Stories of Caring School Leadership

Mark A. Smylie is professor of education emeritus in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago and visiting professor in the Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. Before his work in higher education, Smylie was a high school social studies teacher. Smylie served as secretary-treasurer of the National Society for the Study of Education and as a director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. His work has appeared in the American Education Research Journal, Educational Researcher, Educational Administration Quarterly, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Policy, Journal of School Leadership, and Review of Research in Education. Smylie has worked with schools, school districts, and school administrator and teacher professional associations through joint projects, advising, and school leader development activities. He has served on advisory boards of numerous regional and national professional and policy organizations concerned with education generally and leadership in particular. Smylie's research focuses on school organization, leadership, and change. Joseph F. Murphy is the Frank W. Mayborn Chair and associate dean at Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University. He has also been a faculty member at the University of Illinois and The Ohio State University, where he was the William Ray Flesher Professor of Education. In the public schools, he has served as an administrator at the school, district, and state levels, including an appointment as the executive assistant to the chief deputy superintendent of public instruction in California. His most recent appointment was as the founding president of the Ohio Principals Leadership Academy. At the university level, he has served as department chair and associate dean. He is past vice president of the American Educational Research Association and was the founding chair of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC). He is co-editor of the AERA Handbook on Educational Administration (1999) and editor of the National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE) yearbook, The Educational Leadership Challenge (2002). His work is in the area of school improvement, with special emphasis on leadership and policy. He has authored or co-authored 18 books in this area and edited another 12. His most recent authored volumes include Understanding and Assessing the Charter School Movement (2002), Leadership for Literacy: Research-Based Practice, PreK-3 (2003), Connecting Teacher Leadership and School Improvement (2005), Preparing School Leaders: Defining a Research and Action Agenda (2006), and Turning Around Failing Schools: Lessons From the Organizational Sciences. Karen Seashore Louis is the Rodney Wallace Professor of Educational Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Her area of expertise includes improvement in K-12 leadership and policy over the last 30 years, particularly in urban secondary schools. Louis also conducts research on organizational changes within higher education, with particular attention to faculty roles, and on international comparative policy in educational reform. A past president of Division A of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), she is a widely published author in the field. Recent books include Organizing for School Change, Leadership for Change and School Improvement: International Perspectives, Handbook of Educational Administration, Second Edition, and Organizational Learning in Schools. Louis earned a bachelor's degree in History from Swarthmore College and a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University.

List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments About the Authors Introduction: Caring School Leadership Collection I: Stories of Being Caring in Relationships with Students Introduction Questions for Reflection and Discussion Stories From PreK and Elementary Schools 1. Walk You to School? 2. Terry 3. Ana 4. I Don't Have a Knife 5. Opening Up 6. Had It Gone a Different Way 7. Three Musketeers 8. Fever Free and Smiling 9. Now What Do I Do? 10. Sheila 11. Pizza and a Football 12. Connecting 13. Two Yearbooks 14. The Lunchroom Stories From Secondary Schools 15. Minister of Presence 16. Sue Knows She Is Loved 17. What's Going on With Renee? 18. Promise 19. Red Sneakers 20. Nate 21. Patrick 22. Four Years With That Student 23. On the Bus Ramp 24. Giving and Taking the Chance 25. You Just Gotta Be Calm 26. Not Giving Up 27. The Last Leg 28. I've Got Your Back 29. Toss and Turn 30. Authentic Care 31. Jason 32. Let Me Work on That 33. The Business Card 34. Not All Who Wander Are Lost 35. Not Too Tired to Be Caring 36. Swimming Upstream 37. Try This 38. The Tux 39. Breaking the Law 40. No Pity, Just Care 41. It's Because My School Family Loves Me 42. Natalie 43. Our Collective Responsibility 44. Bicycle Built for Two Collection II: Stories of Cultivating Schools as Caring Communities Introduction Questions for Reflection and Discussion Stories From Elementary Schools 45. We Like the Egg Chairs 46. Hear My Message, Not My Tone 47. Family Connect Time 48. Our Transformation 49. Dots 50. Season of Giving 51. Evaluating Faculty With Challenge and Support 52. Coaching With Care 53. Accepting Your Feelings 54. Seth 55. Learning Together 56. Helping a Teacher Build Relationships With Students 57. Buddy Bench 58. 360 Degrees of Caring 59. The Results Are In 60. Always There for Me 61. Lunch With the Principal 62. School Welcomes Stories From Secondary Schools 63. We Choose Relationships 64. Small Steps 65. Getting You Ready to Walk 66. Student Advocates 67. Grab a Sandwich 68. Welcome to Refugee High 69. Do We Really Know? 70. Setting Rules and Policies 71. No One Graduates Alone 72. Responding to the Crises 73. Good Works Toward Each Other 74. Fostering a Caring Faculty Culture 75. Promoting Safety and Community Through Near Peer Mentoring 76. When It Is Actually Not Easy 77. Mama Bears 78. Celebrating Matt 79. Everyone Has a Voice 80. Our Work Is Really All About Caring 81. A More Inclusive Culture 82. Enforcing the Norms 83. True Safety 84. Gail and Her Girls 85. Our Food Pantry Collection III: Stories of Fostering Caring in Families and Community Introduction Questions for Reflection and Discussion 86. Engaging Parents in Equity Dialogues 87. The Fire 88. Family Support 89. This School Is Here for You 90. An Open Letter to Parents of Children Throughout New York State Regarding Grades 3-8 Testing 91. Community Career Fairs and Pop-Up Food Banks 92. Born and Bred 93. We Are Going to Be Together in This 94. My Mom Is in Trouble 95. We Just Couldn't See It 96. Our Next Mayor 97. Promoting Early Childhood Education in Families and the Community 98. Visiting With the Kids 99. Parent University 100. What Can We Do? Bibliography

Captivating, moving, and sincere; a beautiful collection of stories of caring leadership practice. Full of dilemmas around boundaries and privacy, ambiguities and ethics, inequities and responsibility, this book illuminates, instructs, and inspires. It will be an eye-opener for anyone skeptical of the hard and necessary work that is caring and that schools and educators do on a daily basis. -- Milena Batanova What an interesting time we are in where a book that feeds the spirit presents a perspective that is both bold and lacking in today's discourse! Our society's future lies in our ability to guide the youngest among us towards social and emotional health. We will have left an indelible mark on society if we are able to cultivate in our future leaders with the capacity to be thoughtful, intelligent, kind, and caring. It will take a journey to get there from where we are today. This book should be required reading for the trip. -- John C Borrero The voices of these inspiring educators and their stories of hope bring to life how "caring lies at the heart of schooling" (p. xii). We are reminded that the little things are the big things. The stories illuminate the power of caring, loving, holding, listening, and being present-physically and psychologically-to and for each other. The storytellers create a tapestry made up of the textures of care in different forms-helping us to move closer together in our relationships and connectedness. Get ready to open your heart and be filled with goosebumps. -- Ellie Drago-Severson Anyone who has ever worked in a school understands how important caring leadership is for human flourishing. With provocative questions for immediate application, these three highly respected scholars have framed stories that prove that caring leadership is happening in schools right now. The stories told by school leaders themselves are instructive and inspiring. The student artwork is a perfect complement. This book is more than a must-read for educators - it is a pure joy. -- Jon Eckert These stories truly capture what is at the heart and soul of good school leadership: authentic and unwavering care. These accounts are inspiring and motivating for anyone beginning, proceeding along, or reflecting on their own journey as a school leader. I'm forever grateful for the gift these authors have given us all. This will be a frequently called upon resource to share with the current and aspiring leaders I support. -- Richard Frank The stories in this book remind us that caring is an indispensable quality in teaching and leadership. Stories of Caring School Leadership is an essential resource for those charged with supporting students and adults for today's world-and tomorrow's. -- Kevin Gallick This profound and practical book animates the irreplaceable presence of caring necessary for the learning and development of children and youth. Constructed from practitioners' stories with multiple avenues for access, the moving narratives give examples of why high school parents will flock to conferences, how middle school students were helped to address concerns about a teacher, an elementary child on the autism spectrum was given timely support, an equity committee was formed, and how an organizational context for caring was created. -- Robert Garmston Stories of Caring School Leadership brings compassionate, caring leadership to life through poignant stories and inspiring artistic expressions. The National Association of Secondary School Principals is committed to supporting gtreat leaders in every school who are committed to the success of each student. The sharing of student artwork lets the reader peer into the hearts of our most vulnerable and most precious assets-our students. This book "shows and tells" what school leadership should look like. Congratulations to Mark, Joe, and Karen for bringing authenticity to the vision of school leadership that NASSP finds crucial. -- Beverly J Hutton At times both touching and heartbreaking, this book is a rich source for learning that helps us envision equity -- truly caring about each individual student and valuing their unique set of experiences, assets, and needs. I connected with so many of these stories, and I applaud the authors for embracing the power of stories to bridge the gap between theory and practice. To lead for equity, we must do the internal work to see and recover from our own biases and assumptions about students, teachers, and families. These stories are a powerful tool for connecting though our shared humanity and for co-creating the culturally responsive and just school experiences that will free our young people to flourish. -- Rebecca D. Kaye This collection of stories presents an authentic picture of what it means to be a school leader today. As I read the book I cried, laughed, nodded, and said aloud, "Oh, yeah, that happens, sometimes more than we'll ever know." The storytellers paint a picture of the challenges students face each day that extend beyond their academic success and how school leaders are instrumental in shaping and nurturing schools in which students' very existence and well-being depend on caring school administrators. This book illustrates the many ways leaders cultivate and model caring within their community to extend collective responsibility for student, staff, and family success. These stories show how vital it is for today's school leaders to act with compassion and urgency so that all students, staff members, and community members have advocates, are acknowledged, and feel worthy, valued, and cared for. -- Joellen Killion As a teacher and principal for nearly twenty years, I highly recommend this book to all educators needing a return to the well that drew us into the profession in the first place. The premise and stories in the book tap into the common thread that unites all educators but is often overlooked-a care for humanity. Smylie, Murphy, and Louis remind us that an ethos of caring is a resilient, sustainable, effective road to the Rome we seek for our students and communities. The stories in the text are perfect for a mid-afternoon reading with leadership teams, faculty, or pre-service teachers as a way to reground ourselves in the work that ultimately matters most. -- Christian Sawyer Stories of Caring School Leadership centers us in the reality that our most essential and basic need is to feel known and cared for. It is through our connection to each other that we grow and thrive. This book brings years of research on school leadership to life. It serves as a powerful resource for school leaders as they deepen their commitment to foster caring within their schools. Stories move people and without a doubt the readers of this book will be drawn, moved, and compelled to invest again and again in the students, educators, families and communities that they serve. -- Sonia Stewart This book is a treasure trove of meaningful and beautiful stories that illustrate the power of caring between educators, students, and families. The book begins by defining caring in the context of schools, followed by a cogent argument for why we need to understand and practice caring. At the start of each collection of stories, there is a set of focusing questions to deepen the reader's engagement with and reflection on the stories. This book would be valuable for the preparation of school leaders, as well as for self-study and professional development. -- Megan Tschannen-Moran This collection of stories demonstrates the importance of building caring relationships with children and their families in order to create a school culture where learning can take place. You will find examples of how school leaders show students and their families empathy, kindness, and compassion. This book is a must read for educators who want to see the Professional Standards for Educational Leaders brought to life. -- Jacquelyn Wilson