Katz, s. (march 2010). women superintendents: standing for social  (Page 5/9)

But I thought it [definition of social justice] was a very interesting question to kind of sit back and reflect on what that meant for me as a school leader. . . When I was interviewed for the position, the first thing that really just blew me away was when I looked at the district demographics. [I thought]how is this district going to cope with an African American female as a superintendent after they’ve had a White male superintendent . . . And I have to say, knock on wood, it just hasn’t been an issue. I’m not seen as the Black superintendent, I’m seen as the superintendent by the kids and by the parents.

Ethic of community

All six of the women in this study were making significant efforts and inroads to engage their communities toward the work of social justice. Gail Furman’s work (2002, 2003) on community-building was a framework to ground the data analysis. In conducting an analysis of several studies of community-building efforts in schools, Furman (2002) concluded that community is a process. Leadership practice for social justice must be grounded community. “An ethic of community centers the community over the individual as moral agent—it shifts the locus of moral agency to the community as a whole” (Furman, 2003, p. 4). Educational leaders who work toward establishing the process of community in their districts should ground their work “first and foremost in interpersonal and group skills, such as listening with respect, striving for knowing and understanding others, communicating effectively, working in teams, engaging in ongoing dialogue, and creating forums that allow all voices to be heard” (p. 4).

All six participants embodied many of the themes Furman writes about when she describes community as connection with others. In the next section, I discuss the themes developed form the data analysis and how the women practiced an ethic of community as they worked toward the ideals of social justice for their districts. Common among the women were personalized definitions of social justice drawing from their backgrounds and applying those definitions to current issues of context in their school districts. The women used their “interpersonal and group skills” (Furman, 2003, p. 4) to work toward establishing the ethic of community by listening with respect, knowing and understanding others, communicating effectively, and creating a forum for all voices to be heard .

Listening with respect

Carmen tries to be a good listener and to understand those staff and community members who she interacts with on a daily basis that come to her with issues and problems. “Frequently it is misunderstanding where someone is trying to explain their motives that have caused some problems. I try real hard to be a good listener, ask questions.” Tina talked about her unique way of listening to community members’ concerns about an upcoming referendum in her district and “on Saturdays I sat outside the library here when we had the farmer’s market and talked to people and that one-on-one conversation was really outstanding.” I liked Delia’s motto of listening with respect when she said: “We can agree to disagree but we must not be disagreeable.” She stressed the ideas of becoming an advocate for children – parents advocate for their individual children; Delia advocates for all children. Corwin talked about a newly gained respect for elementary teachers as she had previously worked in high schools. When discussing what groups in her district were marginalized, Fay mentioned that parents seemed to be disenfranchised from school, particularly low-income parents. She created various forums for parents to have a voice in the district and described how she created a specific focus group. “And they weren’t used to being really asked their opinion and so they’ve been extremely responsive because they didn’t know that we really were asking [for their input].”