Stories of Caring School Leadership

by Mark A. Smylie, Joseph F. Murphy, Karen Seashore Louis

Overview

Real-life examples to inform and inspire caring in your leadership practices!

The practice of caring is essential to effective schooling. Published as a companion to Caring School Leadership, this comprehensive resource of powerful, real-life stories will make clear the connection between caring leadership and student academic success and well-being. Stories of Caring School Leadership includes a guide for using the stories in self-directed reflection and learning, for educators practicing in schools and professional preparation programs. Readers will find stories that

• will help aspiring and practicing leaders reflect upon and further develop caring as a quality of their leadership 
• affirm the importance of caring as a fundamental quality of school leadership 
• provide examples of caring school leadership in action that can be analyzed, reflected upon, and used to develop practice 

Stories have the power to inform and inspire. The stories in this book are evidence of what is possible when caring leadership is practiced in our schools.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781071801840
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	07/29/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	168
Sales rank:	1,016,644
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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