ENRIQUE ALEMÁN, JR. TOWARD AN EMPOWERING LEADERSHIP APPROACH

Over the course of more than forty years, the Center for Educational Leadership (CEL) at Trinity University has fostered spaces for thought leadership, developed innovative leadership programs, and conducted professional development for school districts and educational organizations in and around Bexar County. With regular cohort-based conveneings, national speakers on critical education issues, and targeted learning seminars for continued leadership development, CEL programming has been, and will continue to be designed to educate professionals on some of the day’s most pressing issues. We aim to create programming and spaces that inform leaders, shape educational policy and influence and improve how our partners practice their craft.

During the 2023-24 academic year, we are once again hosting a series of talks, panels and book studies, in addition to sponsoring the Trinity Prize for Excellence in Teaching, where we will honor the best of our member districts’ educators. Our National Speakers Series includes eight nationally renowned scholars, three of whom will be on campus for in-person keynotes and the remaining conducting their lecture via zoom to provide ease of access for working professionals and across regional and national expanse. This year’s theme,

“Leading in Turbulent Times: Grounding Education in Humanizing and Advocacy Practices’’ encourages dialogue about the ways in which scholars, practitioners and community organizers can work toward systemic transformation at a time when several damaging and undemocratic policy issues are impacting school communities. In addition, we are also sponsoring two book studies and a school leaders seminar series, which are designed to foster small group dialogues across topics related to the cultivating of school culture, improvement science, and the leveraging of educational resources for community change and empowerment. Each of our programs challenge conventional thinking and inspire discussion of alternative strategies for leading in the current socio-political educational environment.

A Freirian Critical Praxis Framework For South Texas

As our CEL team continues to cultivate these spaces and to organize convenings, we are also looking for ways to expand our presence in our community and to share the strategies, programs and initiatives that are making a transformative difference across schools and neighborhoods. So in addition to our continued programming and events, the

CEL is excited to be adding the Trinity Leadership Forum in our next phase of development. These briefs are designed to not only share practice-to-research projects, but to also present initiatives and strategies that educators and educational leaders are currently developing and applying in their school communities. We aim to share ideas that not only improve educational practice for the students and communities that are most disadvantaged by educational systems and policies, but to also showcase the ways in which practitioners are working toward and demanding equity from their schools by empowering youth, teachers and families. In highlighting models of practice, program innovation, and leadership approaches and strategies, we are striving for systemic change and working toward more just educational opportunities. The Trinity Leadership Forum is meant to be a community-building tool that can be used by school and district staff, as well as for action researchers and youth and community leaders, who are seeking to orient themselves to the issues and problems of educational practice that the broader San Antonio community is facing. As a resource, the Trinity Leadership Forum will center the experiences of leaders, and share data from the programs and initiatives that are benefiting schools and empowering the voices that are often left out of the decision-making and policy conversations that occur in the halls of the Texas Legislature. We understand leadership to manifest itself in many different forms. The professionals who lead school districts and school campuses, as well as directors who develop and implement programming, are significant educational leaders to understand. However we do not want to neglect the myriad ways in which youth, teachers, family members, and community residents also enact, define and apply their leadership approaches.

McCollum High School senior, Daira Garcia, presenting her group’s work on the “Mental Health Challenges of High School Youth,” at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), held in Chicago, Illinois. These particular attendees work and reside in Andalusia, Spain, and Daira is presenting her methodology, research design, and findings in Spanish.

When Brazilian educator and philosopher, Paolo Freire, first introduced his concept of praxis, he described it as a pedagogical tool that promotes critical dialogue, reflection, and action as a form of empowerment and liberation (Freire, 2018). According to Freire, authentic liberation is the process of humanization and “the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it” (Freire, 2018, p. 79). In working with the most disempowered segments of Brazilian society, Freire sought to foster collective action, community dialogue and a radical transformation of the systems that oppressed generations of youth, families and neighborhoods. In creating and publishing the Trinity Leadership Forum, we are challenging ourselves to cultivate a Freirian forum and to share examples of praxis and humanizing education that have the potential to (re)shape the educational landscape in which we live and work. It is when educators and educational leaders enact praxis by reflecting about and actively disrupting and challenging inequitable and unjust structures that educational transformation and student and community empowerment can be more fully realized (Freire, 2018).

Deep systemic inequities exist across San Antonio communities, not only across educational contexts, but also in health, housing, criminal justice, employment and transportation, among other areas of society. We refuse to think that something cannot, and should not, be done to disrupt the historical oppression that has kept generations of San Antonians and South Texans in poverty and segregated communities. The Trinity Leadership Forum seeks to facilitate discussions that some may deem uncomfortable or divisive. By leading conversations that challenge the persistent inequities that impact students and families across San Antonio, we hope to foster conversations that span across educational institutions and educational levels, and inside the school and across higher education campuses, and also in the community spaces, homes, and nonprofit organizations that make up so much of what our community has to offer. In doing so, the CEL is striving to be an organization that brings practitioners, researchers, organizers, educators, and youth and community leaders together to share and learn about the praxis that is happening in South Texas schools and communities.

A New Normal We Want To Be A Part Of

Many pundits and media prognosticators are prone to use the term “the new normal” when describing how the country and the world are contending with the ongoing aftermath of the COVID pandemic or the contentiousness of our national and state political milieu. As is the case in many other communities across the U.S and the world, San Antonio and Bexar County school leaders, students and community residents are struggling as they navigate forward. Our teachers and educational leaders continue to provide the essential elements of a functioning democracy - caring and learning spaces for youth, opportunities for growth, and communities where families and students can work toward empowerment. As they strive to survive and cope with the severe strain that the pandemic had on our economic, educational and health systems, the impact on families and youth is real and has not ceased. This is not a “new normal” that anyone should be comfortable living with.

What we do know as scholars, educators and active members of our San Antonio community is that we want to be part of a “new normal” that challenges the policies and movements that are attempting to destabilize communities and divest in public education. We know that school closures in several local school districts are - and will be into the future - impacting community stability. These closures will exacerbate the unequal educational opportunity of thousands of San Antonio youth and impact the lives of their teachers and families. We also know this phenomenon is closely connected to the inequitable and inadequate funding of schools, and that efforts by some policymakers to further weaken the school finance system is a concerted effort to defund public schools. Lack of adequate funding is also making it harder to attract and retain our educators and educational leaders, who are leaving the profession in droves. The banning of histories and literature that is representative of the majority of Texas school students and families is also a movement being led by a few powerful policymakers. In negating the experiences and perspectives of Black, Brown, Indigenous and LGBTQIA+ youth, their efforts at “whitewashing” history and denying uncomfortable historical truths hurts all Texas students. The push to ban books in K-12 has now entered the realm of higher education with the anti-DEI and so-called anti-CRT mandates thus continuing the weakening of our K-16 systems of public and higher education. Finally, but certainly not least, is the need for mental health support services for our students, families and school professionals.

Together with the threat of gun violence and lacking school safety measures, this is a priority that is perhaps the most shameful of all our public policies that has remained ignored by state officials.

In the coming months, we hope to utilize the Trinity Leadership Forum as an outlet for recognizing and sharing the ways that youth, educators and educational leaders are building community and creating spaces for dialogue and empowerment to happen from the ground up. The struggle for empowerment of our most challenged communities has not ceased. There are many educators and educational leaders, along with parent and youth leaders, who are actively working toward and applying methods meant to provide equal educational opportunities, especially to vulnerable students and communities. Building community with the educators, educational leaders, community residents and youth is central to our approach. Therefore, the CEL will utilize these guiding questions in not only developing programming, but also in publishing the Trinity Leadership Forum :

What examples and approaches toeducationalleadershipfoster educational empowerment, especiallyinschoolcommunities and with youth and families who have historically been disadvantaged?

Inwhatwayscanourschools,and thepoliciesandprogramsthatwe developandimplement,bemore humanizingandtransformative?

Our goal is to be a conduit for critical dialogues and a convener of all those who wish to be part of a conversation that fosters community and builds a “new normal” that is inclusive, humanizing, and empowering. We invite you to be part of it.

References

Freire, P. (2018). Pedagogy of the oppressed: 50th anniversary edition (4th edition). New York: Bloomsbury Academic Press.