By Marissa Reyes, Aspiring Latino Leaders Fellowship Alum

As a fellow in Latinos for Education’s Aspiring Latino Leaders Fellowship in 2023, I had the incredible opportunity to craft my Story of Self during our weekend retreat. Our facilitators invited us to be introspective and thoughtful about our ‘why’ and our ‘purpose.’ But when I put pen to paper, I realized that somewhere along the climb up to my leadership positions, I’d lost sight of my ‘why.’ I was so deep into my practice, putting out fires and addressing the unending need in our school community, that I couldn’t articulate why I specifically felt called to do this work anymore. It was just my identity now, rather than something I did with intentionality. 

So many of us experience this when we get into any field as a First Gen, but especially in education, where you are surrounded by youth and families every day who remind you of you and your story — we don’t want them to suffer the barriers and lack of knowledge and access as we did. We want more for them. We understand their story and want to do whatever we can to make their path easier than it was for us. 

If we want our students and educators of color to be able to lead with identity, we need to be willing to challenge existing leadership structures and intentionally create new ones that invite culturally responsive, community-driven, shared decision-making. 

Emboldening people to own their story, especially for people whose story is so often given to them by society, is transformational. I’ve seen it firsthand countless times. I see it in the faces of my 15-, 16-, and 17-year-old students when they hear for the first time that they are going to lead a professional development session to introduce the school-wide lesson plans they helped craft for over 80 staff members.  

I see it in the student who comes into my office, nervous and a little wide-eyed, and tells me, in a shaky voice, that they want to start a Folklórico dance group because they want to feel like their culture is just as respected as hip hop and cheer, but don’t know where to start. I see it in the students who are shocked when they’re invited to represent their experience on a committee crafting the school’s new graduate profile, even though they’ve never held a formal leadership title.  

Lo hacen con miedo, pero lo hacen. They are scared to do it, but they do it. 

These moments are often turning points that build momentum to be bold about how you use your story and your experience with intentionality. They don’t happen in a vacuum. They happen in communities we build intentionally. Communities like the one I was supporting in San Mateo, California, where your collective purpose is clearly articulated and crafted by the people involved, not by societal expectations.  

San Mateo taught me a lot about the power of structure and leadership in creating the right conditions to build a transformational community. Leadership there isn’t based on a strict hierarchical structure. The burden and privilege of leading is shared among the community of educators, and their students, rather than centralized at the top.  

Every major school-wide decision, from tier 1 initiatives to the graduate profile, began in committee. The practice is facilitated by a teacher-leader, provides intentional listening spaces for students to voice concerns, suggestions or provide context during the development process, sometimes even going so far as to create committee seats specifically for student recruits, all before turning the final decision over to a staff vote for implementation. In this environment, staff feel both empowered and obligated to be a part of the school’s progress and cohesion. It’s community driven, just like so many of our Latino cultures that put the needs of the collective ahead of the individual. It allows us to grow deeper, if not faster.  

A growing body of research continues to highlight the nuanced ways in which exposure to diverse educators during a student’s PK-12 experience positively impacts the academic outcomes of all students, but what if we take it a step beyond representation? What could it look like to not only have the right people in the room with a seat at the decision-making table, but also have them operating in the right conditions where leadership structures also reflect the students we want to build up into the next leaders of our world? Where could you start investigating the possibility of leadership change in yourcommunity? 

We are all in different places on our culturally-responsive leadership journey, and wherever you are is where you need to start.  

Linda Campos-Moreira and colleagues propose a Culturally Responsive Leadership Framework (CRLF) in their 2020 article, Making a Case for Culturally Humble Leadership Practices through a Culturally Responsive Leadership Framework. It’s a scholarly, comprehensive discussion that challenges the typical leadership paradigm with an argument grounded in relevant socio-cultural events and community context.  

Some of us, however, learn better by diving into a practical approach. If that’s you, I’d suggest starting with Lasting Leadership’s Guide to Lateral Leadership, published online by the Lasting Difference, which focuses on self-assessing your current situation and provides templates for developing a sustainable lateral leadership structure moving forward. 

Finally, I recommend any leader who aspires to culturally responsive leadership dive into Distributed Leadership: Why the Right Time Is Right Now, a blog post by New Leaders. It comes with a plethora of additional resource articles and a list of practical questions to support your assessment of your school’s readiness for a leadership shift.  

Your next step may lead you down a different path. Perhaps it will include researching and networking with community leaders or discussing existing leadership mindsets and culturally responsive alternatives with peers or putting into action a new collaborative structure to address the next item on your never-ending to-do list.   

Personally, my next step is connecting directly with community leaders knee-deep in the work and assessing the practical needs on the ground before I make any sudden moves. 

Wherever you’re starting, the important part is to start now. 

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Marissa Reyes is the proud daughter of Mexican immigrants from Santa Ana, California. A veteran educator and storyteller with over 15 years of experience serving marginalized communities, she focuses on building inclusive cultures and student-centered structures in public education. Most recently, she served as a Counselor on Special Assignment in the Bay Area, supporting the development of cohesive Multi-Tiered Systems of Support and culturally responsive programs for first-generation students pursuing higher education. She holds an M.A. in Educational Counseling from Azusa Pacific University and a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Political Science from UC Berkeley.