MOTIVATED BY MIRRORS: A LEADERSHIP CASE STUDY ON WAYS SCHOOL ADMINSTRATORS CAN SUPPORT BLACK EDUCATOR WELL-BEING

As independent schools across the United States continue to attract Black educators in their teaching force, school leadership should examine their current practices for administrators supporting teachers with self-care, well-being, and relatedness to the school community. Such focus should particularly center on interpersonal relationships with students, colleagues, and administrators, along with the way in which recalling positive experiences with students impacts Black educators. This qualitative research study used a relational inquiry intervention called radical student check-ins (RSCs) to explore the impact of radical self-care and the recalling of positive experiences between the teacher–student relationship.

This study involved an iterative process where successes, lessons learned, reflexive practices, and data collection all contributed to the findings, implications, and recommendations of supporting Black educator well-being and relatedness through RSCs. The use of improvement science was highlighted throughout the study, as it served as the foundation for the research cycle. Improvement science was foundational to the study through the intentional use of an antiracist process in the research, where each step in the intervention was analyzed using the plan, do, study, act (PDSA) cycle to move the study forward. Implications from this study push administrators and school leaders to examine their personal self-care practices, support teachers to engage in self-care, and consider how they can cocreate sustainable structures through RSCs to support Black educator well-being. The study findings suggested the use and process of RSCs can be reimagined to impact educators’ mindsets around self-care practices and increase feelings of relatedness to their school community depending on their context. Recommendations for the local school setting, fellow school administrators, and the broader education community include: personal and professional development for administrators and the prioritization of autonomy, competence, and relatedness for implementing RSC’s. Further study is proposed to explore educator growth versus fixed mindsets toward interpersonal relationships and self-care, the impact of RSCs on broader populations, and ways to intentionally educate all stakeholders on purposeful well-being initiatives for educators.

Keywords: teacher well-being, Black educators, relatedness, interpersonal relationships, radical student check-ins, radical self-care, improvement science, educator mindset, administrators, new administrators, teacher retention, burnout