liberty to tell the stories they wished to tell. They could share autobiographical stories about their own work and experiences as school leaders. They could share stories of other school leaders. We told them that they could write in first or third person, and we told them that they could use dialogue they remembered. Our only stipulation was that the events in the stories had to have actually happened. We told our storytellers that they did not have to tell of only positive instances of caring. We encouraged them to tell stories of problematic caring or caring gone wrong. Caring is often complex and not always straightforward. However well intended, it can create problems—even harm. We did not want this book to be a collection of only feel-good or happy stories. Of course, there are many positive stories of caring in this book, but there are also negative ones. There are stories of crises and exceptional circumstances. There are also stories of everyday events. Some stories are quite dramatic, while others feel routine. All of the stories—positive and negative, ordinary and extraordinary—speak to the importance of caring in school leadership.
The vast majority of our stories were written by educators. Several were told to us in a class or conversation, and we put them into writing. Several stories are of interactions or incidents that we witnessed and wrote ourselves. In addition, we found and adapted several stories from news sources, magazines, and books.
By the time we began to prepare this book, we had amassed nearly two hundred stories. From this archive, we selected one hundred stories for this book. These stories illustrate important ways in which caring school leadership is practiced. The stories in this book are not a comprehensive representation of the untold number of ways that school leaders can be caring in their work. They are but a sampling and what our storytellers chose to share with us. We strongly suggest that when you read and reflect upon these stories, you also think beyond them to other ways that caring can manifest itself in school leadership.
We selected stories from different types of schools and settings. You will read stories from preschools, elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. You will read stories from urban, suburban, small-town, and rural schools and communities. And you will read stories from public and independent schools, well-resourced and underresourced schools, and economically and racially diverse as well as homogeneous schools. The stories in this book come from across the country. Not surprisingly, most come from regions in which we live and work. About 40 percent of the stories are from the Midwest; 35 percent are from the South and Southeast; and nearly 25 percent are from the East and West Coasts, the Southwest, and the North and Northeast. They come from seventy different school districts or municipalities from New York City to Los Angeles, from Atlanta to Minneapolis, and many points in between. Several stories come from outside the United States from Africa, Canada, and Mexico. Approximately 47 percent of stories come from urban settings, 25 percent come from suburban settings, and 28 percent come from small-town and rural settings.
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
