Leadership magazine Nov/Dec 2014 V 44 No 2 | Page 15

regions and charters. Be an active participant in seeking out how to advocate diversity
and promote equity.
The focus of EADS is not solely on students; it is also on achieving and succeeding because of equity and diversity within
our own membership. As members, each
of us represents ACSA. The work we do, the
people we hire, all reflect who ACSA is – and
ACSA is its members.
California is a fantastic state filled with
women and men of many religions, cultures,
abilities and ethnicities. In order to mirror
the rich diversity of California, we need to
seek out and become mentors to a diverse
group of people. We cannot wait for diversity to find its ways through the loopholes
and engrained rules to being an administrator. EADS is leading the way to creating a diverse ACSA membership.
To strengthen diversity and understand
equity, it is valuable to reflect on your own
life and conflicts you had, and the support
you wish you would have received. What
may be engrained in us in how to seek a promotion, manage a school or be a student is
not necessarily a part of everybody else. We
all have different strengths; our strengths
and passions may not be someone else’s, just
as our weaknesses are also not everybody
else’s weaknesses.
This is helpful for those who have generally always done well in school and been
promoted easily – we often do not realize
the advantages we inherently have. Trying
to pinpoint and isolate those skills that seem
innate is helpful in knowing how to coach
up administrators and teachers, and help
students be successful in a system that may
seem at odds with their own cultural values
and norms.

The limits of personal anecdotes
Use caution in using your anecdotes and
personal life as your only source of data;
I have seen this technique backfire. I was a
new administrator at a school that hired a
bright, young, Latina teacher. Her parents
were immigrants and she was raised in poverty and was able to work herself through
school.
Excited to have her model success with
our academically and behaviorally at-risk

students, I put many of them in her class,
sensing that shared backgrounds would lead
to success. The opposite occurred. The students despised the teacher – their grades got
worse and their behavior did not improve.
I called the teacher in to discuss and explained why I gave her these students.
She simply stated, “Nobody helped me get
to where I am today. My parents didn’t help

ognize that it is not their job to sort the students, but to give all students the skills they
need to be successful, whatever their postgraduate goals may be. And this extends beyond academic knowledge, to institutional
and cultural knowledge. The same applies
to mentoring aspiring administrators. We
should not wait for the qualified candidates
to be sorted and come to us, but reach out
and build that potential in candidates.

Make your school a haven for equity
The following are simple steps to help
make your school, district, charter and region havens for diversity and equity:

Effective educators recognize it
is not their job to sort students,
but to give all students the
skills they need to be successful.
me; my teachers didn’t give me any breaks. I
worked hard, put myself through college and
got this job. Why should I give extra help to
these kids? I didn’t get any.” She was not
going to sugar-coat adversity or they would
never learn from it.
What she failed to see is either that she had
mentors who helped her and she has failed to
see their effect, or that if she was indeed left
alone to figure it out, her process and her life
would have been made easier and more joyful had there been someone there to guide
her.
Unfortunately, the steely resolve that got
her through college became her undoing as a
teacher. She wanted kids to create their own
equity rather than create an environment to
support them. The students’ failure did not
bother her; it was just the affirmation that
they were not as strong and resilient as she.
Effective educators who evoke equity rec-

n  Each region should be building relationships with the colleges and universities in
its respective area to seek out interested and
prospective administrators and current administrators seeking a job change. Creating
purposeful partnerships with our universities helps us to build our diversity.
n  Make diversity and equity a part of each organizational meeting (school, district, charter
and region), focusing on your practices and
on who is sitting around the table at these
meetings. Is equity a key component of your
professional work and are we mentoring and
coaching others to mirror the diversity of
our state? Have your EADS representative
speak at each meeting.
n  Recognize our own biases. We cannot address them unless we acknowledge that they
exist.
n  Celebrate diversity and the successes of the
schools and districts in your regions and charters. We celebrate what is important to each
of us.
n  Reach out to someone and provide coaching and mentorship to help keep ACSA diverse.
Equity is not something you “do,” or
necessarily put on your calendar. Equity is
something we are. Purposefully advocating
for equity and celebrating diversity means
that our leadership counts and diversity
matters. n

Mark Anderson is principal, Marshall
Fundamental Secondary School, Pasadena
Unified School District.

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