One of the core elements of Springboard Trust’s work with principals is making sure everyone is heard.
From stakeholder engagement to distributed leadership, empowering everyone in a school environment to influence and lead on their own terms is key to positively impacting student outcomes.
For Suzi De Gouveia, principal at St Teresa’s School in Riccarton, this shone through in the most remarkable of ways.
The value of visibility
St Teresa’s is a Catholic school at its heart – but as Suzi explains, it is also much more.
“You walk in, and you see we’re a Catholic school – that’s very visible. But we’re also an incredibly diverse school, with 19 different cultures represented in our students.”
“The Strategic Leadership for Principals Programme massively helped me see this as a focal point. It helped me wade through the data, find our priorities – and one of the biggest was cultural responsiveness.”
This has since become a key goal for Suzi and her team, with four projects underway to achieve it.
“We want to make sure that everyone can walk into St Teresa’s and see themselves represented – that they can feel welcome no matter who they are.”
Working with students and their families, an incredible amount of work is going on. Students and their parents are creating patterns from every culture in the school to be put on display. One parent is creating three Māori carvings to sit at the school, representing faith, hope and love. A central display in the foyer has contributions from the community, including a handmade Ethiopian handbag that a parent’s relative wore to their wedding.
On top of this, Suzi herself will embody the breadth of diversity at St Teresa’s through a custom-made outfit.
“Once it’s done, it will have something from everyone. South African beadwork, student art – some of my Tongan students have reserved some space on the back, because they want to put their strength behind me.”
Upon completion of this work, Suzi is certain that everybody will feel welcome – a perfect partnership of the school’s Catholic values and utter conviction of their strength in diversity.
“This focus – it all came through the programme. My Capacity Partner [Elaine] was sensational at challenging my thinking, having me step outside my comfort zone and really wade through the mud of data to work out what mattered most in the student voice.”
“We want to make sure that everyone can walk into St Teresa’s and see themselves represented”
Suzi De Gouveia
Amplifying voices through the whole school
The centering of voices outside the leadership team has shone through in other ways too, creating change at St Teresa’s that is extraordinarily exciting.
“The programme helped me understand stakeholders far better than I did before,” Suzi notes.
“You always think of the students and parents, but a big one for me was the parish, how they could be more involved in the school. Businesses in the community, local specialists, everyone.”
“We have a totally play-based curriculum, which means we need all the help we can get. The improvements I made in stakeholder work go a long way with that.”
This expansion of their support network also happened internally, with the introduction of a Board of Students.
“They run along the lines of the Board of Trustees – they have a budget, organise sports equipment, and report to the BoT – it’s full student ownership, and it came directly out of hearing their voice.”
And while St Teresa’s currently has extremely dedicated teachers and leaders, Suzi hopes to get the Board of Students involved in future hiring decisions too.
Schools often have more information and data than they know what to do with – it is no exaggeration that Suzi, on several occasions, referred to analysing this information as “wading through the mud”.
But through the Strategic Leadership for Principals Programme and the invaluable insight from outside the education sector, she was able to clarify, prioritise and act in a way that best serves the students.
The results, as you can see, are astonishing – and the work isn’t done yet.
New horizons at St Teresa’s
After every SLPP workshop, Suzi would check in with her leadership team, telling them what she had learned.
“I went to-and-fro, talking with my team, with Elaine, with the team again, getting them involved in every step of my planning. I gave them full ownership of what we would do in the year ahead, and it’s meant our strongest year ever as a team.”
“They see how excited I get about every new thing I learn – which meant our decision to do HPLT [High Performing Leadership Teams] later this year was a simple one.”
“The response is along the lines of ‘oh my, we get to do this too!’”
Through the work that Suzi has done with her Capacity Partner Elaine and Springboard Trust, through the spreading of leadership and amplification of voices that often aren’t in a school’s strategic planning, St Teresa’s had made huge positive change.
And as Suzi concludes, that’s down to the power of teamwork.
“The programme, Elaine, the facilitators – the support you get [in SLPP] is outstanding. Everyone is so excited by and invested in what we do. They get to know your school inside out and are so committed to helping us make out school the best it can be.”
“I’m so, so grateful. The best PLD I’ve ever done – and with 15 years at St Teresa’s, I’ve done a lot!”
