Читать книгу Stories of Caring School Leadership - Mark A. Smylie - Страница 9

We began eliciting stories of caring school leadership during the early stages of work on our book Caring School Leadership. As we spoke with aspiring and practicing principals and other school leaders about caring, we often heard them express their thoughts and experiences through stories. Many of these stories were vivid and profound, capturing action and interaction and revealing both thought and emotion.

At the start, we asked for stories from practicing and aspiring school leaders in university classes we taught. We branched out to seek stories from educators with whom we worked in professional development activities. We went further to collect stories from individual educators we know from our work in schools and from our neighborhoods. We sought stories from principals, associate principals, department chairs, teachers, and others who interact with principals and other school leaders. We did not elicit stories from students, although some of the stories told by adults recall their experiences as students. Student stories hold great promise for a future project on caring in schools and school leadership. Nor did we engage in systematic sampling. Despite this, we ended up with an archive of stories that come from a wide range of schools across many settings. While they may not be considered dispositive evidence of the phenomenon of caring in school leadership, our stories are evidence of actual occurrence and of possibility.

We were fairly general in what we asked of our storytellers. From some, we asked for stories that reflected what they mean by caring in school leadership. From others, we asked for stories that reflected our developing thinking about the subject, notably key elements that make school leadership caring. As our archive of stories grew, we elicited stories of particular aspects of caring school leadership practice to ensure that we had sufficient numbers of stories to illustrate each arena of practice represented in this book.

We asked our storytellers to tell stories that related in one way or another to students. And most of our stories focus on them. The reason we sought and included several stories of caring for teachers, parents, and families is our belief that caring can beget caring. To be caring of teachers and parents is to model and inspire them to be caring of others, notably students. It is hard to imagine teachers becoming more caring of students if they do not feel cared for themselves, especially by school leaders.

Beyond such guidance, we gave our storytellers liberty to tell the stories they wished to tell. They could share autobiographical stories about their own work and experiences as school leaders. They could share stories of other school leaders. We told them that they could write in first or third person, and we told them that they could use dialogue they remembered. Our only stipulation was that the events in the stories had to have actually happened. We told our storytellers that they did not have to tell of only positive instances of caring. We encouraged them to tell stories of problematic caring or caring gone wrong. Caring is often complex and not always straightforward. However well intended, it can create problems—even harm. We did not want this book to be a collection of only feel-good or happy stories. Of course, there are many positive stories of caring in this book, but there are also negative ones. There are stories of crises and exceptional circumstances. There are also stories of everyday events. Some stories are quite dramatic, while others feel routine. All of the stories—positive and negative, ordinary and extraordinary—speak to the importance of caring in school leadership.

The vast majority of our stories were written by educators. Several were told to us in a class or conversation, and we put them into writing. Several stories are of interactions or incidents that we witnessed and wrote ourselves. In addition, we found and adapted several stories from news sources, magazines, and books.

By the time we began to prepare this book, we had amassed nearly two hundred stories. From this archive, we selected one hundred stories for this book. These stories illustrate important ways in which caring school leadership is practiced. The stories in this book are not a comprehensive representation of the untold number of ways that school leaders can be caring in their work. They are but a sampling and what our storytellers chose to share with us. We strongly suggest that when you read and reflect upon these stories, you also think beyond them to other ways that caring can manifest itself in school leadership.

We selected stories from different types of schools and settings. You will read stories from preschools, elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. You will read stories from urban, suburban, small-town, and rural schools and communities. And you will read stories from public and independent schools, well-resourced and underresourced schools, and economically and racially diverse as well as homogeneous schools. The stories in this book come from across the country. Not surprisingly, most come from regions in which we live and work. About 40 percent of the stories are from the Midwest; 35 percent are from the South and Southeast; and nearly 25 percent are from the East and West Coasts, the Southwest, and the North and Northeast. They come from seventy different school districts or municipalities from New York City to Los Angeles, from Atlanta to Minneapolis, and many points in between. Several stories come from outside the United States from Africa, Canada, and Mexico. Approximately 47 percent of stories come from urban settings, 25 percent come from suburban settings, and 28 percent come from small-town and rural settings.

Our stories are published with the permission of their authors, who are recognized by name in the book’s acknowledgments. To protect the privacy of persons in these stories, we do not associate our storytellers’ names or school names with the stories themselves. We also removed or altered information that might serve to identify individuals or places. Pseudonyms are used. For the few stories that appeared in published sources, complete removal of identifying information was not possible. To illustrate the variety of schools and locales from which these stories come, we follow the title of each one with a reference to the role of the storyteller (e.g., principal, teacher, parent), the locale (e.g., small town, rural, suburban, urban), and grade level of the school (e.g., elementary, middle, high school).