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Photo by Shutter Speed  Last night we had our annual leavers’ dinner and the kids were sharing memories of their time at school. There were lots of comments about camps, water fights, favourite teachers, etc, but one person talked about going to school in a ‘bubble’ and lock down at home. While I listened, the […]

Photo by Scott Webb  How’s your breathing going? Is it shallow and fast, or slower and deeper? What do you notice about your breathing when you’re stressed and under the pump? Do you even have time to notice? It’s the end of the year, and chances are there are lots of times daily, as you […]

Photo by eniko kis    It’s Week 7 and using our analogy of a school term being much like a distance race, this is the hard part. People are feeling their usual weak spots – a slight hamstring twinge here and a growing blister there. This is the time when members of your community get […]

Photo by Peggy Anke I’m watching my partner juggle balls in the air, literally. She’s actually throwing three balls in the air and trying to catch them all without dropping a single one. She’s counting out loud; one, two, three. She’s building some sort of rhythm so that she can make everything both fly and […]

Photo by Barbara Zandoval  Protecting Your Own Borders No judgements from me on the recent American politics because I simply don’t know enough to make an intelligent contribution to any debates. But what I do know is there’s been a lot of talk about ‘protecting our borders’ which implies that there’s some sort of threat […]

Photo by Felipe Pérez Lamana  I reckon that the word YET must be one of the best, most powerful, most positive words in the whole dictionary. I’m struggling to think of a time, any time, when inserting the word YET into a sentence, or a thought, hasn’t resulted in a positive reaction of some sort […]

Photo by Andreas Klassen  As Week 3, Term 4 comes to a close, pretty much everything on your ‘to do’ list becomes time limited. Hiring people, spending budgets/creating new ones, strategic planning, appraisals, – there’s a whole plethora of ‘stuff’ that is rolling towards the annual deadline. There’s only so much that you can fit […]

. As we head into the uncertain waters of the fourth Term I’ve come up with a brain dump of ideas (let’s not call them goals!) that might just help to get me through. Maybe they might help you get through as well! Enjoy your Term everyone! Know that although times may be uncertain, I […]

Photo by Olga Guryanova In the sport of rugby union, there’s a thing called a ‘scrum’ where the opposing teams’ forwards push against each other while trying to win the ball. By design, scrums mean large forces are put on the players shoulders, necks and backs and to limit possible injury, these contests used to […]

Photo by Natasya Chen You’ve made it through Term Three. Congratulations! Some of you are beginning Surplus Staffing processes, some of you are fending off complaints, some of you are working through the appointment tightwire, some of you are arguing dollars in the budget cycle, and some are just finding it hard to find time […]

Photo by Annika Gordon  The good news – One week to go, and if you live in South Canterbury New Zealand like I do, Monday is a public holiday – the term break is almost close enough to reach out and touch. The potentially stressful news – We need to hire some teachers and it […]

There’s something about sitting on a Dunking Machine at your own school Fair waiting to be unceremoniously dunked by a huge line of kids, that is a great leveller. In fact it’s more than that – it’s a great lesson in the need for us all to never take ourselves too seriously. As I sit […]

  When you can’t do everything, you need to prioritise, and this is where the world’s simplest sorting tool shines – Hell yes! or Hell no! Example: “Can you add me to your reliever pool?”                       Hell yes! Should I start work on the 2025 budget?  […]

  I’m sitting in a Board meeting. It’s probably mid 2017 sometime. A report from the NZEI (the New Zealand Primary Teachers Union) has just come out and it’s painting a pretty bleak picture about stress levels in New Zealand Schools. In particular, things look remarkably dim for our nation’s Principals. The report suggests that […]

 Creative Commons Attribution I’ve seen a lot of comments recently about the dilemma of not having enough teachers to cover classes. The situation is clearly dire in many schools/areas and does not seem to be resolving anytime soon. And the smaller the school, the closer to this pain point becomes the principal. Maybe I’m biased […]

Photo by Amada MA Last week I found myself down on the lower field throwing gumboots and measuring distances. Ok, so I wasn’t throwing gumboots – my school was. It was part of a fun afternoon we were running, celebrating the Olympics. No doubt schools were doing something similar all around the motu. Being a […]

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez “Willpower is overrated. If you want to eat healthier, don’t work hard to avoid stopping at the cookie jar when you walk into the kitchen. Get rid of the cookie jar.”   Seth Godin Let’s apply this thinking – If staff are distracted in meetings, Start with screens closed. If you […]

Photo by Sam Schooler “You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.” – Pema Chodron This quote popped up in my life sometime this week. It seemed particularly relevant as I opened the window, poked my head outside and felt the full force of the winterly southerly blast on my face. Woah! It […]

Photo by Bruno Nascimento Just over halfway through the year . . . how did that happen? No doubt you have a few important things to do next week. If you shared your calendar, I’m pretty sure we’d see meetings, school events, PLD, class visits, strategic reviews, duty commitments, reports due, etc, etc. But would […]

. The famous Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, once said “Never shirk the proper dispatch of your duty, no matter if you are freezing or hot, groggy or well-rested, vilified or praised, not even if dying or pressed by other demands.” Basically he was saying do your duty and do it as best you can with the […]

Photo by Anthony Tori  What do you stand for? I was at a convention last week where one of the speakers shared an epiphany moment they had a few years ago. They were at a cross-road in their career and were forced to take time off from a busy job. It slowly hit them that […]

Photo by Lan Gao This week I’m writing from the top of the gondola in Queenstown, watching the group of kids that I’m with zooming down the luge. It’s hardly tropical as I watch, and the wind chill must be less than zero. Yet the kids are all happily zooming past… most in shorts, a […]

Photo by Kelly Sikkema Can you remember when you were sick for a few days 5 years ago? What about a year ago? Me either. I can remember the times I broke a bone or had some sort of medical intervention, but not the times a seasonal bug flattened me for a few days. I […]

Photo by Jan Kahánek We do so much writing in our professional lives that whenever I hear the word “journaling” my mind kind of freezes over. We write reports, newsletters, strategic plans, opinions, instructions, curriculum documents, more reports – we’re constantly writing. Turns out though that “journaling” is one of those things that can really […]

Photo by Kelly Sikkema It’s audit time in New Zealand schools. A state appointed auditor has a close look at the financial performance of your school (with a few random ‘add-on’ questions included). This can be a process akin to dental surgery or it can go quietly in a low-key type of way. What I’ve […]

Photo by Alexandra Gorn on Unsplash Last week David wrote a powerful piece called 4am. It’s well worth reading if you haven’t already done so! It reminded me a lot of the sleep pattern/habit that I’m currently in and which I find really annoying! Most mornings I find myself lying awake in bed, about an […]

An eon ago you woke up, and try as you might, you just can’t get back to sleep. Random thoughts, ideas and worries flick through your mind in a messy cascade of wakefulness. You don’t really know how long this has been going on, but it feels almost endless. And you know this is bad […]

It’s the beginning of a new Term.  You find yourself standing in the staffroom looking at the Term planner. It’s full of rows and columns, numbers and days.  At one point, very recently, the planner was pretty much empty. Now you look at it and you see the empty boxes made up by the intersecting […]

Photo by Garrett Jackson One quarter through this new year and you’re probably already behind on some of those aspirational goals that you set with the energy and optimism that the Christmas holidays brought. This is business as usual for most of us mortals and nothing to worry about, but over the last week we […]

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona  Ok, so I’m a bit of a slow learner. That’s probably no surprise to some of you, let alone me! I’ve just come across OSHO’s wonderful quote. He says; “Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.” Ooooh! I like that! I’ve always fancied a bit of rebellion, or at least […]

Photo by Nubelson Fernandes  How open are you to change? The answer will vary based on a number of factors – not the least being how busy you are when the possibility arises. As we are currently in a 5 day mini-break, and with the April school holidays only a fortnight away (in NZ anyway), […]

Photo by Anna Samoylova  It’s been almost two years since I was last on school camp. And to be honest, the last time I was on camp I wondered a lot whether it would be my last. Turns out it wasn’t and it isn’t. I’m pretty grateful about that. I do like a good school […]

  Last weekend our school held one of those uniquely NZ events – a working bee. There are things happening on our site this year and we needed to remove/prune a large number of trees and shrubs. So out went the word to the community – help needed. When I got onsite just before 8am […]

Photo by amirali mirhashemian  I used to like reminding my students, when they’d tell me that things were too hard or just simply too much, that the key to beating this sort of stuff is to think of it all as a hamburger. Yup a hamburger. Stick with me here. What I used to tell […]

Photo by Sergio Capuzzimati  The thought below came out of a recent conversation with a colleague where we were discussing the the willingness (or otherwise) of some newer staff members to take on extra responsibilities when needed. They were frustrated at this situation and wanted change, but at the same time were grateful that many […]

. The tide comes in and the tide flows out.  This happens twice a day; not quite like clock work, but as close to it as possible without a human hand guiding it. To be honest it’s better this way. So too do emotions. And the confusions that flow with them. Sometimes you find yourself […]

Photo by Markus Spiske  When the road works signs went up along the local road I drive every day, I think everyone  noticed them. They were brightly coloured and eye-catching. Everyone slowed down, some even got right down to the new 30km/hr limit. A fortnight later, the media were reporting that traffic was speeding by, […]

Photo by Ethan Robertson    And so ends 2023 for the Forty Hour team. Thanks for following along and being part of our push to challenge the status quo of principalship in Aotearoa New Zealand. You 100% should ‘clock out’ too when the time comes, but if you find yourself lying on a beach somewhere […]

Photo by Nils  It’s been quite a year. In fact, it’s been quite a few years now. And it looks like next year, and the following, will also be quite a year or two as well! Congratulations. You have made it through this “Quite a Year” phenomenon. Well almost. A week or so to go, […]

  People often comment on the financial difference between working in the public sector and working in a business. When contracts are being negotiated comparisons are made and we often end up bemoaning  the relative under pay. But it’s not under payment that is causing me to age a little more quickly this week, it’s […]

Photo by Kamran Chaudhry  Ok, so we all know that everyone experiences some level of anxiety.  For some of us it might be as simple as that nagging little thing in the back of our mind that tells us we’ve missed something important.  For others it might be more  like a suspenseful movie playing and […]

Photo by Chris Abney  Three weeks to go in Term 4 – welcome to the jungle! This is the time when I start to have a nagging feeling that the human brain (mine) isn’t made to work at this pace. I was standing in the playground after school this week and simply could not remember […]

Photo by Letizia Bordoni  With Uncertainty There Are Always Choices Over the last few weeks, there’s been a lot of talk about the changes coming our way in the Education sector in New Zealand as a result of the change of Government. They say that change is the only constant. And whoever “they” is, they […]

Photo by Rod Long  How’s your urgent list going? Getting longer or starting to glow with an ominous neon highlight? As the clock ticks down for the last few weeks of this year, it’s easy for the ‘urgent’ stuff to cloud what’s important. Urgent by itself is not necessarily a reason for something to be […]

Photo by Liam Martens  I once spent a week in Wellington as part of an initiative only the ‘senior’ members of principalship will remember. It was called the Principals’ Planning Development Centre. An experienced leader could apply after a minimum 5 years in the role and if selected, had access to an intensive, immersive course […]

Photo by Albert Stoynov  When I was 17, which is a little bit younger than I am today, I began my first three week posting at a primary school as part of my first year of teacher’s training.  Sadly, I don’t remember the name of the teacher who stood in front of the class that […]

Photo by Georgia Vagim What a double header we have this weekend! On Sunday we have a classic sporting event between the All Blacks and Ireland with the experts picking our Irish friends as the probable winners. Despite the predictions, right up until the moment I’m proven wrong, I’m hoping deeply that our team wins. […]

Photo by Benjamin Davies Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end of another term. You’ve done it! No doubt there have been some misfires, dropped balls, and a few times when everything has seemed just a little icky and maybe a bit stuck. But you’ve made it anyway; like you always do. It almost seems […]

Photo by Pedro Lastra You have probably heard the story about someone walking along a beach covered with starfish washed up by the tide. The starfish won’t last long out of the water and there are millions of them. Further along the sand is another person bending down and throwing the unfortunate creatures back into […]

Photo by krakenimages I really enjoyed David’s question last week; “What would this look like if it was easy?”  Which got me thinking and I want to extend this just a little bit further. What if you moved through your school, or learning place, as if you were the easiest person to work with? Please note […]

Photo by Ignacio Amenábar Principalship is sometimes described as hard, complex, or challenging, which can all be true at times, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was easy? And interestingly, ‘easy’ is very subjective. I’m guessing we all have aspects of the job that we find easy, but that others may well find […]

Photo by Brett Jordan Last week David provocatively asked “What would you do if you had only two hours a week in your job”. It hit a nerve with a number of people, including, unsurprisingly, me. There were elements of David’s piece that were mighty attractive. For a start, imagine only working for two hours […]

Photo by Waldemar  It’s February 2024 and the newly elected coalition Government has just launched its revolutionary education policy. All principals have been called to Wellington to learn about the fresh new AI derived curriculum and how it will transform their schools. Their excitement is palpable. This huge new project will dominate the next 6 […]

Photo by Kenny Eliason  I’m sitting at a local coffee house here in Timaru. Across the table from me sits my friend. He’s ordered a bucketful sized coffee brimming with three shots, a powdering of chocolate and a jaffa on the side. It’s going to be one of those conversations I guess, so I close […]

Photo by Brett Jordan Some tech experts are predicting that the AI revolution will effectively end email as we know it. Not because it will bring newer, better alternatives, but because AI written spam will overwhelm the system. Maybe. While we wait to see if this dire prophecy becomes true, the good old email reigns […]

Photo by Dylan Gillis    We’re now well and truly into the new Term. No doubt you’re just about to head into another board meeting, or you’ve just had one. Board meetings are always potentially stressful places. The main reason for this is because it involves people and their personalities. A Board meeting can be […]

Photo by Federico Beccari It’s Friday, and in New Zealand, the end of the first week back in a shiny new school Term. For some of you this is the first time you’ve made this milestone as a principal, for others you’ve been here literally a hundred times before. If you pause for a moment, […]

  Today we have a guest post from Saira Boyle. Saira has wide experience in leading schools and  is currently the principal of Mt Hobson Academy based in Auckland. She shares some confronting reality about our job, but also offers solutions that just might be what you need.   What’s your real insurance policy? Over […]

  And just like that we find ourselves at the back end of yet another Term. No doubt there were times when it felt like this Term would never end, but like everything it will and it does and it has, or nearly. This got me thinking about our cultural obsession with being happy. I […]

Photo by Afra Ramió  I was speaking to a newly minted principal the other day who was experiencing a strange phenomenon – they were finding their new job fairly easy! .   .   . I can still remember my first principalship, a week in and sitting at my new principal desk, with the door shut and […]

  As a profession we are relentlessly and continually in a state of goal setting. Our goals are supported by plans that are extended descriptions of how we expect we’ll successfully nail our goals. Often these plans are meticulously descriptive. This thing will happen first, and then this thing will happen and then this thing […]

Photo by Felix Berger  Corner cutting is about taking the shortest or most direct route to where you want to go. You’d think that would be a good thing, but this little idiom also carries the unhappy thought that you might be leaving something important out or are going to hit a metaphorical curb. Imagine […]

  When was the last time? We’re half way through the term and so I thought it might be a good idea just to give you a quick list of things to ponder! Ten things to ask: When was the last time you had a school related meeting in school time in a cafe downtown? […]

Photo by Markus Winkler  What is it about taking your own advice that is so difficult? There’s some sort of paradox at play that makes it easy (relatively) to give solid, helpful advice to just about anyone, but makes it 10x harder to follow for yourself. And that’s a nuisance because of all the people […]

. Things are pretty fraught at the moment. There’s the new restraint requirements, the new curriculum developments, the on-going contract negotiations with the government (are they even negotiations? They feel a bit like dis-negotiations). And there’s the constant wave of Covid sickness. Oh and as we head into the winter months there’s a new round […]

Photo by Roberto Sorin  If you are a NZ principal operating under the “work ban”, how is that going for you? 8am – 5pm on week days equals 45 hours (unless you are managing a lunch break . . . ). Most people that I’ve talked to are finding it impossible to do their usual […]

It’s that time of the cycle again – yup, the beginning of a new term. The winter terms are usually fraught with all sorts of mischief – but then again which term isn’t? So with this in mind, what sort of systems do you have in place that are simple enough to use when times […]

Photo by Louis Smit  Just like the cliché about a day being a long time in politics, contract negotiations can change quickly and the post below was written before the PPCB members settled this week . . . regardless, and no matter whether the NZEI members do likewise, conditions around our jobs simply have to […]

Photo by Chimene Gaspar  It’s the end of the term and so I’ve decided to make this week’s post particularly short. We constantly get bombarded with things that use up our time, our energy and quite often make us anxious. So here is a list of ideas that you can do in the following contexts: […]

  What would make your principal role better? If you wave a magic wand and remove the ‘but’ that floats alongside any honest conversation regarding the desirability of the principalship role, what changes? .   .   . Right now we are pushing for improvements to our employment contracts. Money and conditions (workload/sustainability). These things are outside […]

      Hi everyone, there are some of you who will be aware of this, and some of you who won’t, but after 28 years of principalship, I’m having a break. While no longer in the role as a principal, I feel as though I still have plenty to add. So I’m really happy […]

Photo by Nicole Baster Resilience is not singular. I wrote this last week after a chat with some awesome Wellington principals. We were discussing tactics that school leaders could use to make the job better and more sustainable. As we discussed deliberately recovering after periods of intense work, I could see people nodding but with […]

  Ok I’m going a bit OTT here, a bit Off The Topic, a bit off the reservation so to speak. But I’ve got to get this off my chest, and well, that’s gotta be a good thing for my well being and my ability to function as a human being. When I was a […]

. “At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half-mile before my hands start shaking.” – Matt Damon as Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity. I’ve always loved this line from the movie, even though my personal experience of running ‘flat out’ never left me with shaking hands . . . legs, heart, […]

Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN Ralph Waldo Emerson has a way with words and sentences. Especially with the inspirational type. He has this wonderful knack of saying the most sensible things when it comes to that thing that we all do every single day; living. Even more amazing he does so through the mist of time. […]