Dr Victoria Carr (Headteacher at Woodlands Primary School): How one headteacher is coping with partial reopening.

In this episode, Claire talks over the internet with Dr Victoria Carr, headteacher at Woodlands Primary School in Ellesmere Port.

Victoria discusses how her difficult and sometimes distressing childhood meant that she would spend a lot of time reading and learning on her own before she even started at school. This head-start gave her a good grounding and the words of her reception teacher, ‘this girl is university material’, stuck with her and motivated her throughout her educational journey. Although she had (and still has) a keen interest in the military – in particular a desire to fly Chinook helicopters – Victoria moved into teaching and leadership with an ambition to motivate and inspire children and her staff to seek and fulfil their dreams.

Victoria discusses the challenges of leadership in this period of disruption within education, how she supports the pupils and staff in her school, and how the coronavirus has led to her having to be more creative with the latest round of recruitment. She also shares how she strives to help, support and motivate others to be the best they can having learned from her own experiences and seen through her own life what the power of words can achieve.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Words really can have a long-lasting impact.
  Victoria talks about how just five words from her reception class teacher, and the implicit belief about what was entirely possible in her future, have stuck with her and helped motivate her throughout her life. Victoria talks about how being where she is today is proof that teachers and those involved in education really do shape lives and that what we say to children absolutely matters.
• Develop teams with critical thinking.
  Building a culture where people are actively encouraged to constructively question and challenge decisions and the way things work means that a team will always be growing and developing. As well as this, the team members themselves will be growing and developing personally and professionally too.
  Sticking to the status quo can sometimes be the best course of action, but if nobody is questioning it, nothing will improve where gains could, perhaps, be made.
• Invest in everyone.
  Creating opportunities for everyone - not just teachers - to develop both personally and professionally is an investment in that person which can realise potentially significant benefits both for them, the team and, ultimately, the organisation as a whole.
• Do what’s best for you and your school.
  Often, those who develop and implement policies in government are not best placed to have an understanding of the impact of the policy at a ‘ground level’, or an appreciation of how different each individual school can be. Leaders, now more than ever before, can find themselves having to make difficult decisions. However, taking a course of action that you know is best, even if it might be a tough one, will usually always be the right thing to do.
  
  

BEST MOMENTS

“I became a teacher and I've been teaching now 23 years and it is a job that I absolutely love. All of the amazing people I've met through that journey and the things I've done, I don't regret any of that now. I do wonder how my life would have been if I'd been a pilot...”

“I have this philosophy… that when I'm an old lady - hopefully I'll live to become a really, really old lady when I'm 90 - that I'll be able to look back and think that I was lucky enough to seize every opportunity that came my way, that I've got no regrets and that I can truly say I've lived my life and that I've touched lives as I've gone through in a positive way.”

“I know that the teacher who said to my mum and my nan when I was five that I was ‘university material’ did change the direction of my life because, before that, nobody in my family had ever thought about university. It was just never a thing.”

“Back in the 70s, everybody respected the teaching profession. They were well respected. So my grandparents were of an era that teachers were utterly respected.”

“Now that I'm a head, I try to make sure that everything I say to the children in our school is personalised and positive and in some way transformational both to their parents and their children.”

“I wouldn't want to lead ninety-odd people who are just doing my bidding. I want them to actively challenge me because I want to be the best I can be and I want to model that. It can be a really collaborative thing that everybody does and that way we get the best out of everyone.”

“I don't just invest time in teachers. I think you should invest time in people because they are my team and I really want them to feel fulfilled and challenged. I think it just empowers your team.”

“If you can help someone, even in a small way, to realise their dreams then is there anything better? I don't know if there's any better thing than helping people to effect their dreams or their passions in life.”

“We'll just be adaptable. Because one thing's for certain: in my leadership journey of eight years, I do know and, in fact, in my life if I'm honest with you, you just have to adapt. If you want to survive with your marbles, you just need to adapt.”

VALUABLE RESOURCES

The Power of Language – TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/victoria_carr_the_power_of_language_everyday_heroes
Victoria Carr – Twitter: https://twitter.com/headofwoodlands
Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk/
Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/
The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/
Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/
LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/

ABOUT THE HOST

Claire Riley

Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide.

Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff.

Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend.

The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.

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