100 Posts in 100 Days
This is the fourth in a series of blog posts about lessons learned from parents.
During the pandemic, one of the podcasts I began to listen to regularly was Dare to Lead hosted by Brene Brown. At the end of each episode, she does a lightning round of questions with her guests. One question she asks is, “What’s the leadership lesson that you need to learn that the universe keeps teaching you over and over again?” As I’m writing these posts about what I’ve learned from parents, mainly mothers, I’m realizing it’s variations on the same lesson. I’ve learned over and over again, just how far mothers will go to protect their children and that if I can find common ground with them, we can do great things for their children. So, even though the lesson is a variation on a theme, some of the stories are so poignant and memorable in my mind that I keep writing and sharing them. This is one such example.
The backdrop for this particular story actually begins in yesterday’s post about working with Somali families in our school. As I wrote yesterday, I was in my first principalship and I was clearly learning the ropes. I officially began as principal on July 1, but school didn’t start until late August. That meant I had time on campus to plan and prepare for the year ahead.
Our district had a security department, but in lieu of school resource officers assigned to our buildings, we had a relationship with the local police department. Police officers essentially “adopted” specific school buildings and had a regular presence. They visited classrooms, spent time with kids on the playground, and checked in on us several times per month. It only made sense that in those preparation weeks, the police officers and a representative from our security department came to visit me so we could begin to get to know one another. That first meeting met those goals, but also left me with some insights that I hadn’t expected and wasn’t quite prepared for.
The law enforcement officers started talking with me about the local high school, where the older siblings of my students attended. Its location in the suburbs didn’t make it a classic “inner city school”, but its reputation in the district and in the entire region certainly did. What the law enforcement officers shared furthered that reputation. They told me how the students at the school were engaging in fight clubs and that the clubs provided status. Many of the fights were taking place in or around the housing authority development where several of my students lived. Furthermore, initiation into these fight clubs often involved bringing younger siblings, aka my students, into the ring. If I had any doubt about what they were sharing with me, I could watch for myself on the social media links they provided me. These officers “just wanted me to know” in case I witnessed anything like this in the classroom or on the playground when school started. Gulp. Welcome to the Principalship.
During these preparation weeks, I was also getting to know my community, on paper. I knew the demographics and I knew a number of them were first and second generation immigrants from Somalia. I failed, however, to appreciate what it meant to leave your home country or the tragic events and circumstances that my students and their families had faced. I wasn’t fully prepared to hear stories from families and children of what they had seen and experienced nor the ripple effects of those events.
All of that brings me to a young boy, in first grade. Quite literally, he was a fighter. Fighting is why his family had left their home country; fighting was what he saw his older siblings do; fighting and aggression was how he expressed himself. If he was frustrated in class, he would yell, throw materials, and knock over furniture. If he had a conflict with a classmate, he would lash out physically. If he didn’t like what his teacher said, he would yell at her.
Remember that “influential” mom I wrote about yesterday that I was getting to know? Well, she was his mom. And I was getting to know her because of my frequent, and largely ineffective, calls home. Our district had a translation service. I would call the service and a live translator would join me in making the phone call home. Time and again, I would describe what had transpired at school, the translator would relay the message, and his mom would become exasperated. Most days, she would grow impatient, raise her voice, and convey that this was the school’s problem and I must be inept if we couldn’t figure it out. I needed to fix it and I needed to stop calling and interrupting her.
I, too, was growing impatient and dreading making any phone calls home. Navigating the language differences, doing so over the phone, trying to “solve” problems at school. It felt exhausting and daunting. I just wanted her to work with her son to make things better. What it took me a little while to fully understand is that she could say the exact same thing. Read those words again, imagining her voice, “Navigating the language differences, doing so over the phone, trying to “solve” problems at school. It’s exhausting and daunting. I just want the school to make things better for my son.”
There came a day, a specific moment in time, when I began to understand our common frustration, and our common desire to make things better. She arrived on campus, unscheduled, but clearly with something on her mind. We walked into my office together and she quite confidently picked up the phone from my desk and placed it firmly in the middle of the meeting table. She began forcefully waving her hand at the phone. The message was clear: get the translator on the phone. Now.
Even as it was happening, I remember feeling a profound sense of respect for what she was doing. She had arrived with a clear sense of purpose and urgency in what she wanted to say, and an idea how to make it happen. She knew our shared resources and our shared limitations. She knew how to meet her objective. I thought to myself that I didn’t have the courage to march into the office of someone I could barely communicate with and demand that they get a translator on the phone. In that moment, I saw her not as a fighter, but as a survivor filled with a fighting spirit. I knew that if I joined her, rather than battled her, we had a better chance of “solving” the problems at school.
That day, with the help of the translator, she started to share more about what life was like for her and her children in the US. The challenges they faced in the new country and the losses they had suffered. That day, I told her I respected her and I didn’t know if I would ever be as strong as she was. The work and support of her son continued to be a process, and not always an easy one. But after that day, the work was work we embarked on together.
And remember how I keep calling her “influential”. We didn’t always agree on things, but as we began to trust each other, she used her influence in the community to rally other moms and families. She became that personal contact that would spread news in the housing development. She told other moms about the translation services and encouraged them to engage more with the school. Not just with me, but with their childrens’ teachers. When our school became a pilot site for a new parent education course in the district, she single handedly doubled the attendance at the weekly sessions in only 3 weeks. She showed me her fighting spirit and the many ways that it can be used for good.