From the Principal

Early in my teaching career, I was applying for a position of mathematics teacher at a prestigious institution and my principal at the time, Ross Shaver, gave me some pointers for my upcoming interview. Looking back now, it is surprising that he gave me any guidance at all as there was the potential that he would lose his Assistant Head of Mathematics (maybe he was trying to get rid of me) but he did tell me subsequently that he knew that if one of his teachers were to be accepted at this particular institution it would cast a favorable light on his own leadership. In any case he gave a little booklet titled Principles of the Principalship and he directed me to read one section in particular titled The Curriculum.

There are two rather interesting strains to the direction that Mr. Shaver took in guiding me in my reading and thought prior to an interview for a teaching position. First there is the question of why he directed me to read from a booklet about the Principalship when I was contemplating a move to a straight teaching position from one where I had some administrative duties. Second there is the question of why he thought reading about curriculum in general would be helpful to one seeking a position focused entirely on one discipline.

Going even further back into my past, as a late teenager I was drafted into the army. I absolutely dreaded the thought of doing a stint in the armed forces but as it turned out I loved the life and count the experiences as among the most memorable and character building of my life. I learnt more about myself, my capabilities and my warts than at any other time in my life. One of the important lessons I learned from my army life pertained to employee selection and promotion. The army philosophy, as I understand it, is that in determining whether to promote someone or not, one should always look two steps ahead. If you are impressed with the work of a private and are thinking of promoting him to the rank of Lance Corporal, first consider the possibility of the person under consideration being able to someday make the rank of Sergeant. In other words, does he have the potential to achieve a rank two steps above the one he is applying for? If so, then he will most likely to make a good Lance Corporal. I think there is much wisdom in this principle and that, I believe now, is what my mentor Mr. Shaver was thinking when he gave me the booklet about the principalship. His belief was that by assessing a candidate's capability for a position two levels higher than the one being applied for, one would gain an indication of the potential success of the candidate in the lower level job. He believed that in directing me to think about the principalship I would have a better vision of what it would take to be successful as a teacher at that highly regarded educational institution.

In my current position of Principal at Woodstock School I am very conscious of the need to provide avenues of promotion within the school so that we will retain good teachers. I am also conscious of the advantages of having a teacher who has a broader focus than just the classroom. So, in interviewing potential teachers I am always on the lookout for potential and ask questions about the broader aspects of education such as the place of the arts in a science focused school or the place of a fitness program for all students. These, and similar broad educational questions give me some idea of how a candidate might grow into a leadership role. And while I don't believe that all the teachers at a particular school need to have this global perspective, it is important to have some who do, for without such, one has a school full of individuals who are only interested in their own particular subject discipline. A school must provide depth of knowledge and at the same time broaden students' knowledge beyond their classroom experiences.

This leads me to the second question I raised as to why Ross Shaver directed me to read, in particular¸ about curriculum. This was a booklet relating to the principalship and as such it was not about the curriculum in mathematics or English, but rather about a school's curriculum. One critical phrase I took from that little booklet and one that has remained with me throughout my career is this: The curriculum of a school is everything a student takes away with him.

Let me talk about this from the Woodstock perspective. In my book, everything a student takes away from Woodstock constitutes the curriculum-learning about ferns that appear in the monsoons, learning how to deal with leeches that fall into your hair as you walk along overgrown paths, learning what to do about your roommate who plays computer games until two a.m., learning how to approach your best friend about his body odor, learning what differential equation to apply to a particular physics problem. In looking at our curriculum, then¸ as I have been doing since my arrival on the hillside last July, everything is up for discussion. Our curriculum must be broad and deep; as a school we can show the world a model curriculum based on everything that surrounds the student.

We in the education world have been brainwashed into thinking of curriculum as the French curriculum and the music curriculum, as opposed to "everything a child takes away from a school." It is up to us, the Woodstocks of the world to talk with potential employers, with politicians and with university recruiters, that beyond marks and grades is another whole world and it is that world in combination with marks and grades that constitutes a student profile. Let us look beyond what a child is achieving in the classroom setting, to what he or she has the potential to achieve in light of the expanded, broad experiences that make up the "everything a student takes away from the school" curriculum.