Back in April, our community came together for the third year in a row to raise more than €100,000 in support of childhood cancer research through the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. Raffle prize winner Caroline won the opportunity to shadow ASH School Director Dr. Courtney Lowe for a day, where she got the chance to take a look behind the scenes of our school’s leadership.

 

One of Caroline’s biggest surprises was seeing just how much Dr. Lowe manages in a single day. “I realised that he spends a lot of his day meeting with students, teachers, and other staff members while collaborating with them to make big decisions for our school,” she shared.

 

The experience gave Caroline a deeper appreciation for school leadership as an ongoing process of balancing priorities, responding to different needs, and maintaining momentum across a complex organisation. She found it particularly interesting how varied the role is, with no two days looking the same and many different challenges requiring attention at once.

 

Caroline also learned about the complexities of leadership. She believes one of the most challenging aspects of the job is balancing the needs of all students while recognizing that every individual situation cannot always be addressed separately. During her day with Dr. Lowe, she also saw how important it is for school leaders to stay connected to students’ everyday experiences. In fact, throughout the year, members of the Leadership Team regularly shadow students across all divisions, moving with them from class to class and through their daily routines to better understand what school feels like from a student’s perspective. These experiences help leaders identify what is supporting learning well and where small changes could make the student experience even better.

 

She came away with the sense that leadership in a school context is largely about sustaining and improving the systems that support learning every day. As she put it, “There is lots of work behind the scenes to make sure everything runs smoothly.”

 

If she were given control of ASH for a day, Caroline knows exactly what she would do. She would spend time with students from every grade level, listening to their ideas and learning what changes they would most like to see.