Leadership and Agency

Preconceived notions and assumptions

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Episode 30

From: Kerry
Preconceived notions
To: Chance sent - Gmail 5:35 AM

Hi Chance—

I’m sorry it has been a few days since your last email. There is so much going on here that I am having a hard time keeping my head above water. The waves keep crashing over my head, and I am standing on my tiptoes and can’t get any higher.

I did not sleep well last night. In the middle of the night, I decided that preconceived notions and assumptions are more deadly than the status quo. That goes for leadership in public schools as well as the conversation we have been having about the history of slavery in this country.

Let’s see if I can tie those two topics together in a cohesive way.

ONE:
Have you heard about Principal for a Day? The district participates in that program. It matches principals to business or community leaders so that they can have the opportunity to shadow a school leader. The goal is to increase shared understandings and build effective relationships between schools and the wider community.

Yesterday was Principal for a Day. I was matched with a young charismatic leader of a young, successful local tech company. I think we were matched together because he was very interested in the shared leadership approach at my school.

After a couple of hours of talking and visiting classrooms, we met with some of the teachers. I wanted him to have the opportunity to sit around a table and hear about the mission and vision of our school leadership.

I sat on one side of him, and Brian, a freshman and sophomore English teacher, sat on the other side. Once the teachers presented him with some information, we gave him the opportunity to move around the table and have individual conversations with teachers.

He started with Brian. The entire time he was talking to Brian, all he could focus on was Brian’s potential as a principal. Brian kept telling him that he loved working with young adolescents. All the Principal for a Day could see was a bright, young man who should be working to get out of the classroom and move to a job with more status.

He did not have the same conversation with any of the women around the table.

Brian and I were shocked to be confronted with such a tangible example that men think men should be leaders. It was an example of believing in the old saying: Men manage; women teach.

I keep hoping that the culture is moving beyond that idea, but yesterday we were right back in that unfortunate preconceived-notion-ditch.

TWO:
I am reading the history textbook through the eyes of preconceived notions and assumptions. I have read all twenty-seven pages that are devoted to the institution of slavery in the United States.

Six of the pages are devoted to Abolitionism. Abolitionism?!? I just looked in the dictionary for the meaning of ‘ism’ as a suffix. Most of the examples given are negative: plagiarism, alcoholism, criticism. Definition #2 says this: an oppressive and especially discriminatory attitude or belief.

Is the text trying to say that Abolition is oppressive and discriminatory?

I am going to go to Brian today and ask him to explain ‘ism’ to me. I want to know what abolitionism means to him from an English teacher’s point of view.

Is there a reason that not a single sentence from the point of view of the horror of chattel slavery is included? Is it because the authors have preconceived notions and assumptions?

I have run out of time this morning to start my rant about democracy, the planter oligarchy, and southern aristocracy…Maybe I can find some time during my planning period to get back to this.

I really want to hear what you are thinking about assumptions and preconceived notion.

Kerry