By their lived experiences as people of color, the six black participants in this study offer something of the value gained in their efforts toward impartiality. These participants voiced various approaches where their lived experiences not only illuminated their position in society but also influenced their role as school principals. Each of the six participants referenced their use of experiential knowledge in distinct ways: (1) PD trainings to influence colleagues, (2) recognition of their life as it is tied to race, (3) life experience as equity training, (4) empathy, and (5) recognition of how people of color are seen. I recognize these distinct perspectives of experiential knowledge as having two themes: fellowship and asset. By fellowship, I mean participants reveal something of an awareness of a communal bond with both families and students of color. I define asset to mean the method school leaders were able to use their own negative lived experiences constructively to engage their impartial leadership practices. Moreover, I use the theme of asset in working with colleagues, families, and self. Ms. Stanfield and Dr. O’Neal demonstrate experiential knowledges by way of fellowship and Drs. Grant, Kirkpatrick, and Thompson show their knowledges as an asset. And lastly, Mr. Green refers to his understanding of how his impartiality as experiential knowledge has shown both his fellowship and his asset.
Let’s turn to Ms. Stanfield and Dr. O’Neal and their perspectives of fellowship in their lives. Ms. Stanfield and her recalling her first experience as a teacher shares one story in
particular that has remained with her. It is a story about a time when a student in her class made a racist remark about, and to, another student. Ms. Stanfield shares with me a memorable teaching experience:
Yeah! It's not so positive but I have one. So, there was a little boy and I remember his name. His name was Jimmy. And Jimmy was a little white boy and . . . he was a little racist and I'm saying that with respect, but he was, [and] his family was. I [taught] one class at each grade level . . . And so Jimmy was a student; he had been there from the very beginning of the [school] year. And he was very disruptive; he was a smart boy, though. But he would get into it socially with other students [and] he wouldn't be immediately compliant to me, even when I gave him choices. . . . And I remember one day specifically he was having a challenging day. . . . To a male student that was black, [Jimmy] called him a nigger. And [next period] we had a special [class], which was music. I don't know why I remember this story like this, I don't remember anything else, but I remember this.
Here, Ms. Stanfield tells of one of her lasting experiences as a teacher, a time when she was confronted with an issue where racism emerged. I proceeded to ask Ms. Stanfield why such an experience remains so vivid and lasting in her memory. Her response was immediate:
I don't know. I think that it deals with race. I do think my life is very much tied to race. Like I think that. I think about race every single day. I think about my kids and what their experiencing at school every single day. I think about how we're running this school here. And how race shows up every single day. So I think it's always at the forefront of my mind.
According to Ms. Stanfield, her experiential knowledge is strongly attached to race. This lived experience fluidly transfers to influence her practice toward open-mindedness. Such lived experiences become more influential to her development as an equity leader because “it is not necessarily training, but its just life. Living life helps me to be critical and critically conscious.” Such statement by Ms. Stanfield demonstrates the influence of fellowship to her leadership practice.
Dr. O’Neal, on the other hand, recognizes that his lived experiences have provided him both a foundation and the training for his advocacy. He offers the following reflection on his own professional engagement with Courageous Conversations trainings:
(Pause) So, I didn’t feel like I needed it. I didn’t feel like it helped me. To me it’s one of those classes for white people to discuss race. Like for them to recognize race and for them to put it on the table. It wasn’t necessarily for people who lived it, people who are cognizant of it . . . I mean I see the purpose of it ‘cause the majority of the teachers are white. But I felt [the training] was more suited for white people.
Dr. O’Neal sees that his most influential training has been his lived experiences. Also, and in my time with Dr. O’Neal I’ve come to recognize his stories as something of his fellowship and readiness to challenge those issues that lack both objectivity and open-mindedness.
Let us further discuss this subject of fellowship and recognize something of Mr. Green’s candid reflection of his own lived experiences as a black male. Mr. Green readily shares his belief that no matter “who I am, or what I say, or even what I do, at the end of the day, I’m still an African American man, and I’m feared by a lot of people . . . just because of that.” Mr. Green does not mince words about who he is or about his personal assessment on what he deals with as a black man in this country. I somehow recognized that those lived experiences that he has shared with me have become part of his character and serve his forthrightness and determination as a role model for his students. Now, as we look back, we can recognize how those principals Mia Stanfield, Bill O’Neal, and Robert Green both reveal their own experiential knowledges as people of color and models a kind of fellowshipping that contributes to their open-mindedness when dealing with both students of color and students of low-SES.
Dr. Grant reveals something clearly distinct about how she uses her lived experiential knowledge as an asset when she shares with me how she uses that knowledge to influence her
colleagues. Dr. Grant’s strong background in equitable practices has provided her with opportunities to direct professional development trainings on impartiality. She shares a potent story about how she has used her lived experiential knowledge directing PDs:
So one of the things I think is hard for us as black people . . . ok, now I'll speak for myself personally, because that's one of the trainings [and] part of Glenn Singleton's work: keep it personal, local, and immediate. For me it's very hard to talk about race, because it's an emotional thing—it's a painful thing. And I don't want people to know that it impacts me—it bothers me. So I am an administrator, I am sitting in a room with my colleagues who . . . we get along together. And they know, if you’re a principal . . . you got some nice money. And I was telling them . . . I am used to being treated disrespectfully as a person, but it hurts me when I've seen it done to my kids. When I walk into the store with my children and [the store employee’s] want to follow us around the store: when I go into Macy's, like I can't afford to buy Macy's, you know. You almost want to wear your Degree and your [school] ID on your shirt. Right?
(Her and her children’s encounter with store employee’s)
It was emotional for me because I've never really looked at that pain, you know, I didn't look at the pain of how much it hurts me to have to protect my children. And my colleagues cried with me and they said, "I can't believe somebody would treat you like that. Why would they treat you that way?" But you know me, (and as she addresses her colleagues) “How many other black people have you treated that way that you don't know? You only feel bad because it's me. But, how many other black folks does that happen to . . . that are just as sweet and caring as I am?” So that was very powerful because that's a vulnerability that I don't want to exposed to people—of how it hurts. And then it made me think, this stuff does hurt me, and I just push it down so much every day, and I don't talk about it and so . . . if I could just make an assumption, I think that has happened [to] a lot of minorities, that we do that [to]. We do that often and that was the purpose of that particular PD.
We've done some above the line [and] below the line . . . Riverdale is a great, great, great, great, great place! [With] all the hospitals and universities and sports teams and blah, blah, blah. But that below the line information, the poverty rate for black children . . . black people . . . how we are not represented in the universities and you look at our neighborhoods and our communities . . . what they call below line information. And I've felt that was always a powerful PD for me, because it brings up that minority perspective, you have your above the line . . . majority [and] what they are going to say, but how [does] our minority see life in Riverdale.
In these candid statements, Dr. Grant shows how she brings to bear her lived experiences as a form of asset while engaging her colleagues to center themselves on what she calls the “below the line” standpoint. Dr. Grant uses clearly significant—and painful—experiential knowledge in her efforts to engage her colleagues. For Dr. Grant her abilities and career success have not protected her from the negative experiences regarding her race but have allowed her to recognize the power and the influence her lived stories bring.
A second principal to reveal her use of experiential knowledges as a asset, Dr. Kirkpatrick much like Dr. Grant, shares her use of experiential knowledges in working with families of color. In the following story, Dr. Kirkpatrick describes to me how her racial and gender positionalities influence her leadership practices:
Well, I think it gives a perspective, because you know what it’s like to be a minority. Right? Minority as [a] woman [and] what it’s like to be a minority, based on race? And so because you can have empathy for your students. . . . I know what it’s like to be hungry, I know what it’s like to have your lights cut out, police come into your house. Most of my teachers couldn’t tell you about that; they have no idea. Some of them do, not all of them. So when you know that, because your experience because you’re black, right, stuff happens because I’m a black woman in America. Driving in Deer Park [suburban city] the police officer pulls you over, you know, you better put your hands on that steering wheel and don’t move them because in Deer Park . . . they don’t care you are driving in a Prius. She stole that Prius. Right? So it’s an awareness. So when I go in and I operate with my families, I have an empathy for them that without being black you wouldn’t always have for them. I don’t make excuses. I don’t make excuses like, wuu, wuu, wuu, uh, uh. No! I know what it’s like. You can’t say that to me, because I know.
Above, Dr. Kirkpatrick recognizes how her experiential knowledge as a woman of color provides her with the asset of not only empathizing with her families of color but also challenging her teaching staff. Dr. Kirkpatrick in her position as school principal does not confirm her lived experiences as a unfavorable but rather her open-mindedness embraces it as a tangible advantage.
A third subject, Dr. Thompson, reveals her experiential knowledge as an asset of self- reflection that has ignited her practice of fairness and justice. Dr. Thompson vividly tells a story about an experience she had during a training exercise in a principal pipeline program. According to Dr. Thompson, the experience became significant because it helped her to see just how others viewed her. Dr. Thompson tells me,
We went through a series of tasks, as I was going through the—it was almost like an initiation—but I hadn't yet been accepted into the program. So we were going through a series of interviews and action tasks and we had to do this one exercise. I'm gonna say, let's just say that there were ten of us: white males, black males, white women, black women. We had to organize ourselves, without speaking, according to age. We had to organize ourselves, without speaking, according to what we thought our highest level of educational attainment was. And I'll never forget that the white male was first, and when we deliberated about it, the group was a little surprised that I was the only one in that group with my doctorate. So technically, I should've been first, but we assumed that the highest level of education attainment was from this white male—or they assumed. It had to be a consensus. And so, it was pretty eye-opening for me that we had a great deal of work to do, and that I am constantly seen by many [as having] a disadvantage: . . . [having] somewhat of a deficit mindset, [of] being less than. And at that moment, I committed to interrupting that [viewpoint] for children, to the best of my ability.
In this brief telling, Dr. Thompson provides the story of how her engagement in a training program helped her in becoming cognizant of how she was perceived and in opening her eyes to such inequities. This training program heightened Dr. Thompson’s sensibilities on how her experiential knowledge was seen as a disadvantage. And she would use such inference of self as an asset to stimulate her efforts toward personal balance.
And lastly, there is Mr. Green. We discussed described his lived experiential knowledge concerning both the role model he desires to be for students and the conversations he has with parents. Mr. Green tells me that his being as a black man is significant because “ . . . I mean, it means everything.” He goes on to inform me of his personal thoughts reminding me of his felt idea that, as he puts it, “our students need to see successful African American role models in
their lives.” Mr. Green makes pressingly clear the qualities that he intends to make visible for his students. In one situation, he informs me of a conversation he had with a parent, in which he directly informed the parent of his position, “I am an African American man. [And] I’ve been discriminated against my whole life . . . I know what it takes to help your [son] to be successful.” In his engagements with black families, Mr. Green readily, and assertively, shares his standpoint about the qualities that he possesses. The two roles Mr. Green presents to us, then, demonstrate just how he exercises and understands that his own lived experiences are the primary assets that underpin his impartial leadership practices.
Overall, in this discussion of the six participants of color, I recognize something of their experiential knowledges having an influence in their leadership. In the six participants interviews, each uses his or her experiential knowledges both in fellowship and as clear and distinct assets in dealing with colleagues, families, and selves. Their lived experiences as people of color are sources of the strength used to shift and to motivate themselves and others toward impartiality. Yet, it is clear that the promise of such lived experiences come with a heavy toll. Indeed, my participants’ lived experiences as people of color in this country reveal to me the enduring emotional taxing their lived experiences produce. Nevertheless, I demonstrate how these six school leaders exercise their experiential knowledges as practical tools in their equity efforts.