Name: Jan Stipek

Title: Principal (whole school)

Organisation: Regent International School

Currently a school-wide Principal of a large UK curriculum international school in Dubai, Jan Stipek’s career in education spans almost three decades across seven international schools (both non-profit and for-profit) in six countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Jan has first-hand work experience in several curricula and education systems with a first-class knowledge of the International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes gathered over 18 years as an IB teacher/school leader, examiner, authorization team leader, workshop leader, and Head of Global Professional Development working out of the IB Global office in The Hague.

Jan’s approach to leadership is to balance people first with systems thinking where a school’s success is seen holistically as a combination of carefully analyzed smaller elements choreographed into a meaningful whole. A lifelong learner, Jan holds a master’s degree in curriculum and pedagogy from SUNY Buffalo (USA) and a master’s degree in education leadership and policy from Monash University (Australia).

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Educational Leadership!

I hope Jan's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as an Educational Leader?

I am going to reframe the question and write about a challenge most school leaders face and that is managing change. I think that despite many theories and resources out there, managing change is challenging in any organization but specifically in a school environment due to several reasons:

1) time constraint – schools are routine-based organizations and work within a school year timeframe. This means that any major change can only take place at the start/end of a school year so careful timing and long-term planning is needed.

2) stakeholders – although teachers are employees of the school, the nature of the job gives them great autonomy in their classroom. As such, they are important and valued stakeholders with a lot of influence.

Therefore, they need to be brought on board with the proposed change collaboratively and with transparency otherwise the implementation may fail. I personally approach each major change with a project mindset and find it gratifying to see change taking place successfully within the context of each school.

2. How did you become an Educational Leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

I am a teacher by training and have never worked outside of the field of education. I recall that after eight years of teaching, I was wondering what career pathways there are in teaching so that I could keep motivated and growing professionally. This led me to the International Baccalaureate (IB) which has created a range of additional roles for teachers – from examiners to workshop leaders to evaluation team members.

I have started taking on these roles and got my first leadership role as an IB MYP Coordinator in 2009. From that moment, ever subsequent role I took on had more and more leadership responsibility and served as an ongoing leadership development experience for me, leading me to my current role as a Head of School (Principal in UK terms) in a large K-12 international school here in Dubai.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

My daily routine has evolved with experience over time and reflects the context in which I work. The school day here in the UAE starts early so I get to school between 6:30-6:50 on most days. I start the day by checking my calendar, email and Teams messages to ensure that there are no emergencies. I am always at one of the school gates around during the morning student arrival, catching up with my senior leaders, greeting students and parents.

The day is organized into either recurring meetings or one-off meetings as needed, interspersed by set periods of administrative work (checking messages, reviewing documentation, tidying up meeting minutes, etc) all of which are built into my daily agenda as much as possible. Whenever I have a moment, I try to go on campus walks to spend time in classrooms and engage with students and staff which I also formally schedule deliberately throughout the week.

After dismissal, I usually spend time on email, newsletters or other communications I need to write or send. I try to exercise twice a week and go for a run on the weekends. My evenings are spent with my family. I decided several years ago that attending to emails and other messages requires my full attention and time; as such, I do not check any work emails on my phone although I am always available to staff on WhatsApp and phone calls in case of emergencies.

4. What's a recent lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of as an Educational Leader?

I keep coming back to two lessons: 1) bad news doesn’t get better with time so don’t delay having difficult conversations or making difficult decisions; however, 2) never feel externally pressured into making important but not time-sensitive decisions without a due process – it never ends well.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your journey as an Educational Leader so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted you?

Although I could quote here a long list of famous books on leadership from Collins to Fullan, I will take a different approach and go with Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles. The reason I chose this isn’t connected to longevity and healthy living (though these are important) but because of the simplicity and applicability of the central idea which in my opinion perfectly blends both the aspirational aspects, like passion and love, with the pragmatic, like profession and compensation.

This model helped me reflect again on my own leadership style in terms of breaking down the holistic nature of leadership by deeply thinking about which individual aspects, expectations and even tasks I love and why; which aspects I am good at; and which, deep down, I know that they don’t come naturally to me. Engaging with this book in this was powerful and has led me to become certainly a more aware leader and I would recommend this to aspiring and seasoned leaders alike.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young educator who aspires to be an Educational Leader, what would you say to them?

Start your journey by truly getting to know yourself: How do you work best? What does success look like to you? How do you respond to setbacks? What is the one aspect of leadership which excites you? What is the one area that deep down inside makes you apprehensive? What makes you happy? And ... Why do you really want to achieve? Answers to many of these only really come through experience and time so take your time and work your way up.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as an Educational Leader, so far?

One story which stands out is when I was leading a school which was only in the third year of its existence. It was a school with remarkable ambitions and aspirations, and it has attracted some high-quality teachers, all of whom had extensive international school experience. Unfortunately, this experience also came with some strong opinions which, in most cases, originated by simply looking back at the teachers’ previous schools and wishing to replicate those old days.

Every school is different and while prior experience is extremely important, it needs to be reflected upon in the context of the present situation and then shaped into a productive strategy of moving the new school forward. As a result, the school initially ended up with outstanding teachers whose teaching approaches were all over the place which caused parental complaints. In response, our leadership team decided to collaboratively create a set of school-specific teaching standards, drawing on the teachers’ prior experience but distilling it into one set of an agreed framework which clearly stipulated teaching and professional expectations for all teachers, in the specific school’s context.

This teaching standard framework was then used as the backbone of the annual teacher evaluation process and, in a surprisingly short amount of time, turned the school around into a much more cohesive and consistent teaching environment.