Leadership Project

leadership project focus

The proposed problem our leadership team discussed is that students with disabilities in special day programs do not have opportunities to socialize and engage with peers in the general education (gen ed) setting. Most of our leadership team works directly with students in special day programs or have had experience with these populations at some point in their careers. One member of our team works as a recruitment coordinator and has experience in the math department and as a soccer coach. Everyone agreed that students in special day programs have limited access to socializing with peers in general education classes for a range of reasons. As Mendez has a school wide goal of fostering a culture of joy at school, we wanted to create opportunities for our students with disabilities to socialize with their gen ed peers in fun and engaging ways. Students with disabilities often have obstacles in relation to their ability to communicate effectively. Additionally, they are not able to participate in after school programs with their gen ed peers and have limited interactions throughout the day including breaks and elective courses due to their placement in special day programs. Both students with disabilities and gen ed students need support to learn how to interact with each other as they have different social skills and experiences.

team focus and actions

In the initial meeting, we determined the following co-constructed actions:

• We will work to investigate the possibilities of a peer friendship program to match students with disabilities up with gen ed students.

• We will work to implement activities for students with disabilities and gen ed students to participate in once a week at lunch in the form of the Ausome and Friendly Jaguar Club.

• We will work to develop opportunities for students with disabilities to become teacher assistants in gen ed classrooms for the 2023-2024 school year.

• We will work to develop an end of year field trip with students with disabilities and gen ed peers to celebrate their friendship while participating in activities together at the park.

Some short-term outcomes we wanted to see were to implement some initial investigations to give us information about elements that were present/absent, which contribute to the marginalization of students with disabilities. We also wanted to plan some initial activities to support more interaction between students in special day programs and their gen ed peers. Some long-term outcomes we wanted to see were to create systemic changes at Mendez that would build inclusive activities into the foundation of various programs and school-sponsored activities and clubs. We hoped to build a culture of the celebration of an ability-diverse population while bringing various groups of students together in a more communal way.

I reached out to various special education educators on campus to bring in their participation and input into identifying needs and proposing actions we could take to investigate marginalization. I scheduled meetings and created agendas and documented meeting minutes. I facilitated discussion by clarifying action items assigned to each team member. I also followed up with each team member between meetings to check on how each member’s progress was coming along. I also completed actions to build communal activities and developed resources for students to participate in these activities.  The RLP team members conducted informal interviews with students and staff members regarding the participation opportunities for students with disabilities in activities involving their gen ed peers. We discussed our observational experience as well, having worked closely with this population for several years at Mendez High School. The best part of our engagement included the lunch activities with our students. This was an immense amount of work to coordinate staff and students, but the students, both with and without disabilities, thoroughly enjoyed the engagement. We also successfully took this group on a final end of year field trip to play games, make crafts, enjoy a BBQ lunch and socialize at Shane’s Inspiration Playground at Griffith Park, which has facilities to allow students with disabilities to play on a playground. This increased their joy immensely. They were able to interact and get to know each other better.

We are still in the early stages of building teacher assistant partnerships for students with disabilities for the next school year. It is complicated and difficult to do without a formalized process in place. We all have a lot to do and building a system from scratch on our own is very challenging. But we hope to start the process and get it implemented, even if modestly so, for the next school year.

The idea of a peer buddy program did not get off the ground. We talked about it and are interested in it, but there are a lot of time constraints limiting us from delving into this further at this time. We will keep it in our minds as we move forward and maybe will be able to build future opportunities to develop this program.

analysis and next steps

Our observations and interviews with students indicate we successfully built some short-term gains in providing opportunities for our students with disabilities to socialize with gen ed peers.  Our gen ed students indicate they enjoyed the activities and getting to know our students. Our students with disabilities started reaching out to their gen ed peers during unstructured breaks and lunch time in a way they haven’t done before we started our club activities. Our participating gen ed students also started learning the names of our students and reaching out to them on campus during breaks and during their classes. This is the type of engagement we want to build and hope to sustain on a long-term basis. We believe if we continue this club, that these interactions will continue to grow and contribute to a positive inclusive culture at Mendez. We have learned that just starting something, even if it is a simple program, helps to move the needle forward. It has helped to build momentum so that we, as an RLP team, will continue to identify opportunities for engagement in future years for our students. 

In looking at various aspects of our goals and actions this year, I believe it would be really helpful to plan actions out ahead of time, so that at the beginning of the school year, we have activities for the club listed out and the club can participate in club rush and build more awareness on campus from the start. Plus, we want to pick times and dates that do not compete too much with other campus clubs and activities, so that we can generate more participation amongst all our students. Some of the challenges were due to time constraints of the RLP team. We think inviting more members would help balance the load, along with the aforementioned pre-planning so that the Ausome and Friendly Jaguar Club can be more self-sustaining without too much pressure on just a few members. Additionally, we slowed our efforts to develop teacher assistant partnerships for our students as we ran out of time. We are working with counselors to pursue it for next year, but we just ran out of time to research it more this year.

Having most of the team members come with heavy special education backgrounds helped with our advocacy for our students. We understood what they needed and what to build to support their growth and experiences. Having a member without a background in special education also helped as he was able to effect relationship development between our RLP team and other general education teachers and coaches. Together we were able to consider the needs of student participants from all backgrounds and create activities that would appeal to multiple groups of students. It would be helpful to add more general education staff and some students in the general education setting as future RLP team members to build a more diverse perspective on our goals and plans of action.

my leadership skills

One thing that will benefit me most is my ability to bring people into important discussions and giving them space to give their perspective and expertise. It is vital to not run communities of practice in a monolithic way. It is important to listen to others and bring diverse perspectives, opinions and experiences into discussions and planning. I am good at organizing information and following up on action items. It is important to have people on the team who not only bring perspective, but also follow through with determined action items. The most important skill is being able to care about the stakeholders and put their needs ahead of my own opinion or agenda. Being able to pivot based on the needs of others is what drives the most success and trust from stakeholders.

reflection

The most impactful philosophy I am taking away from UCLA’s Principal Leadership Institute is drawn from improvement science. It is so impactful to be able to analyze and pivot in small ways. Just like a teacher in the classroom has to constantly pivot as they adjust pedagogy to meet the needs of students, educational leaders within systems need to be able to adapt to the many people and circumstances they face while trying to effect positive change. As leaders learn more during the process of transformation, they can cut and add various elements of change as needed. As far as leadership styles go, I believe being culturally responsive is crucial. Creating

systems that nurture and affirm student and stakeholder identity, background and community upbringing allows them to have buy-in when changes are being made. They should have a voice and a say in how their community continues to grow and change. A leader is someone who helps facilitate stakeholder engagement while creating spaces for everyone to have a voice and a stake in the system.

The social justice learning experienced in the Principal Leadership Institute at UCLA has resonated with my own core values in being a culturally responsive social justice leader. I believe that transformative tenants of leadership require that I build spaces to include and amplify voices and opinions of all stakeholders. Marginalization takes place when leaders decide to make decisions without regard for the affected community. I will need to work hard to resist convenience as an excuse for making decisions that don’t serve the needs of stakeholders. I also want to build spaces where genuine communication and vulnerability can take place so that stakeholders feel encouraged to share their positionality and perspective as a means of enriching the discussion and decision-making process. I also want to utilize mechanisms of improvement science. Leadership is a process that involves constant vigilance, flexibility and inclusive practices. I plan to be a leader who is always willing to learn from others in order to continuously seek to amplify marginalized voices so that we facilitate democratic practices in all educational spaces.