Interview and Leadership Philosophy in a Title I School District

Introduction to the School District

The school district examined in this paper is a Title I school district located in a low-socioeconomic neighborhood. Its demographics consist of 68% African-American, 22% White, and 10% Hispanic students. The district has committed to promoting social justice learning throughout its schools, and the superintendent is particularly vocal about social justice issues as a guiding priority for the district's direction and culture.

Superintendent Interview

Very early on I became a leader in my family — that is where it starts. Helping out my mother with the chores in the house, making sure we were all fed and bills were getting paid. I got my first job when I was 14 and was helping in every way I could. If you don't learn leadership at home, it's tough to get a sense of your own power to lead, because that is the best place, the best opportunity to get it.

I come from a single-parent home in a very working-class neighborhood. I know what it means to have a blue-collar work ethic, but also what it means for people to struggle. We have a district here that reflects a lot of the problems in the economy and in society in general, where there isn't always the kind of stability and the values that really foster a sense of accountability. I got that at home and from my church, and I had teachers along the way who supported those values. That is what we need more of today, because not every family is able to do it on their own.

I learned that it is important not to get down on yourself or on others, because you never know their situation and you should never think of your own situation as beyond repair. There is a strength in weakness, as Scripture tells us, and what that means is the more you realize you are down for the count, the more you realize how dependent you are on God for getting you through. He sees what you need, and His love is more abundant than anything else — so you put your trust in Him and He is always faithful.

We are growing and developing in ways that we need to. Bringing communities forward and stressing the importance of integration between schools, businesses, families, and churches — everything. You have got to get people involved and engaged because that is the only way to make it all work.

Ethics are important, but what kind of ethical system are we going to have? There are a lot of ethical egoists out there, and that is not good. We do not need more people thinking about how they can use others to benefit themselves. We need people of strong character, people who are going to make a difference in the lives of others because they understand this is why they have been put on this earth — to love, to show love, and to gain from giving rather than from taking.

Obviously, collaboration is a big part of what I bring. It is based in research, yes, and it is based in personal experience. Growing up, I could not have made it on my own — not in a single-parent home. But I had siblings, I had neighbors, I had a church community, and we all supported one another out of a spirit of generosity and love, and that got us through difficult times. Today, we have teachers who bring that same spirit, and we want to instill that same generosity and collaborative spirit in our students and throughout our staff as well.

Personal Leadership Philosophy

My own leadership philosophy is based on the same spirit of collaboration and generosity as that of the superintendent. It focuses on transformation and change, which means there needs to be a vision of what I want to achieve, and I need the ability to communicate and justify that vision so as to get stakeholders to buy into it. I need the support of stakeholders to help implement it, and that means I need to be open to feedback so that I can hear their voices and respond to them with the same kind of support I seek from them in return.

I would describe my philosophy as the philosophy of gaining by giving. The main value here is that we are not in this by ourselves and we are not wholly dependent upon ourselves alone: we are in a community, given to us by God, and He is going to help us achieve good things that glorify Him so long as we do what is right, show love and compassion to our fellow human beings, and stay humble in the process. We have to meet life with a sense of joy — taking joy in giving and gaining the peace and satisfaction that comes from this spirit.

Life is a true collaborative process, and uniting under a single vision is my aim. That vision is to implement professional learning networks (PLNs) that use social media platforms like Twitter to connect teachers, students, and families into a virtual community that also facilitates the development of the real-world community (Rodman, 2018). Keeping everything united and integrated in a spirit of giving is the core component of my leadership philosophy.