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Helen Burge offers some words of encouragement for getting those seasonal tasks done


Last word A


s spring comes round again, I cannot help but think that last year was the quickest ever in my career


as a school business manager. As we all know, working in a school is extraordinarily cyclical, with every term bringing its own unique tasks and challenges, and every season marked and celebrated. So what does ‘spring’ mean for the SBM?


Spring clean At home, the deep clean towards the end of the year feels very thorough – possibly encouraged by the low sunshine streaming though the windows and highlighting all the patches of dust and grime that have been missed. Putting the festive decorations away after Christmas gave us another ideal opportunity for deep cleaning and reorganisation, although we can always guarantee finding a screwed-up Quality Street wrapper that had been lobbed at someone, playing the longest game of hide-and-seek and still lurking during the actual spring clean. At work, I’m going to concentrate


my spring clean on archiving or deleting old emails, old files, old signage on my office noticeboard and a good old audit of our current cleaning arrangements and schedules. What are you going to do as part of your SBM spring clean?


‘We work at a quick, energetic pace. We


pick something up and add our own vesion of SBM magic dust, making a positive difference to life in our schools’


58 SPRING 2019 FundEd


Spring back A SBM’s resilience and ability to recover quickly is so important. It is one of the key behaviours listed within the ISBL Professional Standards and they describe it as ‘an ability to use existing resources to overcome challenges and creates new and effective solutions in the face of adversity’. Resilience is all about your


bounce-back-ability, and the phrase ‘It’s not what happens to you in life, but how you deal with it that counts’, springs to mind. We do need to give ourselves the best possible chance of springing back from setbacks. What works for you? For me it’s chocolate, a good chat with a confidential ear and a chilled


G&T, not necessarily all within the staff room or working day!


The joys of spring This phrase is supposed to be a chirpy one, but I cannot help but think I only use it in a negative way – when someone presents themselves in a grumpy way, I think to myself, sarcastically, ‘well aren’t they full of the joys of spring!’ How we present ourselves at work is so important – are we radiating warmth, ideas and enthusiasm, or draining the life and willpower out of our co-workers? Do you recognise when you switch


from radiator to drainer mode? Or are you permanently stuck in drainer mode?! Do you recognise it in your co-workers? How can you help them switch modes?


Spring into action Nearly every SBM I know springs into action on a daily, if not hourly basis. One of the best bits of our full and varied roles is that we literally have to spring into action to deal with a whole myriad of different issues. There is so much content to get through –


strategic or everyday tasks – that we have to work at a quick, energetic pace. We pick something up and add our own version of SBM magic dust, making a positive difference to life in our schools. Is this the year to spring into action and do something different for yourself? Perhaps study for a qualification? Or dust off your CV and give it a spring clean and apply for THAT job to move on to the next stage of your career?


Helen Burge is Academy Business Leader at St Anne’s Church Academy and Little Learners Nursery, Weston- super-Mare. @SBL_StAnnesWSM


IMAGE: IVANNIKULIN/ISTOCKPHOTO.COM


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