There’s no place like homeplace: School principals’ roles in developing student belonging as resistance against oppression

ABSTRACT

School principals must play a vital role in facilitating homeplace and Black joy by promoting, modeling, and holding educators responsible for their roles in contributing to homeplace. We argue that principals can enact homeplace by embodying the tenets of culturally responsive school leadership (CSRL). The purpose of this paper is to make meaning of the concept of homeplace, conceptualized by bell hooks, through storytelling and explanation of an acrostic. Homeplace creates Holistic Opportunities for Meaning, Expectations on high, Purpose, Love, Achievement, and Community Engagement. We explain each construct by including: (1) a story that connects to one of our personal experiences; (2) a general overview of how we make sense of the construct; (3) how we connect the construct to extant research about homeplace, joy, and CRSL; and (4) possibilities for application of the construct by school principals.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional resources

1. Khalifa, M. (2018). Culturally responsive school leadership. Harvard Education Press.

The author draws from his 2-year ethnographic study of a principal, school, and community in Greater Detroit, Michigan to theorize the role of culturally responsive school leadership in school reform. He interrogates the role of the school principal as a community leader, in ways that bring into focus the 4 strands of culturally responsive school leadership. Given the centrality of the author’s positionality, epistemology, and urban context of the school and community, the book is most transferrable for principals in communities who find similarities with those contexts. However, the book is relatable for leaders who seek to dismantle deficit-thinking, center the experiences of their families and communities, and engage families and communities by honoring their local neighborhood cultures in schools.

2. See In Black. https://seeinblack.com

From its website: “See In Black is a collective of Black photographers who invest in, uplift and build community around Black visibility....We tell our communities’ stories with intention, respect, nuance and care.” The photos on the website are diverse in their imagery, representations of Blackness, contexts, and color. Some show individual people, crowds holding protest signs, or Black people moving their bodies. All of them collectively represent Black beauty. For principals wanting to dismantle deficit views of Blackness, sharing these photos, or engaging with local photographers to take photographs for display around the school, would likely shatter deficit views.

3. Patton, L. D., Evans-Winters, V. E., & Jacobs, C. E. (Eds.). (2022). Investing in the educational success of Black women and girls. Stylus.

This edited volume centers the lived experiences including resilience and joy, as well as illuminating inequities that Black girls face in schools to address ways in which educators, principals, and policymakers can create strength-based shifts in practices and policies to support widespread success and affirmation of Black girls. The centering of Black girls by Black women underscores that Black girls matter. Each chapter provides thought-provoking context about Black girls and recommendations for enacting equitable practices to affirm and support them.