Editor
Leanne Otene (Te Rarawa) has been a school principal for 26 years and currently heads up Manaia View School in Whangārei. She’s experienced her fair share of challenges over the years and is acutely aware of the complexities of principalship in Aotearoa New Zealand. Principals are expected to lead learning in their schools, be the school’s visionary, strategist, administrator, businessperson, property manager, human resources manager, serve the community and meet the needs – whether simple or complex – of every child in an inclusive environment, while addressing inequities and other societal pressures, all on minimal budgets. It’s a tall order for the best of principals, especially when there is little if any advice or support on offer. Otene has experienced it all, and long ago realized that it was the beginning principals who were not going to make it without help. She trained as a mentor and applied her skills to supporting these young leaders to stay in the profession. Her mentorship successes soon became known and she was invited to share her skills internationally through addressing the More Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Teachers Initiative (MATSITI) project at the Adelaide University of South Australia and twice addressed the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Trans-Tasman conferences. This year, some 500 principals were nominated for national awards for leadership. Otene walked off with two of them.
The first was in recognition of her mentorship over many years. The second was the Principals’ award for leadership. It was her approach to teaching in the time of COVID that captivated the judges. Otene didn’t just look at how she might transfer her school’s teaching programme to a home learning version, she looked at what was already happening overseas in countries that had been grappling with COVID long before us. She examined the different approaches and picked those aspects which might work best in her own school community. Unsurprisingly she was quickly singled out to join a nationwide group to monitor Government’s advice to principals on home-learning. Otene attributes her successes to the outstanding way in which her dedicated school staff have supported her in her quest to do more for other principals and to be the best they can collectively be for their own tamariki at Manaia View. No one achieves awards like this alone, she says, humbly. We succeed when we work together and these honours are due to the dedication of my staff as much as any efforts of mine.
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