{"id":522,"date":"2023-10-06T15:18:50","date_gmt":"2023-10-06T14:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whs-blogs.co.uk\/heads-blog\/?p=522"},"modified":"2023-10-11T08:54:17","modified_gmt":"2023-10-11T07:54:17","slug":"uneasy-lies-the-head-that-wears-a-crown-%e2%80%af%e2%80%af","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/whs-blogs.co.uk\/heads-blog\/2023\/10\/06\/uneasy-lies-the-head-that-wears-a-crown-%e2%80%af%e2%80%af\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Uneasy lies the Head that wears a crown…\u2019\u202f\u202f"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are two tomes currently taking pride of place on my desk: a collection of the second of the historical tetralogies by William Shakespeare,\u202f<\/em>and The New Art of Headship 2023 <\/em>by RS Academics. <\/em>Not common bed-fellows, I\u2019d\u202fwarrant, though it\u2019s\u202feasy enough to make jokes about one of these texts covering years of unrest, chaos\u202fand bloodshed, centred\u202faround the anxieties, vanities\u202fand pitfalls of leadership during turmoil; and the other being Henry V.\u202f<\/em>\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Shakespeare is there because I\u2019m\u202fteaching Henry IV Pt I, but I’d\u202falso reached for it last year on the death of Her Majesty Elizabeth II, when finding some words for an assembly. I had tried to think about how she had felt the night before her coronation when, aged only 27 and grieving for her father, she had been thrust onto the world stage, and how her sleep may well have been as elusive as that of Henry in his famous midnight soliloquy in the halls of Westminster:\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose \u202f 
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude, \u202f 
And in the calmest and most stillest\u202fnight \u202f 
With\u202fall appliances and means to boot Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!\u202f \u202f 
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When reading the passage to our students, I admit I felt it resonating within me, not only as a commentary on the burdens of Kingship, but as a reflection of my own experiences over the previous three years and the occasional longing to have a break from it.\u202fWe\u2019re not by any stretch monarchs\u202f- in fact, I often think of Heads more as caretakers than kings or queens -\u202fbut whether leading a small team, a school or a country, a leader is a leader;\u202fand\u202fHal\u2019s envy of his sleeping troops absolutely reminds me of my occasional fantasies of returning to full-time English teaching, and the chance to remove the metaphorical crown and lay it down, even if only for a short while. Who amongst us Heads has not experienced the heaviness of that crown from time-to-time, and the sporadic 3am episode of staring into the abyss of significant and relentless responsibility? And not just us: king of UK Grime Stormzy himself appropriates Henry\u2019s words in his 2019 track \u2018Crown\u2019\u202f(and if it\u2019s\u202fa good enough metaphor for Stormzy, it\u2019s\u202fgood enough for me…)\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, as our thoughts turn to the forthcoming HMC Conference in Shakespeare\u2019s birthplace of Stratford-on-Avon, with its welcome focus on the challenges and joys of leadership in our schools, the two texts sitting on my desk have seemed to me both inter-connected and thought-provoking in that inter-connectedness. The idea that a \u2018new art\u2019 of Headship is emerging \u2013\u202f very much catalyzed by the pandemic, the report suggests \u2013 is fascinating, and much of the report chimes with my own experience: more and different pressures from more and different stakeholders; the need to strategize long-term whilst fighting short-term fires; a transactional element creeping into relationships which may well heighten as the sector headwinds continue to blow; and a feeling \u2013 as quoted in the report \u2013 that \u2018Heads look back on a time before Covid with nostalgia<\/em>\u2019.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Challenges, it would seem, abound.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But isn\u2019t it comforting to know that it has been ever thus? That yes, in a post-pandemic world, everything seems to have changed, but that this change is utterly predictable; that after crisis comes challenge and even at times chaos. Shakespeare tells us this is the case not only as far back as the world of Henry IV \u2013 back in the fourteenth century, after all \u2013 but even further back than that, much further, in\u202fTroilus and Cressida<\/em>\u202ffor instance where the Trojan War is followed by deep pestilence and utter turmoil.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things change,\u202fconstantly, and whilst we are only a small part of that change, we are leading our communities during one of the most significant changes of our generation. Will we need to adapt? Of course? Is it difficult? Absolutely. But it\u2019s\u202fbeen part of human experience\u202fsince the very beginning:\u202fwriters like\u202fShakespeare tell us that leaders\u202feons before us felt the weight of their responsibilities, and that they went on and led anyway; and those who come after us will doubtless experience the same. Being a human and being a good leader must go hand-in-hand, so we\u2019re\u202fgoing to have moments and even years when we feel the\u202fcrown to be heavy or uneasy.\u202fAcknowledging our own flawed humanity, at 3am or otherwise, and our place in a long line\u202fof flawed, human leaders just might\u202fbe what is required\u202fto keep us going.\u202f <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are two tomes currently taking pride of place on my desk: a collection of the second of the historical tetralogies by William Shakespeare,\u202fand The New Art of Headship 2023 by RS Academics. Not common bed-fellows, I\u2019d\u202fwarrant, though it\u2019s\u202feasy enough … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":529,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[53,70,71,72],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/whs-blogs.co.uk\/heads-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/whs-blogs.co.uk\/heads-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/whs-blogs.co.uk\/heads-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whs-blogs.co.uk\/heads-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whs-blogs.co.uk\/heads-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/whs-blogs.co.uk\/heads-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":525,"href":"http:\/\/whs-blogs.co.uk\/heads-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions\/525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whs-blogs.co.uk\/heads-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/whs-blogs.co.uk\/heads-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whs-blogs.co.uk\/heads-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whs-blogs.co.uk\/heads-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}