From the Ground Up: How a Community with a Vision and a Principal with a Purpose Created a Thriving State School

By Steven Cook

Taking Albert Park College from forced closure to Australia's School of the Year

In 2006, Albert Park College, a public secondary school in inner-city Melbourne, was closed after a dramatic loss in confidence caused enrolments to plummet. Devastated yet determined parents rallied and convinced the education department to give the school a second chance. The old buildings were bulldozed and a new school began to take shape.

At the same time, experienced public school educator Steven Cook was in search of a fresh start. He took on the job as principal of the new college, moved into the local area, became part of the community and got to work.

In 2021, Albert Park College was voted Australian School of the Year.

In From the Ground Up, Steven Cook reveals how a thriving new college was created where the previous one had failed, and what it takes to create a successful public school. He reflects on his career as an educator, and demonstrates how to rebuild and renew our public schools to give our young people and our nation a great future. This is an inspiring story of how learning from our mistakes can result in our greatest achievements.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Inc. Books
• Release date: Mar 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781743823057

Steven Cook

Steven Cook is the coauthor of four cookbooks: the James Beard Award–winning Zahav, Federal Donuts, Israeli Soul, and the forthcoming Zahav Home. He and chef Michael Solomonov are the co-owners of the nationally beloved trailblazing Philadelphia hospitality group, CookNSolo, responsible for hit restaurants celebrating Israeli cuisine: Dizengoff, Federal Donuts, Goldie, K’Far Café, Laser Wolf, Lilah, and Zahav.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

A DAY IN THE LIFE

School days always start with a sense of possibility. You walk into the grounds to hear the leaf blower at work as the gardener prepares his patch. In the courtyard cafe, staff are chalking up the day’s menu and firing up the coffee machine; the manager, Bernard, yells out: ‘Strong latte coming up!’ To a soundtrack of early orchestra practice, the administrative staff are sorting out teacher absences and arranging last-minute temps while discussing a forthcoming wedding. Your executive assistant has already rearranged your diary to fit in a meeting you’d forgotten to tell her about; she can do anything! The staff arrive, empty KeepCups in hand, drawing energy into the school from the outside world, checking their lesson plans for the day, double-checking where their first lesson is. Bernard knows their orders: flat white with one, skinny cap and no sugar, long black . . . The duty teachers stand by the gate, eyeing uniforms, straightening ties, extracting promises to dress better tomorrow, greeting students with a happy ‘hello’ and maybe consolations over their team’s loss on the weekend. The rowing teams are first in, fresh from the lake, showered, sports bags over their shoulders. The rhythm of the day starts to unfold. You grasp that your school isn’t an institution but a social creation, a living thing, and you as principal are in charge of it and responsible for making sure it continues. The day begins . . . a few stragglers arrive to sign the late register.

No two days are ever the same. The first person at your door is a teacher desperately in need of an impromptu holiday – after two years of border closures due to Covid, her parents in England desperately need to see her, her new husband and a tiny grandchild. Staffing is tight due to so many Covid-related absences – that teacher shortage is real – but she’s a great teacher, the students and fellow staff members love her, you know how important family is to her and how important she is to the school, so you say yes and work with an assistant principal to figure out how we’ll cope next term. ‘Shuffle classes around, we’ll manage it, somehow.

You look down at your mobile phone and remember that email you got from the department at 9.30 the previous evening – they want you to see a student’s father. It’s a tricky issue: a student having suicidal thoughts, from a separated family, has been left with her father while her mother goes on a work trip. The father is not happy, having discovered just how bad his daughter’s mental health is. He has a history of getting angry easily, apparently, and you’ve been instructed to block him from the school grounds. But how can you physically do that? You don’t have a security firm on speed dial; the school can’t afford such things. The dad turns up, visibly upset, and you feel sorry for him – he’s just a confused parent like you, like all parents – so you suggest a walk down to the beach, where you calm him down. ‘She’s in good hands,’ you tell him. ‘Her teachers really care about her. They’re great with kids. They have their own, you know.’ You think of your own daughters and thank your lucky stars.

There’s a busy morning ahead. It’s Friday, so there’s the e-learning meeting. The IT department wants forty-eight new wireless access points at a cost of $65,000. ‘That many, guys?’ ‘Yes!’ A new plan to lift mathematics results has to be discussed at a leadership meeting with the assistant principals and business manager – it means more team teaching and some new software to buy. It’s a staff member’s thirtieth birthday, so you have to drop into his staffroom to make a short speech, and try to resist the jam donuts – no chance! On the way, you peer into some classrooms that have young teachers, to see how they’re coping. They look a little nervous, working through a class that took hours to prepare, maybe over-asserting themselves, but they’ll get the hang of it. You know this because that was you once. In the courtyard, the dance troupe in their leotards are stretching out in the sunshine, preparing for action.

Why is that student not in class?

Next up is job interviews. One applicant for a drama teacher position is a former member of Bananas in Pyjamas – B1, you think. An ex-student wants to improve the college’s consent education curriculum. An interviewee pulls out at the last minute (another sign of the teacher shortage), so you use the spare time filling out a survey on the department’s success in introducing free tampons into schools – a job that requires you to nominate two teachers and two parents for the department to interview about the effectiveness of the initiative. You curse the growth of paperwork, but cheer up when a smiling school captain pops her head into your office to say hi. She is an amazing student. The play she has written is being performed somewhere in Europe and she’s swimming the English Channel in September, getting back only just before SWOTVAC (Study Without Teaching Vacation), but you’re not worried, because you know she will blitz her Year 12 exams, as she always does.

Then in the afternoon, a sad duty. There’s bad news to relay. A long-time staff member has been in an accident and lies in hospital in a critical condition. You’ve known for a week, but only now that doctors are confident she will survive can you let everyone else know. How do you write the email, knowing many of your teachers are her old and close friends? She’s one of the best teachers you’ve ever worked with; she gets stellar results; the students adore her. There are tears. Lots of them. It hits you, once again, that your school is a people-driven place, one of intense friendships, and you are responsible for it.

It’s 3.10 p.m., the formal school day is over, the students rush out, excited, free. As you stand in the emptying courtyard, the senior students head to the library to get started on homework to a soundtrack of guitars and drums from the band practising. Dance students head to the drama space to perfect their moves. The basketball academy team, in sports uniform, gathers on the court and starts throwing hoops. People head to the local theatre to position stage props for the play that begins that evening and runs for three nights. The school day is not over yet. Not by a long shot. And tomorrow it all starts again.

Running a school and preparing the next generation to take on the world is the best job there is. You are a leader. One of the most important our society has.

INTRODUCTION

If Australia is to have a viable future in education, our schools need to be more ambitious. Otherwise, a creativity deficit and skills shortages will drag the country down into mediocrity.

We have a major problem: our education policymakers concentrate energy on the wrong things. Their sights are set too low. Their concerns are too often about funding, regulatory compliance and teaching the basics, when they should be about how we can use education to engage young people, develop their creativity and build a more innovative economy and a better, more sustainable society. Education should be about empowering our young people to create a better life for themselves and take responsibility for the world they will inherit.

Where must this change come from? Schools, not bureaucracies. Who must lead it? Communities, school principals and teachers. How can it be done? This book provides the answers by examining how schools work and proposing practical ways to allow parents, principals and teachers to become more effective educators. The educational theorists and policymakers have had their chance – now it’s time for schools to lead the way, with actions, rather than words.

Every year, state and territory governments announce funding for new schools. The schools open a few years later, embraced by proud local communities. Ribbons are cut, a Welcome to Country is performed, the national anthem is sung. There isn’t a smudge to be seen on the bright, white walls and polished windows. The children arrive on day one in their pristine uniforms and polished shoes (possibly the only day their shoes will be shiny) to the relief of parents whose long community campaign to create a better school has ended with success. The learning begins.

So, what happens next? There is no manual for operating a new school. (And if we go back one step, there’s no manual for designing one either.) There is little leadership, management training or guidance of any helpful kind. When our nation buys an F35 jet fighter for $75 million, it trains the pilots and ground crew until they are the best weapons system in the world, but when it spends $75 million on a new, state-of-the-art school, it simply hands over the keys and wishes the team good luck. The school may go on to become a roaring success, but sometimes, though, the results are disappointing, and before long the new school succumbs to the usual problems of overcrowding, funding constraints, slightly disappointing academic results, declining staff morale, high staff turnover and student boredom. The promise of that first day gives way to looking forward to Friday afternoon. The initially strong support for the school from the community – its lifeblood – slowly begins to seep away. Parents start to look for alternatives.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. I’ve been an educator for forty years, nearly half of them as a deputy, campus or school principal. I’ve not only led schools but also been involved as an adviser in the planning, building and renewal of them. During that time, I’ve seen stunning success as well as deflating failure. I can tell you that nothing beats the sense of achievement, satisfaction and sheer joy that comes from running a great school. What could be better than helping young people make the journey from childhood to early adulthood and preparing them to become the inheritors of our community, country and world? Get a school right and you will be surrounded by passion, energy and creativity.

So, how do you create and lead a great school? While no two successful schools are totally alike, easily discernible patterns tend to emerge, often early in the institution’s history. Great schools tend to have the following:

• a clear and purposeful vision of what they stand for and where they are going

• a strong understanding of what their community wants from them and a coherent set of values to deliver it

• a curriculum that goes well beyond the basics to engage and excite young minds and young teachers

• an understanding of where modern education is heading and how it is relevant to the school’s community

• a united and purposeful staffroom with a positive culture

• energy that is expressed in creative after-school activities – a good school is never a ghost town by 3.30 p.m.

• a well-administered budget that finds funds for exciting additions and developments

• families and teachers who clamour to get a place for their children or a job for themselves – good schools are in demand!

When schools succeed, the benefits to students and society are immense. When they fail, the costs are enormous, squandering millions of dollars of investment, years of dedicated hard work by teachers and the potential of our young. For communities that place so much hope in their local schools, failure is heartbreaking.

Such heartbreak can be avoided. Our education system simply hasn’t done enough to understand what creates success. Where it has done the work, the ideas haven’t been put into action with enough force to make our schools all that they can be.

In this book, I outline lessons from my own experience to contribute to building this understanding. You may be a new school’s first principal, as I have been. You may have been recently appointed as a principal to revamp a failing school or a school that works well but needs some freshness and vitality. Or you may be a leading teacher with your sights set on one day running a campus or school of your own. You may even be a parent trying to understand what’s really going on at your local school and wanting to help it make a difference.

This book is also intended as a source of general advice about how to successfully run any medium-sized organisation. Whether you employ 150 teachers or 150 computer technicians or 150 architects, there are some common dynamics at work.

The ideas presented here are taken from experience, not theory. Importantly, they include some things education departments would probably prefer we didn’t talk about, like the realities of choosing the right staff and setting a budget, and the fact that too many students are disengaged from learning. Everything we do is pointless if the students aren’t listening. We must find ways of making schooling appealing, stimulating and even fun – for teachers as well as students – while deepening students’ knowledge of important disciplines. And we must do this not by dumbing schooling down but by being ambitious and inventive, modern and relevant to the world the students will inherit, to stimulate their interest and creativity.

What you will find in the following pages, in addition to practical ideas about subject choice, staffing, professional development, timetabling, classroom and campus design and so forth, is a plea for school leaders to do everything with an eye to making the school a more technically advanced, creative and socially aware place so it can inspire its students, teachers and community to trust each other and achieve their very best. In the absence of everything else, creativity will take a school a long way.

A refusal to allow your school to settle down into a quiet mediocrity will take you the rest of the way. The school I’m privileged to lead, Albert Park College (APC) in the inner-Melbourne bayside suburb of Albert Park, has walked the walk on school reform and we offer our experience to all schools to choose what works for them. I know my school principal colleagues will cheer loudly when I say the best way to kickstart this revolution is to trust our principals and schools to do their jobs.

This is the story of how we did it – and how you can do it too.

Let’s get started.

PART 1

CREATING A SCHOOL

1

CARPE DIEM!

In 2009 I was appointed the foundation principal of Albert Park College. After two decades as a teacher and another as a deputy principal, I had achieved a leadership position and was excited to finally have control of my own school. I was ready. It wasn’t difficult: my staff was