Culturally Responsive Leadership

1
Culturally Responsive Leadership

• Elizabeth B. Kozleski, Arizona State University
• Seena M. Skelton, Southwestern Ohio SPED Regional
  Resource Center

2
Overview of Agenda

• Introductions who we are and why did we choose
  this workshop?
• Our assumptions
• Why race, culture, and language are important
  issues confronting US public schools?
• What does leadership have to do with it?
• What is culturally responsive leadership?
• What about me?
• Who am I what assets do I bring what
  liabilities do I carry?
• What about the benchmarks that I use?
• Organizational, Outcomes, Personnel, Resource
  Allocation, Tools,
• What about the choices that I make?
• What about the rhetoric that I choose?
• What about the legacy that I leave?

3
Outcomes

• Understand how culturally responsive leadership
  informs culturally responsive teaching and
  learning systems.
• Connect the dots between culturally responsive
  rhetoric, dialogue and activity.
• Benchmark culturally responsive progress in your
  system.

4
Introductions

• Introduce yourselves to each other
• Why did you choose this workshop?
• What outcomes do you hope to achieve?
• Ground Rules

5
Assumptions

• White is a color and a culture (Glen Singleton
  Curtis Linton, Courageous Conversations).
• Not only are blacks complaints discounted, but
  black victims of racism are less effective
  witnesses than are whites, who are members of the
  oppressor class (Derrick Bell, Faces at the
  Bottom of the Well).
• We need leaders who can situate themselves
  within a larger historical narrative of this
  country and our world, who can imagine a future
  ground in the best of our past, yet who are
  attuned to the frightening obstacles that now
  perplex us (Cornel West, Race Matters).

6
School Values and Expectations

• What are the core values reflected US Schools?
• Think-Pair-Share Activity

7
Instructions

• Getting ready
• Choose a reporter
• Choose a note-taker for the group
• Choose a time keeper
• Take one minute to individually think about the
  core values reflected in most US schools.
• Share with group members and compile your list (5
  min.)
• The speaker of the group share out the list

8
US Schools Core Values

• Independence
• Individualism
• Meritocracy
• Competition
• Future Orientation
• Task/Work Orientation
• Print literacy

• Interdependence
• Collectivism
• Meritocracy
• Collaboration
• Past, Present Future Orientation
• Relationship Orientation
• Oral literacy

9

• Standardization
• Questioning to Assess Information (Inauthentic)
• Indirect Commands
• Low Context
• Formal Register

• Improvisation
• Questioning to Obtain Information (Authentic)
• Direct Commands
• High Context
• Casual Register

10
Why race, culture, and language are important
issues confronting US public schools
11
Of every 100 White Kindergartners
88 Graduate from High School 58 Complete some
College 26 Obtain at least a Bachelors Degree
Source US Bureau of Census, Current Population
Reports, Educational Attainment in the United
States March 1998 (p 20-513) Detailed Tables
No. 2
(24 Year Olds)
12
Of every 100 African American Kindergartners
82 Graduate from High School 45 Complete some
College 11 Obtain at least a Bachelors D egree
Source US Bureau of Census, Current Population
Reports, Educational Attainment in the United
States March 1998 (p 20-513) Detailed Tables
No. 2
(24 Year Olds)
13
Of Every 100 Latino Kindergartners
63 Graduate from High School 35 Complete some
College 8 Obtain at least a Bachelors Degree
Source US Bureau of Census, Current Population
Reports, Educational Attainment in the United
States March 1998 (p 20-513) Detailed Tables
No. 2
(24 Year Olds)
14
Of Every 100 Native American Kindergartners
58 Graduate from High School 7 Obtain at least a
Bachelors Degree
Source US Bureau of Census, Current Population
Reports, Educational Attainment in the United
States March 1998 (p 20-513) Detailed Tables
No. 2
(24 Year Olds)
15
Of Every 100 Students in Special Education
50 Graduate from High School 7 Obtain at least a
Bachelors Degree
(24 Year Olds)
16
(No Transcript)
17
(No Transcript)
18

• Beat the odds

19
(No Transcript)
20
(No Transcript)
21
(No Transcript)
22
(No Transcript)
23
(No Transcript)
24
From Classrooms to Systems
25
(No Transcript)
26
Thinking about the Data

• What questions arise from looking at these data?
• About district policies?
• About school practices?
• About classroom practices?
• About students in your system?
• The Complexity of Cultural Groups
• What are the unintended consequences of
  organizing our analyses by racial category?

27
What does Leadership have to do with it?
28
Legal

• 612 State Eligibility, State Plans and Prevention
• 613(f) Early Intervening Services
• 614 Evaluations, IEPs and Placement
• 615 Procedural Safeguards
• 616 Monitoring and Enforcement and Public
  Reporting of LEA Data
• 618 Data, Public Reporting and Specific
  Requirements on Disproportionality

29
What People Bring
30
Cultural Historical Activity Theory
Tools and Symbols
Object
Subject
31
Cultural Historical Activity Theory
Assessment Multidisciplinary Team Determination IE
P
Special Education Identification
Student
32
Cultural Historical Activity Theory
Subject
Object
Community
33
Cultural Historical Activity Theory
Student
Identification Placement
Classroom
34
Distributed Leadership
Tools
Object
Subject
Community
Division of Labor
Rules
35
What does leadership have to do with it?

• Foregrounding Culture
• Technical Expertise
• Evidence-based decision making
• Complexity-conscious policy making
• Transparency
• Connections

36
What is Culturally Responsive Leadership?
37
Identity
38
Flow

• Inside
• Let go or burn out
• Be a willow
• Fill your bucket
• Learn to live with chaos ambiguity

• Out
• Empower
• Practice aikido
• Fill others buckets
• Help others frame the situation

39
Focus
40
People

• Presence
• Participation
• Emancipation

41

• Create Access
• Educate
• Liberate

Policies
42

• Participation Collaboration
• Praxis
• Tools
• Authenticity
• Evidence

Practices
43
What about the benchmarks that I use?
44
Benchmarks

• Students
• Teachers
• Critical Incidents
• of time spent on crisis response vs community
  development
• Who is in your circles?
• What does the community have to say?

45
What about the choices that I make?
46
Implementation

• Maintain a Tight Instructional Focus
• Routinize Accountability for Practice and
  Performance
• Open Practice Up to Direct Observation, Analysis,
  and Criticism
• Support differentially based on Performance and
  Capacity
• Devolve increased direction based on practice and
  performance

47
What about the rhetoric that I choose?
48
How do I lead others?

• Know what you need
• Listen in sophisticated ways
• Demonstrate empathy
• Satisfy the basic self in others, then
• Appeal to the better self
• Build capacity for collegiality
• Accomplish small wins early and celebrate

49
Changing the way that we think
From Isolation to Collaboration
From Rhetoric to Action
From Marginalization to Inclusion
From Commonalities to Diversities
From External to Internal Locus of Control
50
What systemic work needs to be engaged?

• Develop Coalitions
• Build Consensus
• Focus on Message
• Renew Practice Simultaneously at the
  Professional, School, and District levels

51
What systemic work needs to be engaged?

• Build Tools that Encourage Reflection, Action,
  Continuous Improvement
• Build Expertise for the Future
• Build Communities for Change
• Link Communities of Practice

52
The steady work of Education for All

• Grounded in
• How schools can partner with families to build
  powerful contexts for learning 24/7
• How teachers learn to teach
• How school organization affects practice
• How districts can support school and practitioner
  effort, and
• How these factors affect children's opportunities
  to learn, participate and succeed.

53
What about the legacy that I leave?
54
(No Transcript)