What it all means...

In My Mind...

A Synthesis 

They never told me knowing myself would be this hard. I am good at this job, this role of getting in front of kids every morning, too early in the morning, and being that model of excellence and persistence expected of every teacher, especially Black male teachers. I’ve gotten used to the flow of a classroom where I set the tone, and often the beat, and guide children through a sometimes-well-choreographed dance. When we swing together through explorations of human history or literature there is a peace that is with me that I have yet to find in any other profession. When we sit down to have serious conversations, I feel more connected to these little humans than I do with many adults, who seem to have lost something like a fire that is within each child. That fire I have fought to keep roaring has pushed me to continue to grow as an educator and as a future educator leader. 

My initial plans for attending MSU were to gain administrative licensure to become a building principal. When those plans were altered from moving out of state, I decided to stay the course at MSU and finish my degree, albeit with a different program. One thing that did not change was my desire to become an education leader. Although all of my professors sought to prepare me for the world of leading and changing education, three in particular helped make a profound change within myself that will reverberate through all my future endeavors. These courses and the work associated gave me confidence and perspective that when coupled with my reflective practice, create an impact that will ripple into the institutions I come to belong to.

CONFIDENCE

A professional education leader once told me that dealing with children was easy compared to the “adult world” and implied that my affinity for the classroom was a sign of immaturity. Although I consider myself strong of mind, these words found their way deep and took a toll on my sense of self, my sense of purpose. Could it be true that identifying my whole professional persona, my purpose in life as a teacher was holding me back? This is the question I came to my program living in my mind rent free. How could I develop an expertise that satisfied both the inner teacher and this mature “professional” I am pressured to be? When I am called to leadership, both through negative and positive encouragement, what does that look like for me?

Luckily, my first course in the program created a powerful melody that raised the bar for my work and my self-esteem. Dr. Jada Phelps pulled no punches in Principalship class and although more than one student complained about the high standards, I thrived in the setting. From her class, I received words that rang through my soul and brought me into a head space ready to learn how to be a leader. After about halfway through the semester, Dr. Phelps was reviewing assignments regarding how to address diversity and multicultural issues in an educational environment. Her feedback to me was simple: “You have good instincts.” For a seasoned education leader and researcher to tell me, a first semester fish out of the water, that I have good instincts was mindset altering. This was not what I was expecting having accidently taken an advanced graduate course as my first class in program, yet here was someone genuinely encouraging me to trust what I have to bring to a leadership position. The end of the Principalship course brought me to an even higher and more confident mental space when Dr. Phelps gave me the biggest compliment I have ever received: “I would put my kids in your building.” Never has a more profound shift in my thinking occurred in academic study. I began to see I am somebody worthy of trust and authority. 

That trust in my own potential was materialized in the final project for the course: the 100 Day Plan. It was designed to showcase our ability to envision what a principal can and should do at the start of their tenure. What would be the priorities? Mine were building relationships and understanding the school’s various social and academic systems. What would you change? I saw an opportunity to change the level on engagement with various groups and the principal’s office. Putting all my ideas, all that I learned was important as a school leader, into a useable and professional document gave me physical proof of what I was beginning to feel inside: that I had what it takes to be a leader. When I started the MAED program, I saw the classes as a means to that which would give me confidence and authority: the degree and certification. Now, on the cusp of finishing the program, I reflect back and see that the greatest and most important of those two desires, confidence, found me at the beginning rather than the end of the program. 

Trusting yourself isn’t easy. 

PERSPECTIVE 

In regard to another early course, this one on the racial achievement gap with Dr. John Yun, I admit to signing up thinking I already had all the answers. As an African American man in America, I felt my experiences in the education system, both as a student and teacher, gave me the necessary perspective to answer all the questions Dr. Yun posed to us at the start. Is the racial achievement gap real? Is it natural? Is it fixable? What causes it? What is the nature of achievements being measured? All these questions felt answerable by this first-year grad student in a temporary moment of arrogance. Dr. Yun came to class with gifts however, and for me his gift was of challenging my deeply held perspectives. 

One of the biggest assumptions a student makes coming into any class is that the readings and assignments the teacher provides automatically imply the teacher agrees or is trying to perpetuate the ideology of the author of the work. Dr. Yun however provided readings that strengthened morally dubious and quantitively flawed arguments for the inherent quality of racial differences in educational outcomes and processes. Without being aware of this, I absorbed the material the same way many other students did: unquestioningly. Through our class discussions, I found myself becoming uncomfortable with many of the ideas from the readings that had seeped into my narrative about education. Dr. Yun created a space where even the most fundamental assumptions about children, education, and schisms in American society would be tested and questioned. 

Dr. Yun’s ultimate gift to me was during research time with my classmates on my school employer. In the final case study project, I and three other budding scholars did research on my school’s admissions procedures and policies as a gifted school. Gaining access to normally privileged files and data was a show of trust on the part of my institution, but so was allowing the investigation into the inner workings of a process for which many don’t have an alternative or substantial challenge. The challenge in this assignment had more to do with the cooperative research than the subject matter and obtaining data. My research endeavors have been entirely solo, but here the work isn’t just about me and my lens as an employee at this school—I had to share in all the processes save for collecting raw data. The women in my group, as I was the only male, each had their strengths that added to this work and mine was but a part of that effort. I had to learn how to share academic work in a professional manner that simultaneously changed how I saw myself as a researcher. Case Studies were out of my league and beyond my capability before the class. After this project, case studies were no longer something I felt intimidated by and I understood that research is not always about your specific capabilities or self-doubts, but the collective of those in your group.

Being humbled is not easy.

REFLECTION

In ED 800 Concepts of Educational Inquiry, I found myself in an interesting situation: I was in the last semester before graduation taking what many would consider one of the first classes in the program. In honesty, that idea shaped my attitude coming into the class. Perhaps everything will be review for me? Perhaps there isn’t anything left of substance before the end? One book in this class defied my hubris by exploring a subject that predates my work in education. In Pursuit of Knowledge by Kabria Baumgartner, we explored the work of Antebellum Black women fighting for an education in a hazardous and violently racist society. Using my background in African American history, and my new understandings of qualitative research in ED 800, I was able to reflect on my own identity as a Black educator in ways I did not anticipate from this course. 

The analysis paper required for this course was around what it meant for Black women in the Antebellum period to be striving for “character education”. This cut to the heart of my educational philosophy regarding the most important I face daily as a teacher: why? What is my why? For a job so taxing and so in need of devotion and engagement, why am I working for my students? I questioned whether their needs or mine were at the heart of my pedagogy. I questioned whether I saw these children in need of betterment or fixing. I most of all questioned my role in the education system’s reasons for teaching children. Character education is all about molding students to fit a moral standard put forth by the dominating forces in our society. What am I trying to mold students to be?

The more I wrangle with these questions, the deeper my educational practice becomes. In an always ongoing becoming, I strive to know, like my ancestors in Antebellum America, the purpose behind my classroom and my leadership. For now, I know that, like the sisters in Baumgartner’s book, I want to sharpen the character of each of my students in order to overcome any barriers or obstacles that stand between them and their destiny. I work for a future I will not see, and to keep that work alive and growing I recognize the need to constantly reflect on my why so my students and community can always have the best version of me. 

Looking back to look forward is not easy.

This program was more than I paid for. The impact I expected began and ended with certifications and degrees. I thought I would gain knowledge that could help me make informed decisions, but that those decisions would be coming from a mind mostly unchanged by the rigors of graduate school. Maturity was not on the expectant list, but it is at the top of the list of deliverables. The confidence, the perspectives, the reflections, it all comes together in the end, and forms the foundation of a new perception of myself as a leader and an educator. The program has given me with something worth far more than a piece of paper—it has given me the tools to be the change I wish to see.