One of my weirdest dreams, and one I remember well, happened at least 18 years ago. At that stage, I was the principal of Leanyer Primary School. Our Director or CEO of Education was overseeing a regime that imported many principals from interstate straight into top positions in our schools. Local recruitment was being overlooked, and people who had reached deputy principal level within the Northern Territory system were being bypassed for top spots.

The Northern Territory Principals Association took exception to this and did their level best to thwart this ambition – to import interstate by urging locals to apply for positions. To some extent, we succeeded.

Another development was that people coming from interstate were not resigning their positions. Still, they were taking leave without pay to come to the Northern Territory to broaden their experience before returning to positions that were being held for them. This meant rapid fire turnover of principals in many Northern Territory schools and therefore destabilisation for school communities.

The principals, through their association, kept on pushing.

In my dream, as a member of the Principals Association Executive, I was in a long, thin, rectangular-shaped rice field about a kilometre long and maybe fifty metres wide. High walls enclosed this space, and there was no getting out by scrambling up the smooth sides.

Apart from myself, the other person in this space was the then Chief Executive Officer  of the Education Department—who for this narration should remain nameless. He was walking in one direction, and I followed. Then I turned around and started walking back the other way. He stopped, turned around, looked at me and screamed out, “You bastards! You bastards! It is all your fault!”

I turned back to face him. 

“What? It is all our fault?” 

“It is your association’s fault”, he screeched at me. “You are not helping these new principals from interstate to settle into schools. That is why they are leaving in droves. It is your fault that you are mucking up our ambitions to bring fresh blood into top leadership positions in our schools!”. 

Then I woke up.  

Though it was slightly retrospective, it was a good dream. 

We had achieved something to benefit those within our system. And that was what we wanted to do.