Education has always played a critical role in my life. I’m a first-generation high school, college and graduate school student, and I’ve served students from rural and Native American communities for more than 20 years. Over the past year, as a fellow in Teach For America’s Rural School Leadership Academy, I’ve been afforded the opportunity to reflect on my journey in new ways. Through the courses designed by the Aspen Institute’s Policy Academy, I can see how my family’s history, my students’ realities, and my own understanding of teaching and learning can evolve into leadership tools that drive policy change, creating a long-lasting impact for students and educators alike.
Before joining RSLA and seeing the direct impact of policymaking, I believed leadership was something you were born with or earned through position, because I lacked a reference point for traditional models of leadership. Growing up in Lamar, Okla., as a native Muscogee Creek American, I saw survival, sacrifice and resilience shaped by a history that didn’t make education feel safe for my family long before I ever entered a classroom. My grandfather left school at a young age, due to a legacy of Native American boarding schools and forced assimilation, after facing punishment for not knowing how to read or speak English. My grandparents and parents didn’t graduate from high school, and it impacted my journey as a first-generation scholar and educator. I watched my parents strive for economic stability in a kind of desert. Despite the challenges, my parents obtained their GEDs while I was in grade school. They were the janitors at my school, and my father was also a school bus driver. Their experiences taught me that education was not something you simply received; it was something you fought for. And now that I reflect further, through the insights RSLA and the Policy Academy have provided, I realize that leadership is not an instinct; it is a learned skill set.
Seeing challenges, identifying solutions
When I became an educator, I saw myself right away in my students’ eyes and struggles. In rural school environments, we have unique challenges that force our students to wear multiple hats. As I continue to experience RSLA and the Aspen Institute’s Policy Academy and their focus on identifying systems for solutions beyond individual situations, I can see that my previous style of leadership showed up informally, supporting students, mentoring colleagues, and solving problems as they arose.
I currently serve in Shawnee Public Schools with students from more than 50 Tribal Nations. Roughly 60 percent of our students identify as racial or ethnic minorities, with 30 percent as Native American. Many students face poverty, family instability and substance abuse in the community. Some are caregivers to siblings or grandparents. Chronic absenteeism is a daily reality. Simply making it to school can be an achievement.
Now, with the tools I have encountered through RSLA and the Institute’s Policy Academy, my focus has shifted from reacting to daily challenges to building systems. This program taught me to ask different questions: What is the problem? What systems are causing it? What data helps us understand it? I am particularly focused on designing trauma-informed policy solutions that reduce disruptions and disciplinary disparities.
How we’re creating success
RSLA and the Institute’s Policy Academy have reshaped how I approach challenges, shifting my focus from managing moments to understanding and strengthening the systems underneath them, especially shaping policy. In my classroom today, every student chooses either to learn something new or to help a peer learn, a structure shaped directly by the Kagan cooperative practices we learned through the partnership program model. In this model, students take shared responsibility for shaping the safe and supportive environment they need to learn. Prior to adopting this approach, we addressed issues such as chronic absenteeism with either incentives or punitive measures, which only fostered compliance versus student engagement. It showed in the data. Student responses varied no matter how hard the teacher worked, because neither option addressed the root cause of students missing school– unaddressed trauma.
During my time in RSLA, I’ve learned how to balance between empathy and structure. Empathy paired with clear expectations creates stability, especially for students impacted by trauma. The strength of that insight has pushed me to fine-tune my leadership skills and use data as a tool for further insight. What surprises me most is realizing how much leadership I was already practicing without naming it. RSLA has given me the language and structure to go beyond my intuition and refine my leadership style with purpose, using data to understand, build consistency, and focus on long-term solutions rather than short-term survival.
I did not inherit leadership. I learned it. And in doing so, I learned that schools can become places of dignity and growth, even for families like mine, whose history with education began in loss rather than opportunity.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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