Final Reflection

1. How has your identity as a Leader for Social Justice evolved over the year?

My identity as a leader for social justice evolved during PLI mostly through a deeper understanding of the structures, practices and beliefs that contribute to marginalization and the ways in which I as a school leader through transformative, democratic, and equitable leadership practices can address issues of marginalization due to structural inequities and injustices as well as inclusiveness. My own personal values, beliefs, and sense of purpose, which are internally driven by a moral imperative, have largely remained the same throughout PLI.  However, my ideas about the purpose and goals of education have expanded to include promoting the public good and not just the private good for students in a school community with other stakeholders. This has in turn shaped my vision of social justice leadership by not just addressing excellence in teaching and learning through continuous improvement with its focus on the technical aspects and tasks of education, but also addressing non-academic needs of students and issues of equity and marginalization with its focus on values, beliefs, and the purpose and goals of education mentioned above. Finally, what is true today is that as social justice leader I’m am much better able to act on a vision that incorporates various theories and conceptual frameworks for equity, inclusion, and social justice, thus I now have greater agency.

2. You entered PLI with a set of leadership skills and knowledge.  How has that devolved over the year?

Before I thought leadership and leadership practice were embodied in the individual with the right values and beliefs and a clear moral vision, the “heroic principal” who saved the school. For example I took initiative to develop my own personal mission and vision statements and align my actions and decisions with those statements, so that I had integrity. I initiated a lot of my own learning in leadership development, read books, and sought conversations with leaders I respected. This is important and good, but not enough to bring deep sustainable change to education systems. Now I know that leadership, power, and learning need to be developed and dispersed widely across an organization, especially one as important as a school with a purpose and goals of education that address the private and public good for students. This requires an emphasis on democratic leadership especially in engaging all stakeholders in decision making, where they also are responsible for carrying out the work. It is so much better to end up at a series of never ending finish lines with others who help provide for a better solution instead of alone because of impatience with processes and a focus on technical tasks or efficiency in decision making. In the long run the key to equity and inclusion are relationships and relationships are hard work often involving conflict and reconciliation, but they also mean investing in others and having faith in the power of human potential working toward the same goal. Having said that I’ve begun to develop these leadership practices in myself in my current capacity by working with instructional coaches and intervention coordinators to co-plan and co-facilitate professional learning experiences. In fact this school year 2/3 of professional learning experiences I’ve delivered at school sites have been with the instructional coach and intervention coordinator. Thus their capacity was built and we together were better able to meet the needs of and address job embedded problems by differentiating PD for teachers. I’ve shared knowledge freely with my colleagues, teachers, principles, and my instructional director and in turn been blessed to have received knowledge from them.

3. How has your perspective on leadership changed as a result of all the experiences you engaged in through PLI (fieldwork, courses, lectures, readings etc.)?

First of all as mentioned in brief above, I’m much more aware of the importance of not just having a critical consciousness of the historical, social, and political contexts of an urban school specifically with respect to the positionality of marginalized students and their families, teachers, and myself, as the school leader, but especially the importance of acting on a socially just and equitable educational vision based on a moral imperative and with systemic solutions. Moreover I understand the importance of continually communicating my convictions about educational equity and modeling what it looks like to translate these conviction into action based on a vision of equity. Furthermore bringing about cultural change as a leader is my most important work especially as it relates to socializing a community based on the values of democracy, inclusion, equity, and social justice. With regards to a vision for our school I now know more about the importance of discussing and deciding on this vision using democratic leadership practices and based on the shared purpose and goals of education that we also as a school community have deliberated and decided upon together. I knew coming into PLI that distributed leadership was important in terms of the effectiveness and success of a leading a school, but I now know more about why it is important as a democratic leadership practice especially with regards to the sustainability, legitimacy, the cognitive benefits, prefiguration, and most importantly moral purpose (Rogers, 2015). I have been exposed to various theories and conceptual frameworks of leadership in PLI courses but the I am especially drawn to leading personally based on the 8 tenets of transformative leadership theory (Shields, 2013) but as I don’t want the emphasis to be on me for reasons mentioned above with respect to democratic leadership I also subscribe to the conceptual framework of organizational leadership for educational equity (Ishimaru & Galloway, 2014).

Based on my own experiences, especially with regards to my fieldwork, I have tried to incorporate adult learning and often student learning theory with respect to facilitating change and professional learning experiences for teachers. In order to effectively implement change as part of my leadership project I incorporated improvement science principles using practical tools such as the PDSA cycle, a cycle of inquiry with multiple measures that supports learning about change and applying this to primary drivers in a system for effective implementation. I included the kinds of curriculum and instruction I believe in as the content of my professional learning this year especially with regards to problem-based curriculum and sociocultural, constructivist and cognitive apprenticeship learning theories. The importance of using Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Pedagogy (CLR) is also much more important to me as well as an approach to instruction that is asset based and fully embraces the cultural and linguistic capital that students and their families bring to learning experiences. It also serves to support reciprocal relationships between teachers and students. Moreover as a school leader in training I have tried to address problems related to equity and marginalization such as math anxiety in Latinos through growth mindset interventions and with regards to excellence in assessment practice with a systems approach through the use of a logic model in either evaluating the system or planning the creation of that system as a theory of action.

4. What were the challenges and successes of your leadership journey?

The challenges I faced as a leader especially with regards to my leadership journey largely result from the bureaucratic nature and dominant hierarchical leadership structure of my district, LAUSD. For example due a leadership change at the very top of my district, PD was restricted to those times in which a substitute was not required. This decision was largely a political one and supported with two data points.  Moreover one of my fieldwork projects, the Innovation Action Team work, was also effectively halted due to this change in leadership. Often in my district a change in leadership especially at the top involves complete change based on the priorities of that particular leader, not aligned with any collectively formed vision or mission. This is just one example of why it is important as a leader to employ democratic leadership and also improvement science principles, as an example of a systemic approach to addressing problems. One significant challenge for my leadership journey especially with respect to my fieldwork at school sites was the fact that I was not actually supporting just one school site, but several school sites and so communication for much of my leadership project, which was at one site, had to be conducted through email, not always the ideal form of communication. In addition teachers on my action research team wanted less observations and could not meet to analyze data together, which resulted in less measurement triangulation and monitoring of implementation.

One major success was the fact that based on my position as a Common Core Math Facilitator I was able to participate in many different activities that an administrator would engage with including monitoring instruction through instructional rounds, providing feedback school wide and to individual teachers, facilitating professional learning experiences for teachers, and exposing others including principals, principal leaders, instructional coaches, and teachers to systems approaches such as improvement science including tools such as the driver diagram, fishbone diagram, and logic model. Furthermore I was able to practice democratic leadership and capacity building in co-planning and co-facilitating professional learning experiences with instructional coaches at the schools I served. Finally because I work within a massive bureaucratic system, having integrity as a social justice leader meant simply taking every opportunity to model my convictions through action and in conversations with individuals including my fellow Common Core Facilitator and my Instructional Director. Another success related to one of my challenges was engaging teachers in my first forays into blending learning by providing playlists of recommended readings and videos through a Google Doc so that when we met for a short hour our time would be spent engaging in high-level work including analysis, synthesis, and the creation of new knowledge.

5. What are the next steps in your leadership journey?

Next year due to the cutting of my position I will again be supporting just one school site. This I plan to do as an instructional coach, hopefully at the public school choice STEM elementary school that I helped write the school plan for. Whatever school I end up at I plan to practice engaging parents to a greater degree in forming authentic partnerships (Auerbach, 2012) in whatever role I have at the school. In addition if my role is indeed as an instructional coach that means I can practice engaging teachers in powerful learning experiences and in monitoring instruction in a formative manner such that they in turn might do the same in their own classrooms. Moreover I plan to get my hands dirty with respect to learning more about the operations and budgetary processes at a school site, areas of weakness for me. This might include writing more grants to support teaching and learning as part of a team. One of my first priorities will be to identify the issues of marginalization at the school and work with others to provide systemic solutions especially with regards to inclusion and equity. Finally in whatever capacity I serve in next year I plan to seek to develop leadership and capacity in others through initiating and inviting other to participate in such activities as book studies, action research projects, peer coaching and observation, and curriculum and assessment development. All of these activities can be characterized as construction knowledge together as a community.

6. Which leadership standards, skills, and/or dispositions do you feel you would like more experience with and why?

Leadership standards I would like more experience with are CAPE 4, 17, and 20 because my own experiences have offered very little experience with enacting these leadership standards. Moreover I would like more practical experience with building relational trust in the midst of bureaucratic obstacles and where their has been a history of hierarchical leadership practice. This is because many schools have entrenched trust issues that inhibit the work in a lot of different areas. Finally I would like more practical experience with communication techniques including the use of story, metaphor, and broaching and facilitating conversations whose purpose is to deconstruct knowledge frameworks and construct new knowledge frameworks that support disruption of marginalization and structural inequities and injustices. This involves the hard work of cultural change, which precedes the use of systemic solutions to what may seem to be intractable problems. Finally I feel that it important to have balance in work, even in the important and meaningful work of education, and with life outside of work including family and caring for oneself. I know that one who does not love himself/herself cannot possibly love others. All meaningful work in solving society’s problems must be internally driven by a moral purpose.