The 5 Superpowers of School Leaders Reopening Schools in the Midst of COVID-19

This article is dedicated to the life and work of Chadwick Boseman and Dez-Ann Romain-Superheroes Extraordinaire

School leaders are facing a school year that requires resilience, fortitude, and a cape for the new level of superhero work that they will be confronted with as they lead schools in the midst of COVID-19. Being a school leader has always required a degree of being a superhero. However, this school year, the intensity of school leadership is pressured by following CDC health guidelines, blended and remote learning, and the uncertainty and the unknown nature of the Corona Virus. These and several other unnamed factors makes leading a school with assurance and confidence hard to enact. To successfully navigate and commandeer this school year, school leaders will need to dig in deep and activate their superpowers. The 5 superpowers of school leaders reopening schools in the midst of COVID-19 are a set of tools that will support school leaders as they fearlessly convert the impossible to “I’m possible”. The 5 superpowers are:

1. Exhibit vulnerability. When one chooses to lead a school, there are certain challenges you agree to confront and solve. There are the challenges of ensuring student achievement for all, creating professional learning activities that improve and nurture the pedagogy of teachers, and addressing the need for equity via resource management that guarantees that the needs of all learners are met. The last few months have taught us that a school leader doesn’t get trained in how to navigate the challenges of a pandemic until they are in one. Therefore, a school leader’s ability to embrace and acknowledge their humanness via the demonstration of vulnerability is a superpower that all stakeholders can share in and grow through. Vulnerability is an art form that enables the leader to allow others to see, experience, and live them in the purest sense. It’s a superpower because when leaders enact the allowance of those who they lead to experience them authentically, the leader creates a followership that is enrolled in their vision, mission, and their leadership. People follow and support people they can “see”. School leadership during COVID-19 offers a demand for school leaders to truly express, live, and be a walking example of their truth. In this season of school leadership, leaders get to use vulnerability as a tool to lift their school communities to a level that goes beyond responsiveness and rises to a place of pro-activeness and action that empowers all stakeholders.
2. Lead with trust. The key to the superpower of trust is that it begins with the leader in regards to their trust of themselves. Consider the significance of leading from a space of “I am that I am”. If a leader declares that he or she is trusting of themselves and in turn others, this superpower holds a space for others to trust themselves and therefore believe, listen, and follow the leader. When a leader lacks self-trust, they struggle generating what they do not possess. In these lack of trust scenarios leaders are questioned from a deficit perspective, they are doubted, and followers continuously second guess them. Furthermore, it gets worse if they do not exhibit vulnerability. The latter makes followers not believe in their leadership and go rogue. Once that happens, it’s every man for himself, community breakdowns emerge, and unity is disrupted in the midst of running a school in the heart of a pandemic. Trust is a superpower that gives everyone the opportunity to look at the problem from the same side. It’s a unifier; a gift to school leadership and those who follow.
3. Be courageous. Bake the flourless cake. School leaders get to know and understand that they have been given a seat at the table because they belong at the table. All permissions have been granted. It’s clear why you have been chosen to lead, and we’ve already discussed the importance of trusting yourself first before you engage in the process of trusting others. Now is the time to be courageous and move powerfully with all the ingredients you have to organize, lead, and empower your school community. This superpower supports the importance that the school leader and the supporting community are each other’s greatest ingredients or resources for an extraordinary school. On another note, yes, you may need to do yourself the favor and acknowledge that you are short on some of the ingredients to bake the metaphorical good cake. Leaders of course can demand the needed ingredients, and if their requests are ignored or denied, it is recommended that school leaders don’t under estimate the power of the “flourless cake”. School leaders do not operate in a vacuum. There are urgent directives and timely policies at play affecting school leaders’ moves and abilities. The courage to bake the “flourless cake” is a superpower because it is offers a taste of what’s missing from the plan or expectations. Examples include; time, resources, personnel, and/or other needs that constituents beyond the school leader need to “taste” in order to understand what needs to be done. The latter can be counterintuitive for school leaders as many school administrators prefer to plan based on what they know is wanted and needed. Be brave school leaders. Offering the slice of “flourless cake” can be the golden ticket to getting what is best for school communities during this time. This may be everyone’s first time leading schools during a pandemic, but everyone knows what good cake tastes like. Therefore, bake and deliver the “flourless cake”.
4. Utilize unapologetic agency. Number 3 creates space for number 4. The superpower of agency offers and reminds school leaders about the power of choice in alignment with their voice and actions. Agency is a school leaders’ built in compass that directs and empowers them on which way to go. Agency also opens the door for the school leader to engage in advocacy and lend their voice to those populations who are access challenged or marginalized. Now is the time to speak up for all as the wellness of self and others are at stake. Lastly, agency is transferable via the empowerment of stakeholders. The leader does not need to stand alone. He or she gets to connect with concerned school community members and empower them to lift their voices in support of one vision.
5. Self-expression matters. Speak it out loud and write it down. Running a school while managing COVID-19 means that you may not have been in the same room with your staff in over 5 months, that you have had more conversations with your school community on Zoom or on Microsoft Teams than in person, and that a significant amount of change has occurred in your life as we are all forever changed as a result of this common experience of the pandemic. Communicating clearly is a more urgent need now than ever before. A school leader speaking their thoughts and then memorializing them in writing inspires and moves people to action. It gives them insight into the direction that the community is rising and provides a reference that they can look back to for guidance. Speaking and writing in this sense emboldens the monthly community newsletter and updates. It is an opportunity for the leader to enact and communicate numbers 1–4 as a high frequency lifeline of self-expression that sources and replenishes the school community with hope, responsibility, possibility, and love.

This article was written within hours of learning about the passing of actor Chadwick Boseman. He played many heroes on screen; Jackie Robinson, James Brown and of course his most famous and impactful role-Marvel’s Black Panther to name a few. While he dynamically acted and brought these roles to life, for the past 4 years of his life, he battled colon cancer. He was a hero to the world who chose (and within his rights) to remain private about his illness. Principal Dez-Ann Romain led Brooklyn Democracy Academy with passion, vibrancy and perseverance. She like many other school leaders went to work in March 2020 up until schools officially closed due to COVID-19. A few days later she was hospitalized with pneumonia and subsequently passed away at the age of 36 from complications due to COVID-19. There are times when superheroes wear capes, and there are times when they don’t. One thing that they have in common, is that all superheroes push past their humanness to show up valiantly for the “greater good”. This may be to rid the world of villains or to lead fearlessly because teachers, students, and families deserve the best of you. In this season of leading schools during a pandemic, it’s important to remember that we are all contributors and recipients of the “greater good”; and it is through vulnerability, trust, courage, agency, and self-expression that we get to honor that we are all superheroes having a human experience.