Stories of Caring School Leadership. Mark A. Smylie

      1 Think about how the professional responsibilities of school leadership might shape the nature of caring interpersonal relationships that principals and other school leaders form with their students. Where are the appropriate professional boundaries? Where are the ambiguities and dilemmas? How do these considerations appear in the stories and, where they do, how well do school leaders attend them?

      2 What professional and personal ethical issues do these stories raise? What legal issues? Where such issues are apparent, what advice would you give the school leader to address them?

      3 In what ways are knowledge and understanding of students as persons and as learners important to the actions and interactions of school leaders in these stories? In what ways do school leaders’ efforts to further their knowledge and understanding of students contribute to their ability to be caring? In what ways do insufficient or incorrect knowledge and understanding make caring more difficult and less effective?

      4 How do these stories illuminate the importance of the ordinary, everyday things in developing and deepening caring relationships with students?

      5 How do these stories help you better understand the types of assistance that might be helpful to students? How do these stories help you better understand the ways in which the caring motivation and manner of rendering assistance influence how assistance is received by students and how assistance actually helps them?

      1 How might your own assumptions, preconceptions, and points of view influence how you read and make meaning of these stories? Consider your understanding of yourself as a caring person and a caring school leader, including your strengths and weaknesses in being caring of others. Consider your understanding of what the professional role of a school leader requires of you; what your situation calls on you to do; and what your students, your staff, and your community expect of you. How does your thinking and sense of self affect how you practice caring in this arena of leadership?

      2 Put yourself in the position of the school leader who is the focus of each story. Would you think and act in the same way in the situation described in the story? Why or why not? In what ways might you think and act differently? Why?

      3 For each story, recall a similar, actual situation in your school. How would you retell the story for your own setting, with yourself as the focal school leader? In what ways would your story be similar? In what ways would your story be different? Why?

      4 Consider the positive ways that school leaders in these stories form, maintain, and deepen caring relationships with students. How might you adopt and adapt these positive practices in your own setting with your own students? What factors—personal, professional, and contextual—might support or impede your effort? How might you address impediments to make your effort more successful?

      5 Consider the difficult aspects of being caring of students that are revealed in these stories. Do you see similar difficulties with some of your students? Are there other difficulties? How might you address these difficulties? How do you think about being caring when the student or the situation is difficult as opposed to when the student or the situation is easy? What do you do in such situations to become more caring? How do you think about being caring when you have to make tough and unpopular decisions about a student or a group of students? When you must administer hard caring? When your decisions may be consistent with your understanding of the best interests of students but may not be understood or received that way?

      6 What other leadership practices and strategies, beyond those illustrated in these stories, might be effective to strengthen caring in your interpersonal relationships with individual students and groups of students in your school? Explain why you think these practices and strategies might be effective in your situation. Explain the groundwork that might need to be done to increase the likelihood of their success.