Content to Courageous

• In Event: Moving Emergent Bilingual Students to the Center: Transforming Leadership Preparation in a District-University Partnership

Abstract

See “Front Matter for Papers 2-4” for purposes, modes of inquiry & data sources.
Perspectives: This is the first of two papers featuring a teacher who feels marginalized entering the program but whose knowledge and experiences are validated by virtue of being in a program focused primarily on improving outcomes for the most struggling students. This paper features the perspective of a speech language pathologist and SPED department chair who had previously kept her head down and her door closed, since she felt her knowledge was not central to the core of schooling and that she as a teacher was somehow “less than” general education teachers. It shows her changing view of herself as a teacher and leader, from “content” to “courageous” as a result of learning the centrality of her experience and knowledge in addressing the needs of struggling students.
Substantiated conclusions: This paper shows in detail how putting the improvement of outcomes for struggling learners at the center of leadership development can develop the leaders we need for producing more equitable outcomes in schools. Specifically, this paper shows how as the candidate/author came to understand the import of her knowledge for meeting core program demands (to improve outcomes for the most struggling students), she became increasingly confident on her inquiry team. This led her to more fully empower her students, which increased their success and led to even more confidence on her team. Emboldened to push change and take risks beyond her classroom, she realized she held knowledge that was needed more broadly, and so on. In addition to featuring the importance of the core inquiry task and team structure in enabling transformation, findings also include the role of ELL shadowing (Soto, 2012) in cultivating an “Aha!” about the moral imperative to champion the needs of LTELs and the program stance of positioning candidates as the simultaneous holders and generators of knowledge as key in leadership transformation.
Scholarly significance: Educators who serve our most vulnerable students may, like the students they serve, live somewhat in the shadows. This paper shows how featuring marginalized students in educational leadership helps to bring the educator knowledge that we all need to close equity gaps into the light of day.

Author

• Christina Maguire, Anaheim Union High School District