I met with my Independent Appraiser last week to determine and finalise my Professional Appraisal Goals for the year. The biggest goal that I am working towards and aim to achieve is developing and inspiring Leadership within our staff.

As an Aspiring Principal I had the superb mentoring and coaching of my then principal, who expertly guided me through various leadership dimensions and steps to principalship. Although I am only coming into my third year in this role, I believe it is vital to for me to coach and mentor others, to share the passion and further enhance my own leadership practices and beliefs.

Primarily I will be working with my two DPs, who each lead various areas within the school.

Together we have drafted a Leadership Plan (aligned to my goals) of what and how we want to achieve through the year. Aspects we are looking to include:

Day to day managing of Principalship (ie: staffing, funding, budgets etc), Open to Learning Conversations, Self Review and how to engage with this, and most importantly, “The Big Picture” – visioning and driving the curriculum, using assessment data to inform future actions and reading and reflecting on professional readings and research which informs our practice.

I am really excited by this and see it as a humbling and rewarding opportunity. This process allows me to metacognitively reflect and review my leadership, my experiences, beliefs and practices and to share and discuss with others what leadership entails. I find it humbling as it’s now my opportunity to share with others the excitement and reward of developing leadership.