Our stories are published with the permission of their authors, who are recognized by name in the book’s acknowledgments. To protect the privacy of persons in these stories, we do not associate our storytellers’ names or school names with the stories themselves. We also removed or altered information that might serve to identify individuals or places. Pseudonyms are used. For the few stories that appeared in published sources, complete removal of identifying information was not possible. To illustrate the variety of schools and locales from which these stories come, we follow the title of each one with a reference to the role of the storyteller (e.g., principal, teacher, parent), the locale (e.g., small town, rural, suburban, urban), and grade level of the school (e.g., elementary, middle, high school).
Student Artwork
Throughout this book, you will find pieces of student artwork on caring in school. We asked a teacher in an educational summer camp program in Nashville, Tennessee, to engage three diverse groups of elementary school students in a simple exercise. Using a single prompt that we supplied, she asked these students to draw a picture to show how they felt to be cared for in their schools. We requested that she not give her students any additional guidance other than to encourage them to draw anything that came to mind. It did not matter if students felt like drawing a scene depicting people or an abstraction of shapes and colors conveying emotion. The objective was for students to express whatever caring in schools might look like and mean to them. With the help of a high school teacher and a pastoral associate of a church in Oak Park, Illinois, we engaged groups of middle and high school students in similar exercises, asking them to think about caring both in and out of school. Finally, using the same process, Corwin elicited drawings through its website.
We selected nearly thirty of the drawings and placed them throughout the book. These drawings can be thought of as graphic stories of how students perceive caring. The names of our contributing artists and their grade levels are shown beneath their drawings, as are titles we gave to each.
Organization of This Book
We organized this book as a companion to our book Caring School Leadership. While each book stands on its own and each can be read independently, we wanted to make it easy for our audiences to read across both volumes. We wanted readers of Caring School Leadership to readily find in this volume stories that illustrate practices discussed in that book. We wanted readers of this book of stories to take up Caring School Leadership and find without difficulty discussion of the concept of caring school leadership and of different arenas of caring leadership practice.
To these ends, we arranged this book to parallel the organization of Caring School Leadership. We begin this volume by introducing our concept of caring school leadership and describing key elements that make school leadership caring. We also identify and describe three broad arenas of caring school leadership practice that stories in this volume illustrate. These topics are discussed in greater depth in the Preface and in Chapters 1 and 2 of Caring School Leadership.
Following this introduction are three collections of stories—one for each of the three general arenas of caring school leadership practice described in Caring School Leadership. Collection I contains stories focusing on being caring in relationships with students. Collection II contains stories of cultivating schools as caring communities. And Collection III contains stories of providing care and fostering caring in families and communities beyond the school. The leadership practices illustrated in Collections I, II, and III are discussed in detail in Chapters 3, 4, and 5 of Caring School Leadership.
Stories within Collections I and II are grouped by level of school—elementary schools and secondary schools (middle and high schools). Otherwise, stories are presented in no particular order. There are fewer stories in Collection III than in Collections I and II largely because the third arena of caring leadership receives less attention in school leaders’ work. As we discuss later, much of school leaders’ time and attention is focused inward to their schools rather than outward to families and communities.
Each collection is prefaced by a short introduction that summarizes the elements of caring school leadership practice illustrated by the stories therein. We have numbered all the stories in this book sequentially, and we have indexed them by number in each of the collections according to the primary caring leadership practices they illustrate. We provide this reference system so you can easily find stories in which you may be interested. We made no effort to index all the leadership practices reflected in each of the stories. The practices in most stories are far more numerous and nuanced than we can reference this way.
As we mentioned earlier, we make no effort to analyze, interpret, or convey meaning that we might attribute these stories. It is important for you to read, reflect upon, and make meaning of these stories for your own understanding and practice. Most of the stories in this volume provide direct lessons on the nature and function of caring in school leadership. Some stories are ambiguous and can be interpreted in different ways. You may find some troubling, and you may disagree with the thinking and actions of the school leader. You may also argue with other readers about what particular stories mean. We include ambiguous and negative stories because, along with positive and straightforward ones, they can be important sources of learning.
How to Use This Book
There are many ways that you can use this book. You can use it for independent reading and reflection. You can read and think about the stories, beginning with the first one and moving through the book to the last. Or you can flip through the stories, skipping around, reading those stories that are of particular interest to you. You can read this book by yourself, considering a story or two every day as a centering activity. You can form or join a group of school leaders to read and discuss these stories together, exploring with others their meaning, reflecting on your own assumptions and thinking, and considering how they might apply to your own situation and practice.
This book can be used as a resource for programs that prepare aspiring school leaders for service and as a resource for programs of professional development for practicing school leaders. This book can serve as case material for instructors and groups of learners to read, analyze, and apply to their own situations and practice. We strongly recommend working with these stories in groups.
The stories in this book can serve as a foundation for a variety of learning activities. They can be used as examples of practice to be analyzed and discussed, reflected upon individually and in groups, and considered points of comparison to learners’ own thinking and practice. These stories can become the basis of role playing, whereby learners assume the roles of persons in the stories and act out the story line as written or as key facts of the story might be changed. Learners can create and improvise extensions of stories, imagining, acting, and discussing what might come next and why. Moreover, these stories can be used to help aspiring and practicing school leaders tell their own stories about particular situations, persons, or contexts. Composing one’s own stories and conveying them to others can help learners organize their thoughts, reflect upon their own assumptions and actions, and raise important issues. Sharing stories can stimulate collaborative analysis and joint problem solving. Sharing stories can be both instructive and inspirational. Indeed, there are many other learning activities that might spring from this book of stories.
Last but not least, this book of stories can be used by practicing school leaders in working with faculty, staff, parents, and students. For principals and other school leaders who wish to strengthen caring in their schools and classrooms, these stories can provide sources of learning for all—that is, concrete examples of caring action and interaction that can be thought about, discussed, and perhaps adapted and applied. These stories provide vivid examples of caring school community