Leadership Project

As aforementioned, I was able to complete the first part of my leadership project as planned. I began by conducting an internal equity audit of our EB scholars in terms of academic achievement and growth, as well as analyzing the level of engagement of our EB families compared to non-EB families. I put together a team that consisted of different stakeholders within our organization that could speak to the level of engagement of our EB families; this included staff members, our principal at the time, the Director of ELD at our network as well as several EB families. We held our initial meeting where we reviewed our PDSA plan for the next few months, analyzed the data and completed a fishbone diagram to highlight some root causes. Some quantitative data that we looked at included SBAC scores of EB students, NWEA MAP scores of EB students, general trends of EB family engagement across public schools and school-site specific EB family engagement numbers. We solicited some qualitative data in the meeting directly from families when building out our fishbone diagram, with a few key factors that stood out including lack of meaningful translation, scheduling issues, families questioning meeting relevance, and lack of teacher/family communication. We had 3 more meetings scheduled out in which our plan was to solidify our change strategy, solidify our roles, develop metrics for success as well as how we were going to collect the data.

In late February, I stepped into the Interim Principal role at my school site after our previous principal abruptly transitioned out. Because of this, I was unable to complete my leadership project as planned and shifted the project to focus more on moving from theory to praxis in a real leadership role. This significant change in my leadership project allowed me to focus on five categories including: instruction, family engagement, operations, human resources and school culture. Because of my newness to the role, the data that I have been collecting has been sheerly anecdotal and qualitative as I adjust to the complexities and intricacies of the principal role. I have logged my qualitative notes into a leadership journal that captures my noticings and emotions as I navigate this role, as well as a 22-23 planning journal that documents all of my potential ideas for next year based on my current findings that include quotes, resources and ideas. At the end of the year, I plan on reflecting on this qualitative data to ensure that how I am operating the school is in alignment with my personal values and beliefs as an educator, and how I can continue to create equity of voice as it pertains to creating a democratic and anti-racist school.

Because I was able to initiate my original leadership project, when planning for next year, I hope to simulate and design communities of practice as a common and normalized structure at my school. Simply from meeting with different stakeholders to begin the PDSA cycle in that first meeting, I was able to gain extremely valuable insight that I am confident could have positively impacted our school. Thus, I hope to create a consistent structure for next year based on some of our school’s prioritized areas of interest. One very important practice that I intend to continue for next year is involving all different stakeholders in this process. I found it extremely insightful and enlightening to hear directly from some of our EB families, some folks at the network level and staff members. Even though we will serve TK-G2 next year, it will also be important to include students in this process so that they can have a voice in how we can improve the school collectively. Because of the age of our students, I do anticipate that there could be some challenges in soliciting the opinions of some of our students, however, I am confident that we can work with all stakeholders to potentially tailor or alter the community of practice to make it accessible for our students.

In addition, two EB families were able to join our initial meeting and I recognize that this only portrays a small snapshot of potentially what the greater collective views as barriers to EB family engagement. Looking forward to next year, I hope to continue to involve more folks who have experienced marginalization to gain additional perspective. For example, this meeting was held in a hybrid format, which broadened familial access points by either attending via technology or attending in person. Next year, to ensure equity of voice and to specifically solicit the opinions of some of our families or students that have been marginalized, it will be important to build strong relationships with these folks in particular to ensure that they feel comfortable in participating in such a process. It will also be important to address some of the barriers for attending such a meeting including scheduling, translation and explaining the purpose and relevance. Lastly, another factor to consider for next year when implementing communities of practice (COP) is setting up the skills and structures for them to occur. Because we have a small staff size and most teachers are relatively new to the profession, staff members need to be taught how to operate a COP. Until staff have developed the skillset to do this independently, I feel as though I need to facilitate in order to model and chunk out the COP process in order to set up the foundational structures within our school’s systems, and I plan on taking the year to do such. This next year will serve as an investment in setting up structures that align with our mission and vision to create foundational school culture.

I brought my identity as a leader to the planning and implementation of the leadership project in several ways. First and foremost, English was my first and primary language, and I recognize that I have inherent privilege in that. Knowing that I am still learning the language spoken by most of our EB families, I knew it was important to include translation so that our families were able to access the planning and implementation meetings. In addition, being a white-passing Latina, I have received all of the benefits of a white person in terms of power, privilege and resources. Given that, I knew that my experience as a Latina was different from many of the experiences of our LatinX EB families and while I found myself making connections to some of their stories, it was important for me when implementing the project to incorporate many opportunities for our families to be the ones speaking and telling their stories. A prerequisite to our families feeling comfortable doing so was trust, and so I proactively began to build some relationships with our EB families in hopes of creating a foundational relationship that was not sheerly transactional.

Stepping into the principal role, there is an inherent sense of power and positionality that comes with the title that I need to be fully aware of when planning and implementing moving forward. I have heard comments from staff to students such as “you have to listen to her, she is the principal” or “the principal will have to come and talk to you if you do that again”, which signifies to me that our staff also views the principal title as one of authority, hierarchy and power. This will be important for me to continue to address as we look forward into next year to build out a school that shifts the power dynamic to one of equity where all stakeholders involved have a voice in decision-making and operating. In addition, I hope to create a culture of feedback that allows staff members, students and families to give feedback freely and openly to each other to ensure that our practices and actions are in alignment with this belief of equity of power and voice.

The most significant skill that I relied on in my experience throughout the leadership project was my ability to build relationships. Developing my original project as well as switching into the principal role would not have been possible without the relational trust that I have built with my colleagues since the beginning of the school year. With the original project, I was able to recruit several colleagues that I knew would be interested in family engagement in general due to the relationships that I had built prior. When I interviewed for the permanent principal role, all staff members were invited to interview me as part of the process, and had to “vote” on if I would be a good fit for the role. I was able to leverage my relationships and ability for authentic dialogue during this process. Now having stepped into the permanent position, it has required significant emotional intelligence including reading body language, modeling vulnerability and self-awareness, and knowing when to shift from facilitative to more directive. I also view this skill as a strength of mine that I will continue to use moving into next year.

My social justice leadership vision is built upon several different theories and frameworks including critical race theory, socio-cultural learning theory, improvement science and systems-based thinking. Although I had a basic understanding of these theories coming into the Principal Leadership Institute, being in this program has allowed me to see how employing these different theories and frameworks can alleviate and mitigate oppression and the process of marginalization in schools. Collectively, these theories and frameworks employ an asset-based thinking approach, and bring value to cultural capital that is found outside of the school. They foster structures and systems that are conducive for quantitative and qualitative data analysis, both of which are essential to closing academic and socio-emotional gaps. In addition, they embody an inquiry-based mindset that addresses the root causes of problems, and values voices of all stakeholders, something that is a core tenant of anti-racist education.

When leading the work for social justice, access and equity in an uncertain future, it is of utmost importance that I cannot do this work alone. Part of white supremacist culture is individualism and this work is messy and difficult, so I must rely on our collective whole to address the issues that we are seeing in public education. By prioritizing collectivism, I will also foster a greater sense of belonging, purpose and group decision-making powers. In addition, it will promote equity of voice from all stakeholders involved and shift power dynamics from a traditional hierarchical to one of meaningful democratic participation. This includes soliciting opinions and voice from staff members, students and families. To engage staff members specifically, I hope to continue to build my relationships and create spaces for open dialogue in order to lead for social justice. This begins with humanizing all staff members, from teachers to nutritionists to office coordinators. I also hope to engage students and have students be co-creators in the building out of our school. Because we will be in our 3rd year of founding next year, I hope to utilize student surveys, focus groups, empathy interviews and more inquiry based learning. Lastly, I hope to better engage all of our families, which stems from my original leadership project. Strategies I hope to explore in order to lead for social justice include empathy interviews, home visits, encouraging staff to attend local community and family events as well as address some of the structural barriers including translation and scheduling barriers. By engaging and soliciting all stakeholder voices in my school’s current context, I hope to continue to lead through my personal social justice values, and ensure access and equity in our public school setting.

CAPES

Supporting Documents