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SOCIAL JUSTICE LEADERSHIP FOR SOUTH TEXAS SCHOOLS
3
ENRIQUE ALEMÁN, JR. AND VANGIE AGUILERA
SOCIAL JUSTICE LEADERSHIP FOR SOUTH TEXAS SCHOOLS
The Trinity Tomorrow’s Leaders (TTL) Program is the university’s graduate program in educational leadership. Designed to deliver thirty-six credit hours of master’s coursework, the program also includes individualized leadership coaching for our cohort members and additional preparation for the state of Texas principal certification. The TTL program is accelerated (coursework over the span of 14 months in 4 consecutive semesters) and rigorous, and the majority of our faculty are practicing school and district leaders. Whether our graduates enter the field of school leadership and become principals or assistant principals, begin as an instructional coach, take on a role as a central office administrator, or whether they choose to continue to serve as a teacher leader, our primary goal is to prepare the next generation of educational leaders who work for transformational change and enact authentic community empowerment approaches. As we develop the knowledge, habits and mindset of a school leader with our students, we are also preparing them to create equitable classroom environments, and to engage families, community members and youth with care and humanity. Since 2021, our cohort members have come from 8 school districts and 5 charter management organizations from across Bexar County, 78 % have been women, and 72% identify as leaders of color. Over these last two most recent cohorts, 41% of our graduates already serve in school administration positions.
Despite our longstanding success in preparing school leaders, the TTL program has been undertaking a series of program evaluation activities as we seek to (re)imagine and (re)define the program’s purpose, its goals, and its impact on the San Antonio and South Texas educational landscape. Our (re) imaging has included the updating and resequencing of curricula, integration of applied student learning experiences, and implementation of individualized coaching that prepares our graduates to both:
• disrupt and dismantle practices that result in inequitable outcomes for the students with and for whom they work; and,
• identify, create and apply leadership strategies that support learning and build upon the assets that all students and communities possess, but that are not always leveraged or utilized.
As we revise our coursework and refine our internship requirements, we are also asking our students to wrestle with and reflect on questions of practice and the application of social justice concepts in their own leadership practice. As we’ve revised our program, our students have also prompted us to think about real-world applications of what can sometimes be theory-heavy class discussions and assignments. They have prompted us to ask and reflect upon:
How does one learn how to disrupt and dismantle systems of inequity, while also simultaneously building community and enacting asset-based practices?
Leaders of inclusive and equitable schools do not leave room for students to be disregarded, neglected or devalued, therefore our framework requires leaders to first recognize the systemic injustices that students and families face while they (re)imagine schooling and apply practices and strategies that are asset-based, culturally responsive and humanizing. We maintain that aspiring school leaders must be able to both disrupt and build simultaneously. Our task is to work with our graduate students, to prepare them to stay in the struggle as they build inclusive and equitable schools. In the following sections, we share curricular and experiential learning strategies that have begun to be implemented in hopes of building upon our school leadership preparation for social justice.
CURRICULUM
COURSE TOPICS, AUTHORS, READINGS & FILMS
Equity-Minded and Humanizing Leadership Practices
Alemán, E., Jr. (Producer), Alemán, E., Jr. & Luna, R. (Writers), & Luna, R. (Director). (2014). Stolen Education [Documentary, feature]. San Francisco, CA: Video Project.
Freire, P. (2018). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury publishing USA.
Khalifa, M. A., Gooden, M. A., & Davis, J. E. (2016). Culturally responsive school leadership: A synthesis of the literature. Review of educational research, 86(4), 1272-1311.
Radd, S. I., Generett, G. G., Gooden, M. A., & Theoharis, G. (2021). Five Practices for Equity-Focused School Leadership. ASCD.
Leveraging Community Cultural Wealth
Alemán, E., Jr. (2013). Intersecting Educational Finance, Politics, and Law with Racism: A Critical Race Case Analysis. In Handbook of research on educational leadership for equity and diversity (pp. 552-578). Routledge.
Cardenas, J. A. (1997). Texas School Finance Reform: An IDRA Perspective. IDRA, 5835 Callaghan, Suite 350, San Antonio, TX 78228-1190.
Delgado Bernal, D., & Alemán, E., Jr. (2017). Transforming Educational Pathways for Chicana/o Students: A Critical Race Feminista Praxis. New York: Teachers College Press.
Valenzuela, A. (2010). Subtractive schooling: US-Mexican youth and the politics of caring. State University of New York Press.
Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race ethnicity and education, 8(1), 69-91.
Combating Deficit Thinking and Microaggressions as a School Leader
Ford, D. Y. (2014). Segregation and the underrepresentation of Blacks and Hispanics in gifted education: Social inequality and deficit paradigms. Roeper Review, 36(3), 143-154.
Kohli, R., & Solórzano, D. G. (2012). Teachers, please learn our names!: Racial microagressions and the K-12 classroom. Race Ethnicity and Education, 15(4), 441-462.
School Leaders as Policy Advocates
Darling-Hammond, L. (2007). The flat earth and education: How America’s commitment to equity will determine our future. Educational Researcher, 36(6), 318-334.
DuVernay, A. (2016). 13th. A Netflix Original Documentary. Sherman Oaks, CA: Kandoo Films.
IDRA, Legislative Priorities (2021). Breaking the School to Prison and School to Deportation Pipelines to Create Safe and Welcoming Pathways for All Students.
https://www.idra.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Breaking-the-School-to-PrisonPipeline-2021.pdf
Culturally Responsive and Anti-Racist Practices
Douglass Horsford, S. (2014). When race enters the room: Improving leadership and learning through racial literacy. Theory Into Practice, 53(2), 123-130.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in US schools. Educational researcher, 35(7), 3-12.
Simmons, D. (2019). How to be an anti-racist educator. ASCD Education Update, 61(10).
CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND EQUITY LEADERSHIP FOR SAN ANTONIO SCHOOLS
The theoretical foundations guiding the TTL program are social justice and equity-focused leadership frameworks (Capper et al., 2006, Khalifa, 2020; Radd et al., 2021). We utilize conceptual tools such as critical consciousness (El-Amin et al, 2017) and community cultural wealth leadership (Freire, 2018; Yosso, 2005), racial literacy for educational leaders (Douglass Horsford, 2014), and the enacting of anti-racist strategies (Simmons, 2019), as foundational to our revised coursework. Assignments and internship experiences are conducted with an understanding that educational leadership should be a humanizing and radical care practice (Rivera-McCutchen, 2021) that when implemented with, and not for, students, families and teachers, can be transformational. Disrupting norms and structures that have historically perpetuated inequalities in schools and districts, we challenge our students to also create and enact practices that are culturally responsive and that nurture organizational cultures that result in high expectations and students success, (Khalifa, 2020).
In revisiting our curriculum, course sequencing, and course assignments, we’ve also sought to (re)imagine the program as a social justice graduate program that specifically prepares educators to take on the challenges of urban school leadership in the greater San Antonio community. Our curriculum emphasizes social justice concepts and intentionally includes readings from authors, books, and films from producers and directors that have recently been banned by the Texas Legislature.
Students are challenged to reflect deeply on their positionality and to consider how their role as an educator and aspiring school leader could perpetuate or dismantle systemic practices that result in inequities in education. A systems thinking approach is utilized to encourage students to examine educational organizations as a whole and explore the concepts of equity-centered leadership, community building, social justice and policy research. In addition to our course content, internship experiences and course assignments, the TTL program has also introduced community leadership and policy advocacy as two other components to the preparation of our students. The following two examples represent the ways in which we have introduced experiential learning opportunities that extend students’ thinking and expand their strategies for engaging with historically marginalized communities as well as the policy process.
COMMUNITY WALK AND PLÁTICA IN CHICAGO
Our most recent cohort had the opportunity to attend the 2023 American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois. Attending sessions on leading for social justice and cultivating school culture, along with others on organizational change, educational policy, and teacher retention, the cohort members were required to complete critical self reflections on the sessions they attended and to discuss the impact that these sessions made on their own leadership philosophies. The group also participated in an off-site community-school visit to Paseo Boricua in Chicago’s Humboldt Park community. The Community as a Campus model of education and the notion of Community as Intellectual Space (CIS) were the primary areas of research and practice that were discussed during their school-community visit. Led by educational scholars, Dr. Jonathan Rosa of Stanford University, and Dr. Laura Ruth Johnson of Northern Illinois University, the community tour included a presentation of education and health care programs and LGBTQ initiatives, a visit to a youth employment center, discussion and viewing of community murals, art installations and museum, a panel discussion of housing initiatives and developments, and a visit to the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture. The community walk was led by a long standing activist and educator, José E. López, a leader in developing their community’s praxis to theory and community and social empowerment initiatives. He specifically addressed the health inequities challenging Chicago’s Greater Humboldt Park communities.
The tour concluded with a discussion and reflection with the school principal along with a student panel from Dr. Pedro Albizu Campus High School. Our cohort members witnessed the ways in which student voices are centered and strategies that this community’s leaders have implemented as opportunities for authentic dialogue. Summed up in the reflections of our students, they shared how the community walk experience influenced and (re)shaped their perspectives on leadership for social justice and prompted a (re)thinking of inclusion and centering of community voices. One cohort member stated:
"The biggest connection I will incorporate into my leadership style is to listen to the student voices. When we decide the work is about and for them, we need to include them into the conversation. We have to be visible and interact to make an impact, talk about the things that matter to them.[One panelist]reminded me that we must show up to work along side our students, bridging the gap between the work and the research."
Another cohort member shared how participating in the walk prompted them to think differently about their own approach to engagement with their community. The cohort member stated:
"I would like to take the time to engage with my community about their values, beliefs and needs. It’s critical to have this conversation so that we can communicate about our experiences and expectations in relation to them. We cannot expect to keep doing the same thing and expect different results, we have to be willing to adjust our way of thinking and doing things to meet our students where they are and to foster change."
Another cohort member described how an elected official happened to be walking in the neighborhood when Mr. López recognized her and struck up a conversation. The cohort member recalled:
"One aspect I can apply to my leadership practice is to always meet people where they are at. We cannot expect our families to reach out to us, if we don’t show that we care about their concrete needs. When walking through the Paseo neighborhood we were lucky enough to run into the Lieutenant Governor [of Illinois]. She explained how important it is as a leader for her to reach out to her constituents. People knew who she was, and it was amazing to see how they looked up to her."
Our students left with a deeper understanding of the possibilities for student growth when community and cultural wealth are at the forefront of school design. This session, and the AERA experience, built on the program’s efforts to extend and build on the mindsets of our students and to guide them toward a perspective that works toward the transforming of their own school and community, and the developing of strategies for enacting educational justice.
A “DAY ON THE HILL” AT THE TEXAS LEGISLATURE
Educational leaders are well-situated and have the responsibility to influence the policymaking process not only at the building, central office, or university administrative level, but also at the state policymaking level. Whether they are leaders on a school campus, in the superintendent’s office, as a student organizer or in a community organization, they play an integral role in fighting for social justice transformation in the policy arena. Because educational policy is value-laden, historical, constantly evolving, and contextual, the ways in which we prepare our students to take an advocacy approach to educational policy is critical. Thus, as our students continue to define their role as policy actors during the program, we are striving to give them opportunities to apply advocacy approaches and strategies for leadership in the policy arena.
The second example of curricular revision and application of social justice concepts involved the program’s “Educational Law and Policy” course. Redesigned as an introduction to educational policymaking, analysis and advocacy processes, coursework encourages our students to examine the major policy actors that influence policymaking, as well as prepares them to identify and discuss how the policy environment, issues of power and implementation, and various methods of policy analysis influence, affect, and determine educational policy. Our readings and discussions prompted cohort members to examine the effects that educational policies have on all students, especially those who are currently and have historically been marginalized in this nation and in the state of Texas. Although the majority of readings focused on the K-12 arena, we also discussed policies, actors, and the environment that affects higher education.
Along with core content on defining the policy role of educational leaders, we also asked our students to understand educational policy by contextualizing the history of education in Texas, and also by framing the intersections of policy, law and race. Fundamentally, the cohort was challenged to humanize policy and its effects on students, families, teachers and communities. What does this policy decision mean to your campus? How have you seen these state mandates impact or influence decision making in your school community? In what ways does educational policy hinder or support a teacher’s ability to teach? The biggest change to the curriculum was in its requirement that group projects be field-based experiences. Group policy projects required students to conduct an analysis, prepare a brief, and to then present their findings and recommendations to Texas legislators and/or legislative staff during a “Day on the Hill ‘’ at the Texas State Capitol.
Students learned to track a bill, understand its fiscal implications, and to read educational statute. Groups identified key members of the education committees, and monitored news services and other online sources (including policy think tanks, interest groups, and legislators) that were key to understanding the arguments being made about their particular policy issue. Policy projects on school funding, bilingual education, and mental health services for K12 students were among the briefs they shared with legislators and legislative staff. For most of our cohort, engaging with policy work had never been part of their training. Many had trepidation about presenting recommendations to staffers and elected officials. After completing our legislative briefing experience, we asked the cohort to reflect on their experience and to consider the following questions: What impact did completing this project and presenting to legislators and legislative staff have on your advocacy perspective? How do you reflect on the role of educational leaders in the current political climate in Texas?
Reflections from cohort members about their experience in Austin spoke directly to a change in their mindset. The project challenged them, but they were proud and thankful that they had an opportunity to participate. One cohort member stated:
"I had to stretch outside my comfort zone, and I’m glad I did. I have learned so many things about myself, others, and the world around me."
Another cohort member described the impact that it made as an applied activity. They stated:
"The thing that I found most impactful was having that dialogue with somebody in person [at the Capitol], and not just having it in theory. I felt like we were actually doing the work."
Finally, two other cohort members reminisced about this new experience and marveled at how their perspective had changed. They were not as fearful about participating with the policy process anymore and they credited the experience with helping them to see this side of the process. The first stated:
"For me, going into the [legislative] office was really cool. It’s like any new experience that you’ve never had, it was like an area I’ve never stepped into, a realm I didn’t think I could step into which is really crazy because it’s education [and I’m an experienced teacher]."
And the second cohort member reflected:
"Visiting the Capitol was a really… it was a once-in-lifetime experience for me. Or at least, I don’t want it to be a once-in-a-lifetime because now I’ve gone and done it once, and I can go and do it again. So I guess it was actually a first in-a-lifetime kind of experience."
As documented in the students’ reflections regarding their participation in “Day on the Hill,” many of our cohort members spoke about raising their level of engagement in the policy process, that up until this experience, they had not been involved with understanding policy and the importance of voicing their perspective. One cohort member spoke of her change in mindset:
"I actually felt like it really…that [this experience] filled my cup. I think you don’t necessarily see that the hard that you do is making a direct impact, but I felt that the work that we put in at the Capitol, just like talking to different people, trying to make a little bit of change, it just felt like it made an impact. Whether it does or does not turn into anything, it felt like just having those conversations [with legislative staffers and representatives], makes an impact. I went home and told my family, as well as my work family, about that experience and about how we need to go out there [and be engaged with the policy process]. We need to start advocating for changes because we have voices."
Another cohort member described his motivation to keep honing his skills, and wanting to see that the project that he and his colleagues completed would be addressed by the staffers he met. He stated:
"The policy class for me was life-changing…Going to Austin, some of those things I just would have never done [as a teacher].I wouldn’t have known how to do that [to present a policy research project and advocate for change]. I wouldn’t have experienced that. And I’ve learned that I can make change. I did follow-up with every person [legislator and legislative staffer] that I met when I got back home. I have all of their cards, and sent them brief notes of our discussion along with a digital copy of the handout. This day was busy and a great learning experience."
CONTINUING TO (RE)IMAGINE THE APPLICATION OF SOCIAL JUSTICE LEADERSHIP
Our findings indicate that overwhelmingly students are specifically seeking opportunities to experience social justice leadership in action. It is not enough to refer them to “how to” approaches to leadership void of any actual field-based experiences where they interact with those in positions of influence, authority and decision-making in schools. Our (re)imagined curriculum embeds standards into every course along with opportunities to interact with stakeholders at all levels in the learning continuum. They recognize the value of communication centered on the people who are most impacted by their decisions, namely students. The transformational piece is where they begin to see themselves as the real change makers, persons of influence and strong leaders for equitable and inclusive schools.
The Trinity Tomorrow’s Leaders Program has a long history of excellence and success, but as we engage in self-study, evaluation and reflection it is important that we continue to (re)imagine what we can be and how we should prepare future school leaders. How should we engage our San Antonio and Bexar County community in the preparation of school leaders? Given all that schools and communities have been dealing with socially, politically and financially, how could we best serve our school partners in preparing and educating the school leadership pipeline? Our colleagues in other leadership preparation programs, locally and across the state, have all been challenged with an evolving higher education and K12 environment just as we have, so our questions and self studies came at an opportune time of our program’s history. In San Antonio, we prepare our students to work, live and lead in a community that is majority-Brown, where schools have been historically and systemically under-resourced (Alemán, 2007; Cardenas, 1997), at a time when key policymakers are divesting in public education (Despart, 2023) and educators and educational leaders are feeling devalued for their work (see Charles Butt Foundation, 2022). So our purpose is clear: we aim to prepare school leaders to advocate, to lead as instructional leaders, and to strategically disrupt the systems and structures that have been layered upon our school communities generation after generation.
REFERENCES
Caraballo, L., Lozenski, B. D., Lyiscott, J. J., & Morrell, E. (2017). YPAR and critical epistemologies:Rethinking education research. Review of Research in Education, 41(1), 311-336.
Cardenas, J. A. (1997). Texas School Finance Reform: An IDRA Perspective. IDRA, 5835 Callaghan, Suite 350, San Antonio, TX 78228-1190.
Cammarota, J., & Fine, M. (2008). Youth participatory action research. Revolutionizing education: Youthparticipatory action research in motion, 1-12.
Delgado Bernal, D. & Alemán, E., Jr. (2016). Transforming educational pathways for Chicana/o students: A critical race feminista praxis. Teachers College Press.
Mitra, D. L. (2008). Amplifying student voice. Educational Leadership, 66(3), 20-25.
Mitra, D. (2006). Increasing student voice and moving toward youth leadership. The prevention researcher, 13(1), 7-10.
Rodriguez, L. F. (2019). Community-based participatory research: Testimonios from Chicana/o studies. University of Arizona Press.
Wenner, J. A., & Campbell, T. (2017). The theoretical and empirical basis of teacher leadership: A review of the literature. Review of educational research, 87(1), 134-171.
