For the love of a job he was determined never to do
Kean Broom is the headmaster of Treverton College
What does a headmaster do?
A headmaster’s job is to do what needs to be done. This mostly involves listening to a lot of people who have different opinions and ideas, but who all believe they have the best interests of the school at heart.
He balances the individual needs and interests of each stakeholder with those of the broader school community, making tough calls when needed. He often spends more time dealing with other people’s children than his own and lives with the tension of that daily.
He generally gets to do his routine work, like admin, e-mailing and paperwork, after hours because his day is full of surprises and unpredictability — often heart-warming but sometimes hair-raising.
What do you think makes you a good headmaster?
I think what makes a good headmaster — which I can only strive to be — is a love of people and a sense of calling to serve a community of people in a sacrificial way. I think a good headmaster should be quick to listen and slow to speak.
What led you to where you are today?
I was always determined never to become a headmaster. At my previous school, St Alban’s College in Pretoria, I was mentored by an amazing headmaster who encouraged me (and probably tricked me once or twice) to take on new challenges aimed at personal and professional growth.
I grew from only teaching English to being a housemaster of a day scholar house, and a boarding housemaster, where I learnt the most about managing people in a school environment. I still did not want to be a headmaster.
Eight years ago we moved to Mooi River, where I took up a position at Treverton College as the head of English. I fell in love with Treverton’s educational strategy of using adventure as an integral part of the curriculum.
I subsequently moved from head of the English department to deputy head and finally to my current position as headmaster.
How did the school cope during lockdown, and have you kept any of those habits now that life is beginning to return to normal? If so, what?
It was nothing short of miraculous that we instituted the introduction of laptops for all pupils and trained all our pupils and staff in the use of Google Classroom at the start of 2020.
When Covid-19 hit, we were all freshly trained and ready to tackle online schooling — through no special foresight of our own. As a result, we lost no academic time to Covid19
and had tremendously good feedback from our stakeholders.
However, like many schools, we faced serious challenges on the social and economic front as a result of lockdown, which forced us to scrutinise every area of our operation.
We made a lot of changes to the way we do things. We found better ways to operate and we became ardent students of sustainability.
Does Treverton give career guidance?
Yes, we do. We believe it is vital for our pupils to be aware of possible career options and career trends, as well as the fact that many of them will be involved in careers that don’t even exist at the moment. The most obvious way we do this is through career expos we host on our campus. We make use of members of our local community and parent body to introduce pupils to career ideas and entrepreneurial thinking.