Jenny Cole: 1:03

Hello and welcome to Positively Leading. I hope you enjoy my guest today as much as I always do. Emma Cooke is one of my favourite people and she's currently the principal of a tiny school in the wheat belt, about two and a half hours east of Perth. But she's taught in and led a whole variety of schools more than I can count, and we'll talk about that in a moment. Welcome, Emma, so pleased that you can be here.

Emma Cooke: 1:28

Thank you, I'm very pleased I can be here as well. All the stuff I've had to do over the past couple of days to make sure that I'm here in a lovely garden enjoying your company.

Jenny Cole: 1:39

Thanks. Today, what Emma and I are going to do is have a rambling conversation, possibly because Emma is multi-passionate about things and I'm endlessly curious and have an opinion on just about everything, and we love getting together and having conversations. But before we start, I'm going to ask Emma to talk about her leadership journey and the kind of schools that you've worked in and led.

Emma Cooke: 2:06

Sure, I'm just going to give you the potted version if that's okay. So I started out my teaching in a big district high school, one of the biggest, and that sort of set me up really, really well to have a range of people I was working with, to have a range of people giving me feedback on the way that I approached the world. Those who knew me as a teacher back in my first few years would not recognise the way that I interact with the department, with parents, with children. It has changed over time, which I've been really lucky about. I have led just about everything from district high schools to primary schools. I have worked in big senior high schools, led new programs in those big senior high schools. My great love is D Highs. I have always said I just love watching that 12 year or 13 year journey, 15 years at Macon Barra District High School, which was my previous D High experience. I love watching families and children and building a school that has that 15 years as its baseline. So many of us think in leadership cycles of three years or five to seven years and we forget that families are with our schools for up to 15 years. So we have to create a culture and a part that looks after the child now but that looks after the family. That's one child, 15 years at Macon Barra District High School was one child. Many of our families up there had five or six kids, so creating that length and consistency is really important to me.

Jenny Cole: 3:37

Yeah, we might talk about that experience in a moment at Macon, because I reckon you are the most personally and professionally generous person I've ever met. But you also describe yourself as the poster child for burnout and recovery.

Emma Cooke: 3:52

Oh, you've heard me say that, oh my.

Jenny Cole: 3:53

God, I've been saying it a lot lately You've had a couple of interesting experiences without breaking confidentiality. Do you want to talk about why you call yourself the poster girl for burnout and recovery?

Emma Cooke: 4:05

Look, I don't mind being a poster child for anything really. Confidentiality for me sits with me. I had another conversation with a fellow leader across the last week where I said if I don't talk about it, how do I create space for other people to put their hand up and say I'm a highly professional, experienced, talented leader, but I am in crisis. So part of that being the poster child is about creating a space where successful leaders can actually have trouble at various times in their career. We will all have days, weeks, months, even years, where we feel as though we are not the leader we can be and we're not the leader we need to be and it doesn't mean we're in crisis. But if we stay with that and don't ask for help and don't get the help we need and don't leverage them, it works. We either become insular and we all know the ones. We've probably worked in them, we've probably worked for those leaders where they wait to find the feedback loop that tells them they're great and that's all they listen to, or you burn yourself out, like I did, Trying to be professional and generous and supportive and reflective when everyone around you is in crisis because of the challenges that they're facing in their day-to-day work, which 2020 was very much like that for most of us and most of our teachers. So you know, trying to hold your teachers up, hold your families up, hold your kids up and do it all because that's what we had trained ourselves to believe.

Jenny Cole: 5:39

You gave us a snapshot of those you know schools that you've worked in some very complex district high schools and you were level five, which is just about as high as you can get in the WA system in terms of principles, but you're currently in a very small school. Talk to me about that. I know that it's part of the strategy to find balance again, but how are you going? What does it feel like to go from a very complex big school into a smaller school?

Emma Cooke: 6:05

The start of it you're a meerkat and everybody who's worked in a high demand school know what I mean. You know a child drops a basketball on the playground and you're meerkat. High demand, high trauma school that's the precursor to something that is out of your control and something where you are going to have to be front and centre to either manage the situation or support your middle leaders who are managing the situation. So you spend a lot of time being a meerkat and speaking to my colleagues, they've been through things that are actually PTSD. I don't believe that I have, but I'm currently leveraging the sort of treatment that is used for people with PTSD because it's much more about how you respond to external stimuli in your job than it is about that diagnosis on your front. So I'm trying to realign. Now, Cadoux Primary School is where I'm at. I'm happy to say it, even if Jenny has to edit it out. It is the unicorn school. We are absolutely delightful out there taking it along busifully. But I selected for it. You know I asked every question under the thumb of the forehand and I deliberately chose a school where I couldn't focus on the problems, because focusing on the problems is what had got me into the trouble I was in, because I can fix problems and I'm really good at it. But if the problem was me, I needed to be in a school that didn't have that constant churn of staffing problems and people problems and family problems and children problems and finance problems. I needed to be somewhere where I could focus on doing, just doing the work, just getting and do the work and at the same time, to work on myself.

Jenny Cole: 7:39

Emma also has identified as neurodivergent. I'm glad you said that because I was going to at some point and that's one of the reasons I love her is that there's one million ideas and a lot of them come out all at once. But I think we got that, emma that you were in a very high, complex school and the result of that was you start to have responses to everything, like everything's a crisis, and you had a couple of options there. You could bunk it down and stay there, or you could leave education completely I know you thought about that at some point or you could just do what you love and recover and recuperate and find the joy again in a school that needed you and you needed it.

Emma Cooke: 8:19

Yeah, it really was. And look, if you're listening to me or wondering if you can do a level three job in a school in the wake belt, please put your hand up, please apply for a few, please ring the director, because every level three school I look at around me needs good leadership. It doesn't have to be highly experienced, like me, it doesn't have to be the middle-aged ladies, but every school needs thoughtful, curious, considerate leadership, and so few people are choosing to put their hand up for it.

Jenny Cole: 8:49

One of the things that you're most proud of is what you call Emma's empire, because you, you actually listen to what I say.

Emma Cooke: 8:57

I think he's throw away stuff and Jenny bars them all the way gets them out like little index.

Jenny Cole: 9:04

You may have written it down somewhere for me, but Emma's empire where you intentionally and deliberately row future leaders. Do you want to talk a little bit about how you develop future leaders and also a little bit about Emma's empire?

Emma Cooke: 9:20

It came about a little bit accidentally. It's sort of that problem solving mindset, that going into somewhere and going OK. So how do I make this place literally better? My first principal job for those of you who've never set foot in a principal chair I went through a series of working for leaders who did not see my potential and actively worked to dissuade me from pursuing leadership. There were lots of and we've workshopped this a lot, jenny Lots of statements like you have to learn to be less emotional if you're going to be a principal. You have to learn to be tougher if you're going to be a leader. You know lots of that sort of stuff and because you know if I see it, I say it. It's made me quite unpopular with some leaders who really honestly they're not interested about what is this new person in the team. So I went into my first principal job having never sat in the chair for even a day. I had never been trusted with the leadership of my school. So I won that principal job, permanent, walked through the door on day one and discovered that I had a school full of principals. So every teacher in my school had been a principal for longer than me, and one of them who is now a fantastic principal in her own right and in her soul. She's really good. One of those people I realized front and center was, even though she hadn't applied for it and wasn't interested in it, she had a lot to offer. So I set to work to make sure that I was strengthening the school and looking at succession planning Succession planning was my big thing in that school as a level three. We don't have deputies, we don't have any of that. I need to make sure that we have strength in leadership here. So I basically just dragged her along to everything. I'd ring the department and say I'm bringing two people to this training and they're like, but you've only got one principal. And I'm like, yes, but I have created a new job title. I do this sort of stuff. If the system doesn't work for me, I just create new stuff or I change the system. So I created a new job title called designated relieving principal. I was able to sneak it through because we need to have some changes to our school systems to meet the requirements of an audit. So I gave her all the permissions so if I'm absent she could do things that the principal would normally do. Drag to her, along to everything and on my appointment to make a thorough. Three years later I had three deputies and I went oh my god, it's like we get to see a mutual cheer squad. I had one guy sitting in his office all by himself working every hour that God gave him because he was incredibly ambitious, but still no direction and leadership and nobody noticing what he really needed to be doing to get better. I had an incredibly experienced woman in the front office who was my level four primary deputy who was being expected to teach a couple of days a week because that's just what she was told to do and nobody was using her expertise. She's now a principal of a highly complex level five in the southwestish amazing principal and now she's got her people who rave about how she leads. But she had lost her confidence and her capacity to do the job that she is now doing to the benefit of all those kids that she's led over the last five years. It was an absolute joy and I remember having a conversation with my director. He'd asked me to go for nine weeks and I wound up staying for three and a half years, but that sort of eight weeks in where he said you know, what are you enjoying about the job? And I said, look, I love working with my community, the engagement with the Aboriginal reference group. I love all that, but my big joy is developing these people and the excitement at the end of the year when I employed another lead teacher to come in and help us out so my deputies didn't have to teach and he went on to a deputies position, which is what he wanted, and my two deputies that I talked about before both went into principal positions and that was just. That was the greatest joy I could possibly have. And then I pulled the next generation through and one of whom I spoke to yesterday actually, and he's now being made permanent of a beautiful but challenging school in Victoria, where he's originally from. So he's finally picked up the permanency there after some challenges himself, but all the way through these are my people. Don't tell the tax department, because it really was just a junket. But last year I flew over to Victoria so that I could go and sit with him and eat lunch and we workshopped some of the stuff that was happening at his school and you know the particular challenges he was facing and he ran me through how he was tackling particular things. But you know, that's what I love. I love that I'm somebody they ring to share that joy with. I also understand with that I get the brain done when things aren't going so well.

Jenny Cole: 14:13

But that's what you do, yeah and so what's the kind of advice and support? I know each of them are different, but is there any sort of thing generically that you say to these new leaders to do more of or less of? Do?

Emma Cooke: 14:27

more of or do less of. I have to say, because you know we're doing a podcast and people are listening to us. I do. I listen to. Every leadership podcast is out there. It's like you send students and I don't mean this to be pejorative at all it is like you send students. There's no way that the send plan goals that you've got for Jasper are going to be the same send plan goals that you've got for Harper. So don't assume that the same advice for your deputies is going to be the same for each of them. I mean, I do a lot of transparent work. That's one thing. That if people are listening and going all, how can I develop leaders as well? Be overly transparent. Think of every leadership decision you make as a think-aloud. Go in and say this is what I'm thinking about doing and here's where I'm at and here's why I'm doing it. Remember that values to Congo we had when we first got together as a team and we talked about what our team values are. This is the value I think we're exhibiting when we do this, and then you hand it over and go well, what do you think? What's your take on it? Because that will give you so much information about how they see the world because, if I'm completely honest, the variety of people I have worked with in my team is massive. I mean, this is a podcast that most of the time, I'm assuming I'm not pejorating you if you're listening, but most of the time the people who pick this up will be women. But I have worked with a lot of men and I will go back to the reason I enrolled in the women in leadership, which is where I met you the first time around was because I didn't understand the men in my team. That's why I enrolled, not so I could understand women better, but so I could understand what is the difference? Why the hell is it? And you know, tony I know you're probably listening to this, but you won't mind that I say it what the hell is going through Tony's brain when he says that? Because I don't understand Tony and Jack Kai, his jailmate Jack, listen to this as well. Same thing. I needed to know how to understand so that I Could actually be effective in helping them to be better, because I don't be effective with them when I just give them Vice, because a lot of the time, the advice is be more like me. Yeah, and it's oh yes, it's very risky. It's. You know you're right out on the edge, don't know what's going on, so be more like me was never the way for Jack to be a better leader, and it was never the way for Tony to be a better leader. My job was to create the send plan for them, which went here your strength, here are the things that are getting in the way of you being effective with other people. Let's talk about those, and what I really love is that in many cases, all of my leaders have walked into other schools and Been able to capitalise and learn from the next person. I don't set them up, for you know I'm a great leader and wherever you go can't be as good. I set them up to open up their minds and listen and Shape and be curious. You know it's a brown, a brown thing, but I'm using it to open up and let the next person shape them. What are you learning today? How are you behaving with integrity today? Know what your values are, because not every job is easy, not every person you work with is going to be for your work, but I mean, I'm hopeless hopeless at being a deputy because I found it so difficult over time I still have moments where I'm thinking about stuff and I go, okay, what would Cheryl do? Because what Cheryl would do is what I want to aspire to. But at the same time I learned so much working for other people who are good leaders. They're just not my leaders and we know that we could never work together long. And then I catch up with them and we have that conversation and I'm like, yeah, we would have killed each other, wouldn't we mate? Yeah, definitely would.

Jenny Cole: 18:17

Emma. What I heard then was each person's an individual get to know their strengths, let them shine, you know, and they really transparent about, when you're the more senior leader, what it is that you're doing. And then there was that piece about giving feedback. Mate, this is not working for you, or you know? Just read the room, you know, find out who the people on your team are and just give. Make sure that you're giving them what they need.

Emma Cooke: 18:40

Yeah, don't be afraid to do that. I mean the amount of times I've sat with those Conversations and gone. This is the hardest conversation I'm gonna have. But do it with kindness and grace and Expect there to be a moment, especially for a type kind of personalities blokes or women Expect there to be a moment of profound discomfort in the room where they go. I am doing everything I can and it's still not good enough for you, because I've had a bit of that come back to me before. But they're trying to process stuff that you're telling them but nobody else has ever had the courage to tell them before, and especially if they're confident and knowledgeable. You know they've got to where they've got to by being confident and knowledgeable. So you're about to tell them something that nobody else has ever had the courage to tell them before. Other people have just sired on them. Nobody ever teaches us how to do it. There's not classes in it, although you have classes in it.

Jenny Cole: 19:41

Thank you, Emma.

Emma Cooke: 19:42

Yeah, you're welcome so go to Jenny's classes and learn how to. Is it you or Brene who says embrace the suck.

Jenny Cole: 19:49

Because it's managed, the discomfort and you're absolutely right. So often by the time people get into their first leadership role, even if it's the head of the literacy committee it's because they know a lot of stuff and they're very good and they're very Practiced. And then they move into a leadership role where they need a whole range of different skills and all of a sudden they might not be doing it right. They're graduate. Leaders need that feedback loop too, and you're right, it hurts. It hurts big time, but if you can embrace the suck and go, this doesn't feel good, but there's a lesson in here for me. I think that's key.

Emma Cooke: 20:23

Yeah one of the phrases I use all the time, especially with my highly confident leaders and especially With my new leaders, is what outcome do you want? And that may sound like it's not rocket surgery and I, but having to have those conversations with a leader who goes on. The Leader and I said it and they argued with me and there's this panic, they're undercutting me or they make you look bad, or the blah, blah, blah. But it's like focus on what outcome do you want? You want best teaching in every classroom in your school. That's what we all want. We want the best teaching. Yes, we want the kids to do well at NAPLAN, but NAPLAN is, as far as I'm concerned, focusing on having excellent teaching in every classroom doesn't leave a lot of room for focusing on the principal. So getting people to change that and go okay. So what outcome do you want? And you met my staff at make up. The staff at maker were the most Ragtag bunch of legends I have ever met. They were amazing but by nature they were not compliant, as in compliant good little people who sit at the PD day and smile and nod. They were now the and they argued and they were educated in their own spheres and I would argue with each other and I think that was quite challenging for a few people. But I'm like what outcome do I want? I want them to go into that classroom and be excellent. If they're not being excellent, we'll talk about it. But what I want to do is make sure that they all have this motivation to go in that classroom and be excellent. I have the knowledge that they need whether, not being excellent, they can change and to want to change as well, to Respect me enough to want to change. I don't respect me because I know everything, because I don't. Obviously, the respect has to come from. Yes, I see you, I see who you are. I see what you're trying to achieve. I think I've got some advice for you to get a better outcome. What outcome do you want as a teacher? Yeah, because I can't teach every class and if I did, it would be a very, very dodgy school. I am not primary school teachers, little finger. I was a better deputy than I was a teacher and I'm a better principal than I was a deputy.

Jenny Cole: 22:34

This is where I need to be in order to have the most effect on the most children and so I'm just going to loop back because that kind of ties in nicely. But I'm going to loop back to that notion that young and new leaders, and in fact those who've been around for a while, really need networks, mentors, sponsors and coaches. You and I have talked about this before. It's very obvious that you sponsor others. You know you say go, try this. I've heard you talk about young leaders in the wheat belt where you've said you should apply for this school. You should do this, and you've talked to people down from that confidence cliff. But you've got very strong networks of people that you bounce stuff off. Do you want to talk about how that works for you and young leaders?

Emma Cooke: 23:17

Yeah, it's come from and I've done a blue bit of reflecting over the holidays. I don't operate as an individual person, unfortunately. I grew up as one of six girls. We lived in one house for a period of time Hello to their sister cousins. I grew up in this big bunch and so I don't think alone and if I do, I get lost and things fall out the side. You know the ideas I develop and the way that I approach things comes from being part of a team. The lovely Gary was my very first designated by the department principal mentor in the very early days of the principal advisory team and I rang him before I started and I said, gary, I don't know how I'm going to operate without a team. I've never done this job without a team. And he said you will find your team or you will create your team. And I'm like yeah, yeah, right, whatever. And luckily they were there, but I did actively seek them out. So how does that work? I look for people to join me in having these pardon my language bullshit conversations. You know that stuff that just goes round and round and round. So I look for people who are happy to join me in having that sort of crap on about these, crap on about that and use them to sort of split all ideas. You know, I ring people and I say, am I on crack to check in about the thing that I'm thinking? And then I discovered it has a name. I did the grad cert in the EBL a couple of years ago. We did this whole thing. It's called benchmarking, apparently, where you've got a policy or plan or whatever and you want to check it against other people's, it's called benchmarking. So now that it's got an official name I'm like, oh, that's what I do.

Jenny Cole: 24:57

I'm much prefer spitballing, but anyway, carry on.

Emma Cooke: 25:00

So I have set myself up with that network and what that network does for me is it makes me the person who is in many cases a bit of a go to for others, because they know that I will be there for them to spitball and bounce ideas. So the small talk, which isn't everybody's cup of tea. I'll do the small talk, and sometimes just by email. Oh correct, you know, one of the girls from our women in leadership has just picked up a big six in the last six months. No, not maybe, but I've leaked her an email. Hey, remember me, congratulations. So if there's a point at which I have to ring her, she knows I'm touching back. So making sure she knows. So I had a chat with this guy with a special program, so that was already in my head. So when another friend rang me with a bit of a blow up but that program was part of this conversation I was able to say actually, one of the guys I really trust, I trust his values and I trust his leadership, he's in that at the moment. How about you give him a call? So it's not always about me. It's sometimes about having those bits and pieces in your head so that you can connect other people up so that they can have the information that they need in order to be able to make good decisions, and I think it's vital in our jobs. I know I can't do it alone. I've watched some people fail because, specifically, they tried to do it alone, or they tried to do it by surrounding themselves with people who told them they were great. Yeah, because they were so afraid to hear maybe, not, maybe. Just put that aside for a bit and it was even an abject failure. But I've also watched people create cultures at schools that are not conducive to learning, not conducive to development, because they have avoided taking on board the ideas that say maybe there's more to this. I was having a chat to one of my previous leaders who's now in a principles position, and he said he'd run into another of his previous principles who had not to throw any shade or anything but very ambitious, very. You know this is where I'm going, this is what I'm doing, this is what we're going to do, and had alienated a number of people along the way. It was a little bit hard for me, because some of the people she had alienated are my people and every now and again, I get angry on behalf of others. I want to hold a grudge about that, but to hear this guy, who was one who had been alienated in the pursuit of ambition, to hear him say I'm here to provide my compassion and care and she deserves all the support she can get at the moment, I was like, oh yeah, that's what I taught you. I want to hold a grudge, but I taught you not to hold a grudge and now you're being a better person than me. Damn it. I mean that's why you build these networks so the people who come after you, who you teach shit to, can remind you of your shit when you forget it, because there are days when you forget that you know being a generous leader, being a compassionate leader, being a leader who puts people first. You can forget sometimes how to do it because you just want to go see a. Told yourself we're not all perfect all the time.

Jenny Cole: 28:14

Oh wait, oh OK. That's a shame. That's a shame. I'm just going to make a quick comment and then we're going to talk about communities for a second. What I like about the networks you build is people tend to think that networking is one of two things standing up at a conference awkwardly trying to meet someone and have small talk, or joining some sort of professional association or having a collegiate group where you've got a small network. What I love about your version of networking is building on all of those because they're valuable, but actually it being a collaborative, it's like a professional learning community, but for leaders. So just that lovely collaboration that we have as teachers with our colleagues. You get to do it at your level because you ring people, you give people feedback, you check in. You actually build that professional learning community. But I'm going to talk about another kind of community, and that is one of the things that I love about you is in every school you've been in, the absolute dedicated focus you've had on the community and being part of it, but also helping teachers understand that the community is the reason that they're there. Do you want to talk about that?

Emma Cooke: 29:22

Yeah, it's an interesting one because it's in the big five. You know, the principal thing is the eights will standard. That's been a while since I wrote a job application, Can you tell. So one of the big five is community and every time I read that standard I go. I'm so hopeless at that. I'm hopeless at the hustle, you know, going around the show iron and going around the businesses. I'm well hopeless at that because you know to me, unless there's a purpose for it, why would I do it? I'll be the first one to be knocking down the door of the IGA to say I'm here and I'm ready to build a plan with you to support Callum, who has autism, who needs a work placement in year 10, because Callum needs a work placement, Not because I feel like I should hustle so I can put it in a job application. You know what I mean. So it often does become context-specific leadership. But also what I have discovered is that when context-specific leadership is what you do, every country, town is its own context and regional leadership is my jam. So you walk into a town and your job is to provide a good school to that town and the good school that was at Danderegan cannot be the same good school that is at Nekotara and it cannot be the same good school that it could do. Danderegan could do very similar sort of communities, but the good school at Danderegan back in 2014-15 is not the same. It is on because of what we've been through. So it is vital to have that to create a connection and a meaningful feedback loop with your community. But I mean that that comes back to being generous and a bit humble too, doesn't it being generous enough to say to your community, my job is to? This will be my only football term in this podcast Because I learned it when I was back watching Footy at York. I learned about shepherding where somebody's out there making sure that somebody else can run with the ball. You know, my job isn't to be the guy running with the ball and kicking the goal. That's the kids job. And my job's not to be the person who passes on the ball. That's their parents job. My job is to shepherd. My job is to make sure that they can get from place A to place B and be the super stars on the day. I am not the superstar that my end of year awards night, every grandparent, every parent, every auntie, every uncle wants to tell me what a great job I'm doing. I have nothing to do with that. It was all my staff. I'm not being disingenuous here because I know it was me, because my job is to create an environment where every single staff member felt like they wanted to give their best to make sure that that worked really well so that all the kids could shine. I had to create that, I had to build that and I had to build a good relationship with the community so that when the community comes along to those nights, they're not looking for what goes wrong. They're busy focusing on what's going right for their kids. Because, believe me, I think I have as many, if not more, mistakes in my awards night than previous principals, but all they see is their kids shining? And my job is to do that. My job is to support everybody to do a great job, whether it means tweaking a light or supervising a kid or locking the toilets or whatever. I do that. And then on the night I can say to families oh, it was absolutely not me. Oh, those costumes you told me were great. Jenny did all of that. Gosh, she's amazing. Aren't we so lucky to have such a talented person on staff? Aren't we so lucky to have Amy, the way that she supports her juniors? It doesn't mean I'm not having a conversation with staff at other times where, yes, they do need to get above the line about other things. There is no reason not to be generous about them in the moment, because if I'm generous about them in the moment, they're generous back to the community and the kids. So I think it's building the relationship with my communities is as much about listening generosity. It's not about hustling around your businesses touting for sponsorship. Don't get me wrong. Other people are really good at that and crack on.

Jenny Cole: 33:32

I love it because I think that is fundamentally the job of a leader and that is to make other people shine. And if you can support the teachers to feel included and supported and accountable, and then they can make the kids shine, that is brilliant. So, emma, I am so thrilled that you've been able to join me today Just before we leave. Do you have a piece of advice that was given to you that you still remember, or advice that you'd like to give to middle leaders as they're making their way through the system?

Emma Cooke: 34:03

The advice thing. Do I have advice for middle leaders? I suppose it's sort of twofold. I saw Caroline speak a few years ago about winding up as the premier of WA and I took away what she said because I thought that's exactly when we talk about my leadership journey and all the things I've done. I never wanted to be a leader. I wanted to solve problems that I saw. I got incensed about stuff, and what Carmen Lawrence said was I got in there to do the work and I wound up being the person in charge. Don't create an ambition list that says I want to be this and be this. Create a list of the change you want to affect in the education department and in schools. And, believe me, post COVID, there are so many things we don't understand about families and kids and what's happening to children's mental health. We don't understand how we can reshape our system in order to be a more positive influence on our kids. It's as simple as that, and I'll put my hand up first to say I don't understand it either. I'm experimenting with a whole lot of stuff, so my first thing is experiment with this stuff and my second thing is expect to get it wrong a lot, and getting it wrong is not a failure. I think I was 30, my first year as a teacher, 29, maybe my first year as a teacher, so late starter, but you got years. If you started as a 22 year old, you're for all the time in the world. Don't go into it assuming that your pathway will be clean and clear, because if you have your burnout episode at 50, like I did, if you find your career flat owing at 30, that is not the end. That is just a blip. And, as somebody said to me the other day, the education department has a very short memory. There is no black book. No, no, because I have pardon the language fucked up a lot of shit in my time and anyone who listens to this will go oh yeah, well, remember that time, remember that time, remember that time, remember that time, yeah, all of those times. But I learned stuff from those times and I have turned that learning. That's the other thing. Read as much for a neighbor and as you can, because she will actually give you positive tools for moving forward, because staying curious about the thing that you messed up and how you can use it as a lesson for next time, it's the only way. It is absolutely the only way, because the kids in your school need you to do this job well and to do it sustainably. And I suppose, if we can circle back a little bit to you, jenny, the thing that you said in that first women in leadership, which is about taking your best self to work and bringing your best self home again I felt like no, no, I don't need to do that, because my school needs me more. The thing is, the system, long term, needs me more. Yes, there's a whole place for you know, I want to spend time with the grannies and I want to do this, but being good at this job over a longer period of time is actually the better investment in the kids in the system. If I can not burn myself out and leave education altogether Because I'm doing good work, I need to look after myself in order to continue to do that good work.

Jenny Cole: 37:15

It's important. Brilliant, stimulating as always, emma, and there were lots of questions. I deliberately didn't ask you because I know that that would send you off on a tangent, and as much as I love our tangents. We didn't have that long, so Emma is not professionally active on social media. However, as I said, she is hugely generous. So if there is something that she mentioned that you would like to know more about, I'm going to give you a link where you can contact me and I will either put you in touch with Emma or I'll be in touch with Emma to get that information back to you. So thanks again, emma. I hope everyone has enjoyed this episode as much as I've enjoyed recording it. If you have, we would really love you to subscribe and rate or follow whatever platform you're on, and that's it for now. Follow us next week and we will be back with some more. Can I put a little?

Emma Cooke: 38:07

end point on. You may Come and chat to me. I do show up at the WA Primary Principles Association a lot. That's where I find new victims to network with. So come and talk to me, come and say you heard the podcast, you want to know more about XYLZ? And yes, as far as I'm concerned, anything I've created in the last 20 years is fair game. I have no intellectual property weirdness. I will share anything and everything. So do look me up, do go through Jenny and do talk to me. I want to talk to people in the coffee line.

Jenny Cole: 38:41

Otherwise I have to be alone with my own thoughts and that's horrible. I'm going to push the record now. So thank you, Em, I love you.

Click on the link above to collapse this text.