Strategies to Build Culturally Competent and Affirming Schools
The Lead with CARE framework empowers educators to reject the achievement-at-all-costs mindset and focus on creating a school culture that rests upon the pillars of Cultural Responsiveness, Affirmation, Relationships, and Empowerment.
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Lead with CARE
Dr. Lionel Allen’s book is an extraordinary tool for collective change. If teams of teachers and school leaders were to read and discuss Dr. Allen’s book together, it is hard to imagine them emerging from the experience unmoved.
Invaluable and inspiring...
In Lead With C.A.R.E., Dr. Allen provides a way to disrupt the harms that systems, teachers, and leaders may inflict on children.
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With learning goals, summaries, and discussion questions included in each chapter, this guide offers actionable strategies educators can use to establish a culture that prioritizes students’ experiences and affirms their identities.
Dr. Lionel E. Allen, Jr.
A native of the south side of Chicago, Dr. Lionel E. Allen, Jr. is an award-winning school leader with over twenty years of experience in education as a Teacher, Assistant Principal, Principal, and Chief Academic Officer. He is a school improvement consultant, professional developer, and a frequently invited speaker and panelist.
Most recently, Dr. Allen led a highly successful network of charter high schools in rewriting the educational narrative for young African American males in Chicago. Currently, he serves as a clinical assistant professor of educational policy studies and leadership coach at the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC), where he teaches a signature pedagogy course on cycles of inquiry, a course on improving education organizations, and co-leads the full-year residency course for aspiring school leaders.
His work has been featured in the Chicago Tribune, CNN, PBS, and Edutopia as part of their “Schools That Work” series. In 2018 he founded ed Leaders Matter (eLM), LLC, a consultancy that aims to improve schools by developing school leaders. Under the eLM umbrella, he has provided professional development and coaching to hundreds of school leaders and scores of schools and school districts nationwide.
He is also the co-founder and design team member of the Aspire Fellowship, a program designed to diversify the principal pipeline by preparing teacher leaders of color to enter principal preparation and certification programs.
Dr. Allen received his baccalaureate degree from Northwestern University and his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The Lead with CARE Framework
Cultural Responsiveness
Culturally responsive educators acknowledge, respond to, and celebrate the diversity of students’ cultures in meaningful ways and offer full, equitable access to education for all students.
Affirmation
Affirming educators celebrate, honor, protect, and cultivate their students' identities; they make students feel good about who they are.
Relationships
Relationship-focused educators prioritize establishing positive and healthy relationships with students and understand that quality relationships are a prerequisite to learning.
Empowerment
Empowering educators help all children realize their abilities and potential and grant them the power and authority to be great despite their circumstances.
Read Dr. Allen's recent article, "Establish a School Culture That Prioritizes Student Experience" View Article >
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