Tale End

This is our principal Scott Flintoft and vice-principal Corre Mahan at Joe Clark School in High River. We have the best team, always helping out when needed, caring and so supportive AND brings us snacks too!!

This is Michelle Nanias (left) with St. Patrick Catholic School in Camrose. She is so caring and kind. She makes sure her staff are taken care of! She is a shining light in our school. 

And you’re understanding and easy to talk to.
 

This is Keith Early from Athabasca Delta Community School, Parkland School Division, on our flight into Fort Chipewyan. Keith is kind, he’s empathetic and he cares.

As with most cases, it’s about building relationships and trust. If you have a staff team that feels that they can work comfortably with you, and you can work comfortably with them, you’re able to collaborate easily. Making sure that you understand who they are, they understand who you are ... that makes a huge difference.

The biggest thing for me is creating those connections and finding out what gifts and talents they bring to the work. And I think recognizing that when we walk into any type of leadership role, it’s really helping to walk alongside people, helping to see their gifts and talents so that they can really start to feel like they’re part of the process and have that sense of belonging within it.

The first thing is capital F fun — have fun and get to know people and connect. So, I would say connect and have a good time. I mean, you’ve got to have fun in this work. It’s really, really hard. It’s hard on everyone at times, so have fun, build relationships and connect first before you get to the hard work.

It’s all about relationships. I have to be super intentional about my relationships with teachers, even at my own school site. So it’s maybe going in earlier than I would normally like, so I can get my own work done, because then by the time people start showing up, I just want to talk and socialize. So I’m intentional about that, and then just making sure I physically walk around my school, to different parts that I maybe normally don’t get to, when I don’t have supervision.