Dear teaching,
I never wanted to be a teacher when I was at school. I wanted to be a vet or someone like Joy Adamson in Born Free raising lions in khaki pants and a safari hat.
But, 36 years later, I am so grateful that I chose teaching and that this morphed into school leadership and then trust leadership.
I became a teacher because a university tutor rightly identified that I liked talking as much as I liked big cats. At the time I took this as a compliment rather than as the hint intended to shut me up that, on reflection, it might have been.
The fun in teaching
That suggestion, however it was intended, turned out to be a wise one, though - because I was extremely relieved to discover that I was proficient at teaching (not something I could say for the part-time jobs I’d had before; I was positively dangerous as a waitress, for example).
What I loved most was working with children: they were imaginative, energetic, idealistic and great fun, and fun is a vital motivation for me - and, no doubt, most teachers.
Part of that fun comes from unpredictability - not least the moments in teaching that are actually not unlike being a vet. Like the time when I heard quacking in the science corridor and, on investigation, found a wounded duckling temporarily stashed in a locker by a boy who had found it on the town common and brought it in, but when the morning bell sounded, panicked and placed it there to keep it safe.
Or the girl who mistakenly brought a rabbit into school because, while she had been cleaning out its hutch for her neighbour, had placed the sleepy “Dandelion” in her school bag - and then forget about it.
Friends, meaning and purpose
Over the years my colleagues naturally became friends because they were bright, caring and principled people and none of us were in it for the money - just as well because my starting salary was less than £8,000 a year.
I didn’t mind, though - the career fulfilled my passion for creating the climate for social justice.
I never woke up at 3am wondering if I had a “bullshit job”, as the sociologist David Graeber describes so much of the work done in the corporate world. I knew I did something that mattered and that I could and would make a difference. So thank you, teaching, for that.
Fighting to the top
It was not all easy. Back in 1989, female school leaders had not been invented or, at least I had never come across one. All the way through primary and secondary school all four headteachers that I had as a pupil were men.
When I became a teacher, I worked for five male headteachers in a row. They all had wives who did most of the child rearing and domestic tasks at home. None of them had gone to a comprehensive school - they all went to grammar or private schools.
All of them specialised in small talk about rugby or cricket or football.
This made me feel for a long time that becoming a headteacher was mad, uncharted territory. I had been educated at a progressive state comprehensive, was fiercely anti-elitist, had two children under 7 and a husband with a demanding job himself.
My topics of conversation were books, theatre, music. I had five minutes maximum in me on football or cricket, and nothing on rugby. So I had to make it up as I went along.
I hope that pathway has now been well and truly been cleared. One of the things I am most proud of is the talented women who have been able to follow in my wake as headteachers.
It now feels normal for women to lead schools, even if the statistics still tell us that 75 per cent of teachers are female yet only a third of multi-academy trust CEOs are. Clearly it’s not perfect yet, but I still owe a big thank you to teaching for allowing this “outlier” to find her way to the top.
Leading in your own image
I have been CEO at two MATs. One I set up and one I inherited and have allowed to grow. Along the way there have been as many “might have beens” as there have been things we pulled off.
Some CEOs get fixated on business models or school structures, but I have always believed that Dylan William was right when he said that the quality of the teacher is the key driver behind outcomes in education for the child.
Most of my work has been about driving that improvement. I set up a teaching school to train teachers and a teaching school hub when that became a possibility.
To be a strong teacher you must be able to learn from the best and think, craft and share lessons in a bespoke way to meet the needs of the young people in front of you. Great schools respond to the needs of the children in their contexts.
They grow strong ecosystems of leadership. They co-construct the curriculum and grow people. They are rainforests, not plantations, as describes it.
If I have an educational philosophy, it is around that. All the pressures in the education system are to create plantations, so learning how to avoid or defend against that pressure has been part of my role as CEO. Thank you, MAT leadership, for allowing me to do it my way.
I will look back on my decision to become a teacher as one of the best I have ever made. I have had 37 years of fun. Thanks, teaching.
Much love,
Caroline Derbyshire
Caroline Derbyshire is the CEO of Saffron Academy Trust
You can now get the UK’s most-trusted source of education news in a mobile app. Get Tes magazine on and on
