School Principal Sam Woods tells what it is really like to lead a Christian School
If you read anything about leading change, the first step is always the same: communicate the vision.
In a school, you’d think “Educational Improvement” wouldn’t even need vision casting, isn’t it our core business?
Turns out… that’s where I was first wrong.
I’ve been the principal of ACC (Auistralian Christian College0Benalla for three years, and yes, in my last newsletter we established that, according to my resume, I had no business being a principal.
But maybe you’re wondering: “Why the heck has it taken you three years to begin the journey of school improvement?”
Truth is, I’ve been on this journey the whole time. We’re just now moving into the next phase: the phase of cementing school-wide practices. And I believe that as the leader, I need to become an expert in the direction I’m leading the school.
Learning to Lead
The first three years of my principalship? I was learning how to be a principal. (There are about 126 newsletters worth of stories!)
On my very first day, I realised something: I actually had very little idea what a principal did. Turns out, it’s not just making addresses at assembly or ensuring there are bickies in the staff room. Nor is it simply finding new enrolments or dreaming up buildings we might one day afford.
The core part of my job was to build a team and unite them around a common vision for what we were building together.
It didn’t take me three years to come up with a vision. But it did take three years to cement that vision into our collective DNA so that we could use it as the foundation for the pedagogical and cultural practices we’re working to implement:
- Science of Learning
- Explicit Direct Instruction
- Instructional Coaching
- Cognitive Load Theory
In this edition, I want to drill down into what our vision is and how we arrived here.
Faith and Pedagogy
I want to acknowledge from the outset that we’re a faith-based independent school, which gives us a very different starting point than many others, but I believe the process is still transferable.
The first question I had to ask myself was:
“What type of Christian school do we want to be?”
If you’re not familiar with Christian schooling, let me tell you, they’re not all the same. There are two extremes on the spectrum, and ACC sits somewhere in the middle.
At one end are what I call “Haven Schools”: a place for uber-Christian families to ensure their kids make it through school without seeing anyone dressed up as Harry Potter for Book Week. In short, they prioritise faith over curriculum and pedagogy.
At the other end are what I call “Grammar School Lite”: schools filled with tradition and a sense of excellence, but where faith has become little more than a part of the name. In short, they prioritise academic outcomes over the Christian mission.
At ACC, we fit somewhere in the middle. We’re a Christian school where faith underpins everything we do. We’re open enrolment, we accept students of all backgrounds, but we have a heart to see each student develop their own faith.
Our campus in Benalla serves a low socio-economic community, with most students coming from families who didn’t access private education and where university isn’t the norm. Needless to say, we have students across a wide range of academic and social backgrounds.
During my first year, I realised something important:
“I didn’t want to lead a school that put faith above pedagogy and I didn’t want to lead a school that put pedagogy above faith.”
And then I realised, “I don’t have to choose!”
One of our mission statements is:
“We are helping each student succeed in whatever God wants them to do.”
And I figured… at the very least, God wants us to be literate!
That was a breakthrough moment for me. Our faith and our pedagogy don’t need to be separate. They’re expressions of one another.
When I talk about “mission,” I know it can sound like a specifically religious concept and for us it is. But more broadly, “mission” is the deep ‘why’ that underpins everything a school does. It’s the bigger picture: the vision, the values, the reason we exist beyond academics alone.
If we want to be successful in our Christian mission, we need to create a space where our students can succeed. I believe this idea holds true for all schools, faith-based or otherwise.
Casting the Vision
In one of my earliest staff meetings, I shared this idea:
“If we are using education as the platform from which we share the Gospel, then the quality of the education we provide is directly proportional to the quality of the Gospel that we share.”
I argued that if we want to be more missionally focused, we need to become more pedagogically focused. And if we want to be more pedagogically focused, we need to become more missionally focused. More broadly, our purpose should drive our practice, and our practice should strengthen our purpose.
Sounds pretty good, right? I thought so. And honestly? I still do. I absolutely believe it.
But…
The Big Leap
Twelve weeks before I became a principal, I was a high school music teacher and a church youth leader.
What do I know about Early Years Literacy? Nothing.
What do I know about synthetic phonics? Nothing.
What do I know about Cognitive Load Theory? Nothing.
Do I know how to tell a story about diarrhoea that simultaneously grosses out and engages a bunch of fifteen-year-old boys? Absolutely.
Do I have a heart to see young people reach their full potential? You better believe it!
So within a year, I had a clear vision for why we would embark on the journey of school improvement.
It took another two years to develop that vision into a strategy.
And this year? I’m upskilling to lead the next phase: → rolling out, en masse, what the last three years have led us toward.
Final thoughts
I’ll share more in upcoming editions about what this next phase looks like. I’ll also explore how I’ve leant into our Multi School Organisation (Christian Education Ministries) , the role that mentors have played over the last few years, and how we’ve managed a rapidly growing, ever more complicated school without losing focus.
I’m curious. 🧐 How clearly is the vision for educational improvement articulated in your school? Hit me up to chat about this more!
Until next time,
Sam
Sam Woods blogs on Linked In at Building the ship while flying it