Translator: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner Reviewer: Ivana Korom
Imagine a school, where things were so bad
that the principal had a gun held to his head.
Where members of staff suffered post-traumatic stress
as a result of a constant violence and dysfunction.
A place where some students saw their school
only as a conduit to a life of crime,
in order to escape generational poverty.
That was our school.
Once thriving, it had lost its way.
Enrolments were down.
Education was no longer the core business.
Visitors were greeted with barbed wire fencing
and bars on windows.
There was an anger in the school
that simmered just beneath the surface.
A clear 'us' and 'them' mentality,
separated teachers and their students.
I'll never forget my first day there.
Within an hour, I was dealing with a fight.
It was pretty serious and one boy was badly hurt.
I learned then
that would not be my last sight of blood.
It's easy to give up on a place like that.
You can always blame the community.
You can always blame the kids.
You can always blame the system.
But, you can't,
because where there's a heartbeat,
there's life.
Eight years on,
and our school is almost unrecognizable.
Enrolments have almost doubled.
Gone is the barbed wire and bars.
The violence and the apathy towards education, too.
It's been replaced with a 'can-do' attitude
and a deep-seated belief
that our school, once a last resort,
is now a great school.
We've got a waiting list of teachers.
Our community dinner,
which started with 50 people in attendance,
now has over 600.
Our students line up for leadership positions.
And our boys, well, they wear their uniform with great pride.
They want to be at this school.
Every morning the deputy principals and I greet the students at the front gate.
We share stories, we have a laugh, we welcome them.
We're building relationships every single day.
My parents, born in Lebanon, came here in 1974.
Like many migrant parents, their dream
was that their eldest son would become a doctor.
(Laughter)
That's another story.
My father never had the chance to finish his schooling,
and yet, he remains as one of the greatest teachers
that I've ever met.
He drilled into us the importance of learning.
And as for mum,
well I'll remember the floral shirt
that she bought me for my first day of teaching.
(Laughter)
It was her way of showing her pride,
but it also showed me she was stuck in the '70s.
(Laughter)
Thanks, mum.
Maybe it was the lucky shirt,
maybe it was the fact that I actually started to dress myself,
but within 10 years
I was appointed as one of the youngest principals in the state,
to Punchbowl Boys High School.
(Applause)
A school, where too many people had given up on.
I heard all sorts of stories before I started there.
"You're wasting your time."
"It's a dead-end school for deadbeats."
I drew the line, when a teacher said to me,
"These kids aren't worth it."
I knew they were.
I didn't want to mark my time as the principal,
then move on to something better.
I wanted to make our school the 'something better'
that people were looking for.
I wanted to create a sense of belonging,
a community,
a school family.
From pretty early on, everything became about family.
I drew on that idea that a family has your back.
That a family wants what's best for you.
That a family is there for you.
This school had been missing a heart.
And in creating a sense of family
we not only found our heart,
but we developed our soul.
We started to remove obstacles for the kids, so they could succeed.
If they didn't have food, we gave them something to eat.
If they hadn't the right equipment we found some for them.
If they didn't believe in themselves, we built it into them.
We were there for them when they fell.
We were there for them when they needed shoulders to stand on.
With this lens we decided to review everything in the school,
from the things and subjects that we were offering,
to the quality of our teaching,
even down to the food, that we were selling in the canteen.
From that point on, being just good enough
was no longer good enough.
It takes a lot of things to make change
and these changes were underpinned - I think - by three crucial elements.
The first was that we had to soften the hard edge of our boys.
We had to work that gang mentality out of them.
We wanted them to start coming to the school,
but we wanted them to come to school, so they could learn.
We started focusing on the good stuff, not just the problems.
We tried to catch them doing the right thing
and acknowledge them for that.
And do you know what?
Pretty soon their attitudes started to change for the better.
We had more bums on seats
and a greater effort in the classroom.
Most significantly,
the boys had no excuse no longer to succeed.
The second crucial element
was in empowering our amazing staff.
They are the heart and the soul,
that turned our vision into reality.
I didn't want staff feeling like just being there,
as some sort of community service.
Today it's the norm for our staff
to be at school outside of regular hours,
whether they're helping the kids with additional work,
running sports programs,
mentoring,
career guidance
or even doing some maintenance in the school, that we can't afford.
They give the best of themselves,
the same they would want for their own children,
because they believe in the school and the vision that we've got.
They are resilient.
They are inspiring.
And, yep, you guessed it.
We're family.
We are not just colleagues.
The third - and I think most critical element -
was in engaging our community.
The parents of our boys are good people
and they want what every person wants for their own children:
the very best.
When I wanted some advice or tips, to deal with teenage boys
we ran evening classes for them.
So successful were these classes,
that our evening lessons have now become an institution,
and they are typified by good will, great humor, learning,
but best of all:
the best food you are ever going to eat.
(Laughter)
The parents have become our loudest advocates
and they have put their complete faith in us.
So did all this tinkering and reviewing and engaging and all that sort of stuff,
actually make a difference academically?
You tell me.
Last year 65% of our boys went on to further education.
Compare that -
(Applause)
Compare that to just 30% eight years ago.
(Applause)
I told you our teachers were good.
The concept of family though,
is no better typified than in Sam.
Sam is a refugee from Sierra Leone, who joined us at the age of 15.
He'd only had nine months of formal education.
There was no mum or dad on the scene.
I knew my history enough, not to ask any questions.
One particular day I stood at the gate.
I was stopping this drunk person from coming into the school.
I didn't know the person.
He had no business in being in the school,
but he was insistent on coming in.
I always insisted on him staying out.
Out of nowhere,
Sam materialized beside me.
He had sensed that something was wrong
and he wanted to protect me.
He had my back.
Once the situation resolved itself peacefully,
I actually asked Sam,
"Sam, have you ever been in a fight?"
He said that he hadn't.
At that moment,
I knew exactly what he was doing.
He was repaying us
for the kindness, compassion and love
that he'd received from his new family.
It's hard not to be moved by something like that.
(Applause)
In softening the boys, though, I almost lost my two deputy principals,
and they're more like a brother and a sister to me
than a deputy.
Recently, they both handed me, together,
an envelope with their resignation attached,
saying the school was not what they'd signed up for
and that they needed to move on.
They had been prepared
and had in the past dealt with fights,
swearing,
carrying on and misbehaviour.
They were not prepared or even equipped
to deal with the latest problem.
They'd just come back from solving an argument between two boys,
which in itself, is nothing unusual,
except for the fact that the two boys -
they were arguing over the choice of hand cream to use.
(Laughter)
The deputies got me a beauty
(Laughter)
and it's good to sound they still work for me, as well.
(Laughter)
It's the funny stories that keep us sane.
Our school was once deemed ready for the scrap heap,
but our experience shows
that you can change the culture.
You can change the trajectory of any organisation.
It's a truth for everyone.
If you work with your heart and you open your arms,
others will join you.
The positivity is infectious
and superstars - well they're made up of ordinary people.
I'd like to see a bright future for schools,
where the simple concept of belonging
is not something that we strive for,
but, rather, something that is inherent.
Where regardless of where a school sits,
on some simplistic ranking system,
the important measure
is in the strength of its heart and of its soul.
Thank you.
(Applause)