“In the quiet tension between compliance and care, I learned that leadership is not always about saying yes to authority. Sometimes, it is about standing still, holding the line, and protecting those who trust you, even when the corridors of power close in.”

It was 11:00 a.m. on a cold January morning, and I was only a few years into my principalship, though still considered a junior. I sat behind my desk, enveloped in the familiar routines of school life—petty urgencies, voices crackling through the intercom, stacks of paperwork waiting to be signed—when the call came. Calm in tone, yet assertive in implication, I was told that a senior officer from an external military agency would be visiting the school the next day. He would be conducting classroom assessments, grading teachers, and observing classroom teaching in specific and general learning environments.

I asked whether the necessary approvals had been sought, being aware that a public school was not mandated to allow any external agency to carry out any function without prior approval of the government authority. I was assured they had, albeit informally, through the Department of Education’s senior-most official. That was a surprise, and as per the procedure, I would have received instructions from my department rather than the external agency. My instinct resisted. I reached out to the department, but the department’s head was inaccessible. Their staff confirmed that the military officials had been present at the office recently, and that perhaps some verbal understanding had indeed been reached. I was advised, almost helplessly, to comply with what the external military agency would like to do in the school. I was clear it was not a just treatment to the teachers, to the school.

To follow and be prepared for the next day, I called an urgent staff meeting, and we planned for the next day. While showing readiness and being prepared for the task, I could see the anxiety felt by the group. Some of them showed their dismay and questioned the legitimacy of being assessed on such short notice by an externally mandated authority at such short notice for no obvious reason. I did not burden them with the full weight of the absurdity we were being drawn into. I did not disclose my own discomfort I had been feeling, and whatever efforts I was exerting to keep things in order. I continued to try to reach the department’s head to communicate how the unplanned teachers’ assessment was not only beyond the scope [and legal mandate] of that agency, but was also highly demoralising for my school’s teachers. However, we kept preparing for the evaluative visit, but I kept the unease to myself, though it pressed heavily beneath the surface.

Until late in the evening, I could not access the office.

As the day ended, I was still trying to thread my way through the tangled corridors of authority. In the process, I contacted acquaintances in senior bureaucracy to clarify my legal foundations. I was aware that the policy protected me, and it was not binding upon me to follow orders from an external agency outside my chain of command. Those senior contacts confirmed what I needed to hear: there was no formal directive, no obligation to comply. I was advised to record my objection in writing and to notify all relevant parties. I reached out to a trusted contact in the bureaucracy—one of the rare few who could still be counted on to understand. Support was promised.

That evening, I faxed my letter to the Department. It was firm yet respectful. The visitor would be received, I wrote, and given an overview of the school. But access to classrooms for teacher evaluation would not be granted. No personal details would be shared. I copied the letter to the military officer and the concerned director, framing it not as defiance, but as due process.

The next day, the visitor, a senior military officer, arrived. He was escorted through the corridors, welcomed into a few classrooms, and shown the broader learning environment. He asked for names, for detailed access, for full compliance. It was not given. Despite his obvious annoyance in regard to his denied access to personal details and classrooms independently, he was politely informed about what the possibilities were within the legal frameworks and what course of action had already been taken by the school. I shared the copy of the letter I had faxed to all concerned the day before (or say night?). The boundaries were clear. He was displeased, but polite. The visit was completed within two hours, and he was ready to leave. But before he left, he smiled but only once, sharing that though he was disappointed that all of his travel was wasted but he knew that he would have done the same had he been in my place. I escorted him to the gate to reciprocate the respect.

For the rest of the day, our school functioned with unusual stillness. The teachers moved through the day with quiet confidence. No fear. No strain. Just a shared knowing—that we had protected something essential, even if we hadn’t named it aloud.

Towards the end of the school day I finally received a call from the highest office. I was told how the department’s head was unhappy after receiving displeasure from the military agency and for my handling of the matter in my non-conformist way. A small argument but my firm legal grounds helped me succeed in saving my teachers from exposure to unnecessary workplace stress.

When the school bell rang and I stood at the doorway, watching my teachers leave, I noticed their radiant faces—steady, calm, assured. No applause. No declaration. Just the subtle affirmation that care, when exercised with conviction, can redraw the contours of power.

I was reminded of a quote by George McDonald (1824-1905) I once read and had never forgotten: “To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.” In that moment, I felt both. I have remembered that day as the best team-building measure ever, and together with that team, a school marginalised in every aspect rose to affirming recognition at all fronts.

As I reflect on that episode now, I am reminded that the role of a principal is not merely administrative—it is profoundly relational. Leading a school means inhabiting a space where responsibility is constantly negotiated between institutional and policy compliance and human care. Principals are not only answerable to policy frameworks but are also ethically accountable to the emotional and professional well-being of their staff. As Noddings (2005) asserts in her ethic of care, leadership is not about control, but about relational responsiveness—a readiness to stand beside others, especially when the system stands against them. Likewise, Theoharis (2007) reminds us that socially just leadership often requires disrupting unjust systems to create more equitable and humane environments. In shielding my teachers from a demoralising and illegitimate inspection, I was not obstructing the system—I was doing the work of care, defending a professional dignity that is too often sacrificed at the altar of procedural obedience.

Leadership does not unfold in a policy vacuum, nor can it be reduced to a set of universally transferable skills. It is a deeply situated and evolving phenomenon which is shaped by the historical, political, and social contours of its context. These influences may remain obscured in formal discourse, yet they profoundly structure how leadership is enacted, resisted, and reimagined.

To lead is not simply to implement policy, but to navigate its silences, respond to its ruptures, and, at times, act against its grain in pursuit of care, justice, and dignity.

to be continued…

Saadia

References

Noddings, N. (2005). The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education. Teachers College Press.

Theoharis, G. (2007). Social justice educational leaders and resistance: Toward a theory of social justice leadership. Educational Administration Quarterly, 43(2), 221–258.

Author’s Note

For ethical reasons, the names of individuals in this narrative have been anonymised, and no identifying departmental or institutional affiliations have been disclosed. While the events described are drawn from real experiences, personal and institutional details have been withheld to protect the dignity and privacy of all involved. I believe that the value of this story lies not in specific names or dates, but in what it reveals about how institutions operate—and how care, in its quiet refusal to conform, can become a political act. The phenomenon of imposed surveillance, procedural ambiguity, and quiet resistance is universally recognisable. It is in that shared understanding that this story finds its meaning.

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