As a 2022 fellow of the National Fellowship for Black and Latino Male Educators, I attend an annual retreat designed to provide fellows and alumni with support and resources so we can all achieve the common goal of becoming educational leaders. The event provides leadership development skills, offers a psychologically safe space to process our experiences, and fuels the spirit of brotherhood and community necessary to sustain our value and our work.
At this year's retreat, Lester Young Jr., chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, inspired us with the noble story of his journey as a black male educational leader and gave us tremendous insight into the value of assuming leadership bravely. In the middle of his presentation, he posed a question to the group that resonated deeply with me: Do you feel comfortable running a school where kids love themselves but fail academically?
At first I thought, “Of course I do,” knowing that if I had to choose between running a school where kids love themselves or succeed academically, I would prioritize self-love. However, the question persisted, even after I left the retreat. After a week of contemplation, I asked myself why we can't do both.
Across the country, many schools that understand the value of teaching students self-love, something the American Psychological Association define as “respect and interest in one's own self or satisfaction” – are incorporating social-emotional learning (SEL) into curricula due to the positive effects it has on student satisfaction, including increased self-esteem, self-efficacy, and perseverance. Research suggests that when exposed to a learning environment that prioritizes the well-being of the whole child, not just their academic performance, students become more confident, optimistic, and perceptive. In essence, they develop a greater sense of self-love – meaning they understand what contributes to their well-being and can take steps to promote it.
While there is evidence that SEL benefits character and personality development, these skills are not explicitly assessed or systematically tracked in American schools, making it difficult to see broader impacts and best practices. Student success is most often defined by whether a student demonstrates achievement in what my grandmother called the “3 Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic,” the basic academic skills necessary to illustrate mastery on standardized assessments.
This is a dilemma.
Over the years, our country has strived to provide a national standard for the quality of education in public schools, and multiple administrations have promoted federal initiatives and national goals to define the academic outcomes of American students. I haven't seen any of them incorporate self-love as a priority outcome.
This is probably because self-love is difficult to evaluate and measure. It is not a mastery-based standard and has not been given the same weight as making a clear argument in an essay or explaining the relationship between photosynthesis and cellular respiration.
There are clearly defined standards and metrics to track and measure student success, but they depend solely on academic growth, especially in particular content areas. While standardized academic assessments can provide insight into where a student is academically, these assessments simply do not show the full picture of how a human being develops.
Coding self-love and identifying ways to capture growth is key to student progress. While we have not seen systemic consolidation around a set of standards, pillars, or guidance around many of these more difficult-to-assess areas of development, we can learn from organizations and individuals making valiant efforts to advance the field.
Over the years, education luminaries have researched and recognized the non-academic non-negotiables that lead to good student outcomes. In fact, many of the leaders who have shaped my philosophy on teaching and learning have offered research, insights, and resources that reinforce the importance of developing a strong sense of self, which is a key ingredient to developing love. own.
And this is not a new conversation.
in a rehearsal Written in 1935, which has become one of the reference texts I have used throughout my career, WEB Du Bois stated that “the proper education of any people includes sympathetic contact between teacher and student.” His words helped me develop my position that all children need a loving environment. More recently, in 2020, Bettina Love published a framework and guiding questions for creating classrooms that affirm Black, Latinx, and Indigenous children, which I have used to expand my own understanding of how to create the conditions where love and acceptance flourish within our school culture.
Leaders like Du Bois and Love have shaped my belief that I can lead a school where students love themselves and succeed academically. But until there is widespread validation of the importance of cultivating these areas and capturing progress, I don't have the data to report whether my school is accurately achieving this balance.
That hasn't stopped us from trying.
When I was a teacher, I was obsessed with finding ways to make my classroom a space where students felt safe and inspired. Now, after almost two years of being principal at my high school, my obsession persists, but in this role, I am positioned to support all teachers at our school in building learning spaces that foster self-love.
One of the areas I am redoubling efforts on is the way our leadership team trains our teachers because I believe that supportive leadership lays the foundation for great teaching. We focus on two main objectives:
- Advocate for an instructional lens that prioritizes the holistic development of the child, and
- Use best practices that recognize the humanity of our children and push them to see the best in themselves.
We support teachers by constantly observing them in their classrooms doing what they do best: engaging students. During these visits, my leadership team and I use an instructional rubric developed by our network's teaching and learning team that provides guidance for creating high-quality, high-functioning classrooms.
One component of this rubric is dedicated to assessing the classroom environment, and within this component, there is something special that we look for: we call it “belief and belonging.” My leadership team and I look for evidence of the level of belief and belonging in a classroom by paying attention to the overall tone of the classroom. Is it marked by enthusiasm, love and care, and single-minded focus? Does the teacher frequently recognize and narrate positive behaviors and use challenges and aspirations to motivate students? If so, we have a good indication that students are being respected, which is the foundation to promote self-love.
The rubric provides us with great guidance, but it is not enough.
To lead a school where children love themselves unapologetically and succeed academically, we need national recognition of the importance of self-love and guidance on how to code, measure, and track this aspect of development in America's public schools. There must be a common image that principals like me can use to ensure that we are developing well-rounded children into well-rounded adults. We need a national movement, in every state, to put the love back into schools.
