashan:

Teaching and educational leadership are jobs that are never, ever finished.

Heidi McGlashan:

So you can be at school at 6.30 in the morning and not leave till the cleaners kick you out at 6 o'clock at night and then go home, have dinner and work again till midnight, and you could do that every day and still not be done. So I think having for me particularly particularly during COVID, because that was such a tricky time for all of us um being really clear around what my work hours are and when I don't get my laptop out, um, and I started leaving my laptop in the car. We had to take it home in case you go into lockdown overnight, so I would just leave it in the car. So I thought as soon as it comes out of the car and comes onto the dining room table, I feel this pull to do stuff. So having those really tight boundaries around what's my work and what's my home and the other really valuable part in that is at home is doing things that are physically like getting, like moving, do something to move yeah, whether it's going for a walk, I love Pilates.

Heidi McGlashan:

At the moment I'm loving Pilates, but I used to do high intensity interval training, which I wouldn't do in a pink fit now, but you know I loved doing that but also doing something that uses a different part of your brain to what you ordinarily do. So don't go home and read. You know something about that's work-related or leadership-related. Leave that, allocate some time in the workday to do that, if you can, um, go home, do I don't know go and take photos, go and I I crochet and do embroidery, but and that uses a different part of my brain. So you know switching on different parts of your brain so you can switch that work brain off, because otherwise it will switch off for you.

Jenny Cole:

Great advice and you and I have talked about the value of movement to move through the stress cycle. And I was talking to another principal colleague who said you know I'm not exercising and it's really hard and you know I have to leave here and take Henry to soccer practice and the dog, and you know. And I said why don't you take the dog with you and you walk the dog around the oval? And I said why don't you take the dog with you and you walked the dog around the oval. And she sends me photos now of walking around the oval.

Jenny Cole:

She said it's amazing. She said normally I would sit in my car finishing off work or answering emails and boundaries. Yeah, boundaries so important to our wellbeing. Any final pieces of advice, any final stories, anything that you'd want to share to us? Look?

Heidi McGlashan:

I think I have one little pearl of wisdom from a principal that I had who she's just beautiful and she's still a principal and I love. I follow her on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and she's just this amazing, stylish, beautiful principal. And she came into our school, was breath of fresh air, you know, and our classrooms were pretty dingy, it was pretty run down place and people were flat and run down and the business manager had a really tight hold on the money purse, you know, nothing was getting past his fingers. And she said we are air conditioning all the staff rooms. So in South East Queensland, that is like, oh, thank you. And we were all like, oh, my goodness, we're going to come back, you know, in January and our staff rooms are going to be air conditioned.

Heidi McGlashan:

And there was just this boost of enthusiasm and energy and she said to us as a leadership team so I was a head of department at the time and she said feed the teachers or they eat the children. Yes, exactly. And I just thought, oh, you know. So what she taught me was look after your staff, look after their well-being, manage their cognitive load, like, do all the, that's your job as a school leader, that's your job and um, and I'm grateful for her, for teaching me that very important lesson and for air conditioning our staff friends oh gosh, yes, and my very valued very first mentor gave me the book.

Jenny Cole:

If you don't feed the teachers, they'll eat the students. It's actually a book um it's, it would be very old now, but it's so that absolutely warms the cockles of my heart, because I couldn't agree more. And that doesn't mean making school all about the adults, but we've got to provide people with the basics where they can feel comfortable. And that's such a lovely story. Thank you so much for joining me, Heidi. I am going to share your contact details, if that's okay, so people can catch you on LinkedIn or wherever it is, and I will try and link to those various books that we've talked about over the course of today. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. Lovely. Thanks very much, jenny. You're welcome.