In my role as High School Coordinator I have to make a lot of decisions, which is really ironic because anyone who knows me well knows that when it comes to my personal life I don’t make decisions easily.
When Hayley and I were first married I would drive her crazy with my usual answer to any kind of decision making problem: “I don’t mind”. What should we have for dinner tonight? Which movie do you want to watch? Which house should we buy? “I don’t mind”.
Thankfully, when it comes to school I’m a lot more comfortable making decisions. From working out teaching allocations, to timetables, rooming, assessment guidelines, and report structures, there are plenty of decisions that I need to make. Sometimes it’s my call to make, sometimes it’s alongside Mr Westcott, and sometimes it’s a group decision, and I think we manage pretty well the majority of the time.
We always try to make decisions to benefit as many people as possible, and we know that we can’t please everyone. But that’s all part of the job. We have a simple method when it comes to making big decisions – trial it with a small group of people first to see how it works, keep it going with the small group so any problems can be fixed without affecting too many people, then slowly start rolling it out to everyone.
Over the past six months, COVID-19 has made this next to impossible! We receive information one day and have to have decisions made and policies written by the next. It’s fast-paced, stressful and can lead to little adjustments on the fly.
However, I have really felt for the politicians and health experts responsible for making decisions around COVID-19. Our decisions impact our school and aren’t a case of life and death – but their decisions are!
It’s easy to sit back from the comfort of our homes and criticise the decisions that get made. For example, it’s a hard pill to swallow for Year 12s that their families can’t come to their farewell assembly. But I can only imagine how difficult it is for the people making these decisions. There are so many variables to take into account, so many moving parts, so many different people to try to keep happy… I’m just glad it’s not me.
Let’s all stay positive and pray for wisdom for the people making these tough decisions, and pray that COVID-19 cases will continue to drop and their job will get so much easier – and they might even be able to reverse a few decisions in time for the end of term!
Greg