The Assistant Principal Perspective: Leadership Through Human Connection

• In Event: Fighting for Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Schools Under a New Administration

Abstract

Objectives
The educator in this commentary recently completed his dissertation, in which he studied his efforts to help four math teachers increase belonging among Black and Brown students in a school where he had previously been the assistant principal. This school leader and the math teachers developed a survey for helping teachers learn more about their students as a strategy to increase student belonging. In this commentary, this school leader shares how his use of this survey has evolved over time as he has sought to pursue culturally responsive and sustaining schools, and he details how the new federal administration’s education policies limiting discussions of race and identity have impacted this and similar equity-centered reforms in the large suburban school district where he works. Throughout this commentary, this administrator advocates for educator agency and student voice in sustaining inclusive learning environments in schools, regardless of policy.

Theoretical Framework & Modes of Inquiry
This school leader frames CRSE as not only pedagogical but moral and political work that informs his practitioner-scholar standpoint. In understanding his own experiences as a student, teacher, and now administrator, this educator uses critical reflective narrative to engage in reflective practice and examine how he and his district colleagues are navigating policy constraints.

Evidence
In driving his CRSE work, this assistant principal draws on data from the student surveys he has administered with teachers in two school buildings, from student roundtables and forums he has conducted to help teachers better understand Black and Brown students in their schools, and from his experiences shadowing students throughout the school day. Through these sources of evidence, this leader seeks to understand the student experience and use data to help educators improve those experiences, with particular attention to belonging and inclusion.

Arguments
Drawing on the evidence noted above, his dissertation research, and scholarly literature, this school leader emphasizes how the current federal education agenda seeks to devalue students’ diverse identities just as educators in his district are learning to more fully embrace them. In response, he asserts that belonging is foundational to learning, that teachers must engage in cultural self-reflection, and that suppressing identity harms all students and undermines the democratic mission of education.

Significance
In this commentary, this assistant principal insists that the most powerful response to authoritarian policy is human connection, and he encourages educators to maintain progress toward human connection in any form. By grounding this argument in data from his own research and leadership, this practitioner-scholar asserts that CRSE is essential, not optional, in public education.  

Author

• Brian A. Valentine, Fairfax County Public Schools