As the states second youngest principal, 32 year old James Witchard is excited about his new role at Kadina and the opportunity to live in the Northern Rivers with his young family. He shared some of the steps to getting here with Sara Browne.

I grew up on the Northern Beaches in Sydney and went to primary school and high school there and then attended uni in Newcastle. Then, because I was part of a Teach NSW scholarship program, they placed me at Blacktown Boys in Western Sydney.

My wife’s family are from Grafton, Maclean and Yamba so the north coast has been part home to us. That was part of the appeal of coming up here as well as the school and Lismore. We’d spent time in and around Lismore and the Northern Rivers because of our family connection but also because it’s a nice place to come for a holiday.

I knew I wanted to study teaching when I finished school. In some ways there was parts of school that I loved, and parts that I didn’t, but what I loved was learning. I had a really inspirational English teacher who was probably someone that showed me what great teaching could look like early on. I can remember watching that and really enjoying the senior years of high school. Then the Teach NSW scholarship came out and what it presented was the opportunity to pay for your university study, even an allowance for text books and things like that. I think you had to demonstrate academic aptitude, a commitment to community. I was really involved in SRCs and leaderships and things like that. I did a lot of volunteer work with community organisations where I lived. That was all part of my submission from memory. Your principal had to recommend you so I had that endorsement. I was the school captain and had done lots of those sorts of things. I put in for the scholarship quite early on, before I’d even made university selections, and decided that I wanted to be a teacher.

I think that surprised quite a lot of people, like my teachers. Every teacher you have, they have different ideas. I applied and I won the scholarship which meant that my uni degree was paid for and the trade-off for that is that you are willing to work anywhere in the state. I was ready to get out and do something new. I went to Newcastle Uni and studied and then got placed at Blacktown Boys.

It was a terrifying first day there, walking in. It’s not terrifying because the school is terrifying, it’s because of the responsibility that comes with being a teacher, which was a weight that really sat with me and I knew how important that was. What I walked into at Blacktown Boys was a community unlike something I had been into before but I felt so welcome. It was incredibly diverse, kids of cultures and languages from right around the world that made my first teaching job awesome.

I was really lucky that I started teaching with a whole bunch of other young teachers. We were all in our first year out. Those people are my best friends now. One of them was the best man at my wedding. Another was part of our bridal party as well. We all walked in to a school, a group of young teachers, ready to have a crack. We had success and we had failures. We laughed together and cried together and learned together and we made some awesome opportunities for the boys that went to that school that we’re also really proud of.

That time taught me things that will last me a lifetime it would be fair to say. There are individual kids there that have stuck with me. They all taught me something. It was a pretty awesome way to start and made this tight knit community of young teachers which is exactly what schools like that wanted and needed, we all rose together and set up some really cool things.

I had just turned 22. I went in as an English and Drama teacher. We were just getting drama off the ground so we were making productions, took some of the boys on tour with their own performance. We hired a mini bus and drove these boys, who had never really had experiences of camps and holidays, on a tour of the northern beaches of Sydney where I knew some people and organisations. They performed at nursing homes and community centres and preschools. We took some of the boys to the beach for the first time in their lives. It was a pretty special thing to do. We had the freedom and opportunity to try new things as young teachers, it was an awesome part of working in western Sydney.

I think there’s an ability to relate to kids when you’re a young teacher. But that’s not to say that an older teacher can’t do that. I think you could argue that on face value, as a younger teacher, there might be more immediate connection but I think anybody that is genuine about wanting to see a kid succeed can relate. In terms of being a young teacher, I don’t think I have any more energy.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more tired than I was in my first year of teaching. I’ve seen first year out teachers and I’ve seen teachers in their 40th year of service be just as excited, just as engaging, just as passionate. I don’t think it’s an age thing. I think it’s that passion for wanting to see any kids get their best possible outcome, and understanding that it’s not necessarily a consistent measure, it’s whatever is best for that kid in their life and time.

There are lots of teachers in my family but not my parents. My Mum is a nurse, my Dad is a marine mechanic. My youngest sister is a teacher, I’ve got cousins and aunties and uncles that are in education. My wife’s family has quite a few teachers as well so you do end up forming your own little staff room amongst the family in some ways. We all teach in really different settings and communities. Both my parents were very supportive about me going into teaching and excited by what I got to do. There hasn’t been a school musical I’ve run or a public school event that they haven’t come along too.

I was at the end of my second year at Blacktown when I applied to go and relieve as head teacher at another school, Riverstone High School. The Principal there had been my deputy so I had worked with her before, I also had another friend that had taken a job there so I knew there were some exciting things happening. I put my hat in the ring to have a go and I was successful so I was relieving as head teacher of English and HSIE and Drama. What I walked into was the chance to pick my team. It was a group of very young teachers. We were all in the first five years of our service with the department. We had a lot of fun. We had the opportunity to build the faculty from scratch. I won that position and stayed on in a permanent position there for four years and then moved on to become Deputy at that school. And now I’m here. Its my tenth year of service.

Sophie Ottley, James, Jessica Cole – co-presenting at a statewide Department conference on the importance of empathic learning

It’s a quick trajectory. I am a very young principal. That is the first comment that I get. I don’t sit here in my job now as principal professing to have all the answers or experiences that I’m sure some of my colleague principals do. However, I was really fortunate in the schools that I’ve worked in, the principals that I worked with, I was afforded opportunities to test my leadership skills really early. It started with leading small committees, bigger school initiatives then into leadership positions, earlier than others, and I’m grateful for those opportunities. I believe that experience is an important component of leadership but there’s also skills to leadership about communicating, engagement and enthusiasm and passion. And as a leader I have a responsibility to unite people, to bring people together in a team and create a focus. I’m confident that I can do that. And so, they’re the type of skills that I brought to the table when the job at Kadina came up. I’ve been fortunate to be successful in that so far but it’s week three in the job.

I’ve got work to do to build trust in the entire school community, I know that. And I know that as a young principal, that is people’s first reaction. Have you been working long enough? Have you got the skills required? I hope that, while I may not have all the skills or the answers at any one moment, I’m committed to learning those things. I’m committed and passionate about every kid that attends here and every staff member and our broader community. This is an awesome school and some great things happen here and so I’m excited by the opportunity but I don’t take it lightly.

There are plenty of principals that do teach, depending on the size of their school. I don’t teach here but there is opportunity to impact classroom teaching and be part of teacher development, assist with team teaching and things like that. There’s opportunities there that I hope will come because it is something that I really enjoy. I don’t have a particular class at the moment. It’s a sad shift for me, moving away from classroom teaching. It’s early days and I’ve been too busy to miss it just yet. I had the great fortune to teach my last class in Sydney which was a group of students I’d taught since they were in year seven, so we’d spent a lot of time together. They’d just started their HSC.

I get those connections in a different way in the position that I’ve now got. I get the ability to impact teaching and learning on a broad scale which is what you get to do as a teacher but not just for the kids in front of you at that moment, it’s for an entire school community, which is exciting.

I think if you ask anyone, what makes a good teacher, we come back to the same kind of things. We can reference policies and standards, those things are important. But you ask anyone, who are the teachers that made the most impact in your life, they’ll all tell you, it’s the teacher that knew them. The teacher that knew how they learned. That’s the consistent thing that people say when they talk about their favourite teacher. And they felt valued.

A great teacher is someone that knows how to dynamically bring the best out of anybody and that’s quite a skill when you’ve got a class of 30 kids. The ability to do that across 30 different personalities is something quite incredible. I think its easy to forget that teaching is a science. It really is a scientific pedagogy skill that we have. The best teachers I know and the best teachers that have taught me were people that knew me, they knew how I learned, they how to bring the best out and challenge me. They knew how to raise the bar and make me work harder and instill the belief that I could do it. I see that in teachers here. The best teachers are those that really care about those kids that are in front of them.

The hardest part, I think, as a teacher, is letting go. It’s this huge responsibility that you have. We spend more time with our kids in classrooms than we do with our own kids. You invest in these relationships, building kids up and helping them succeed then it gets to a point where you’ve got to let them go. Also. when we’re supporting kids that are going through hard times themselves, we go home to our families and the hardest part sometimes is having to step away from each day. That can be really difficult. It goes hand in hand with one of the best parts about being a teacher which is being invested in relationships with kids and their families too.

Foolishly, at one point I thought I’d like to tour the world with a drama performance company. I was very involved at uni with drama productions as a performer and a director. The part I kept coming back to was that directing productions and performing for people is just another form of teaching, another form of educating. At the end of the day I think that being a teacher, cliched as it might sound, is something that I knew right from an early age I wanted to do.

If you asked my mates at school or my sisters, I was probably bossy enough and demonstrated the skills that I wanted to be in charge from the beginning. I can’t ever imagine doing something different other than being involved in education and working with young people. There’s certainly hard days but there’s never been a moment where I’ve thought, oh no, I’ve had enough.

I have two daughters, four and two. They are very excited to have moved up here and be living in an awesome part of the world and be connected to some of their other family. One of the key excitements about me coming to Kadina is that they want to see a koala. At some point, I’ll have to make one of those appear to keep my four year old happy. I don’t know if I can do that as principal but I have alerted staff that if someone sees one, they have to let me know very quickly so I can ensure getting it on film to prove to my four year old that they do exist here. It’s the most incredible geographic landscape the school is on, with this rainforest around us and this abundance of nature and wildlife which is unlike anything I’ve worked in before.

When I’m not working I’m spending time with my kids. My passions outside of work …I love music, I’m a musician, I’ve played piano since I was nine. For me that is a huge relaxation. One of the key things for me when we moved was to make sure my upright piano got on that moving truck, much to the upset of the removalists.

With two little kids, what I like doing in my spare time is whatever they like doing because that’s what being a parent is, getting joy from watching them have fun. At the moment, it’s about spending our weekends exploring beaches and seeing what’s around, enjoying that big lifestyle change.

For my Dad, the image of the principal is a man in old tweed jacket with some walker socks. Gone are those days. The role of a principal is about educational leadership. It’s about creating and maintaining environments to promote quality teaching and learning across the school. So, every school has systems in place to support kids’ welfare and wellbeing and I’m a part of the process.

The great thing about public schools in NSW is that there are structures in place to support every kid. My day isn’t necessarily about marching the hallways which is what my Dad and older generations probably imagine the role of the principal is. The exciting parts of my day are about working with teachers and kids to plan for the future, to set up systems and processes to do really awesome stuff.

This week, a great part of my week has been being a part of the peer support interviews where I’ve sat with the teacher to interview kids that are coming in that leadership role, and question them about what leadership should look like. I’ve been part of orientation days, welcoming new kids that are coming to be part of our school community. There’s lots of admin but the great part is being involved in the vision and planning for a school.

For me, I have aspired to the position but what comes next after that is really up to the individual. I might read this quote in years to come and laugh but, whenever I’m ready to retire, moving back to a classroom role could be a great way to go. It comes down to what you can use your role to achieve. Classroom practice doesn’t have to be inaccessible as a principal.

Call me the eternal optimist but I have faith in any generation. I think any generations ahead will always look at the one below and think …oh they’ll never be able to achieve what we achieved. Or is there hope for this generation when they have things like phones and social media? What we already see from the current generation is that they’re achieving some awesome things that others would never have been able to. I think high school students and teenagers can be branded as difficult. I have toddlers at the moment and there’s days when I’d argue that they’re harder than teenagers.

The reason I think I’m in high schools and not primary schools is that, adolescence is really challenging. It’s a really difficult time for young people, we all go through it. There is something really awesome about watching someone’s beliefs, ideas, personality shift and change and watch them growing into advocates for things that they are passionate about.

L-R: Kadina Captains Sophie Painter, Lochlan Maguire, Jeffrey Coles, Montana Morton

High school can be really hard for young people. At times, I found it really difficult socially. The academic side of high school I loved. It’s a great responsibility, and I know I’ve said that a lot, to help young people out. When they’re going through all of those huge changes that teenagers do, the responsibility is to create a safe space for them to try out ideas and challenge things and ask questions why. It’s a bit like the toddlers, when they learn the question ‘why’ and they want to know everything. That’s what we want in our young people because that’s when they form strong beliefs and ideas that will hopefully propel them into doing awesome stuff.

I am the middle child in my family. I’d like to say that I’m not the conventional middle child and I would love to say that I didn’t cause my parents any grief. I’m sure that they could disagree with that. I certainly didn’t have that rebellious phase. I was really fortunate to have a really good relationship with my parents. I was very involved in rock eisteddfods and debating and all those kinds of things that fit that image of the person who goes on to become school captain, I guess. I was lucky that my parents were supportive of all that, and still are. I’m sure there was times I drove them nuts, that’s just part of it. My older sister became a tv producer and my younger sister a primary teacher. Our parents were invested in making sure we were happy and focused.

I am optimistic about any generation because there is possibilities for what they can do and the world will keep changing. I think it becomes dangerous to cling on to one ideal of what young people should do because we want them to be dynamic and challenging and to take safe risks in their learning.