The Community Leader: Carlos Azcoitia

     To start of our third week of the Distinguished Speakers Series, Carlos Azcoitia, from Chicago Public Schools and John Spry Community School, gave us a visit.  With a Cuban heritage and a Basque surname, we quickly got an introduction into Carlos’ philosophy: becoming a culturally proficient leader with a vision of a school as a community can lead to societal change.  We had to get started right away!

Carlos took us through a journey of self-discovery, learning how culture, language, and identity tie in with schooling and, most importantly, community. Bringing a wealth of experience, including serving as Deputy Chief of Education for Chicago Public Schools, Carlos shared his lessons learned over his thirty plus year career.  We started off Day 1 with Carlos stating that “identity is very important and everyone has an identity.”  He explained he was Cuban by ethnicity, but had finished high school in Puerto Rico.  In Chicago, his career started out as an elementary principal in a neighborhood school of a Mexican American community before moving up as a Superintendent and later, Deputy Chief of Education.  He decided after serving as Deputy Chief of Education to return back to the front lines of education and develop a PreK through high school, John Spry Community School.  John Spry has a nearly constant 100% graduation rate.

Carlos continued the day by sharing the principles of a community school.  He emphasized that having a strong understanding of cultural heritage is vital for academic identities.  He provided us with a handout on the five essential elements of a culturally proficient professional:

Assesses culture

Values diversity

Manages the dynamics of difference

Adapts to diversity

Institutionalizes cultural knowledge

Carlos also discussed the integration between school, community, and family, emphasizing that in order to understand one’s self, it is important to know one’s history.  To underscore this point, we conducted a poem exercise called I AM FROM.  In this activity, we wrote down a few sentences that described our origins.  Through exchanging our poems, we were able to get a new sense of where each person had come from.  Our dynamic instructor also spoke to us about the essence of a good leader and the important skill of interpersonal relationships.  He talked about building bridges and being boundary expanders.  Carlos reiterated that power in an organization is the capacity generated by relationships.  In his article, Community Schools and the Immigrant Debate: Revisiting History, he wrote, “Schools cannot escape their interdependence with outside factors that influence whether students learn.”  Emphasizing the interdependence of the community with the school is an important endeavor in the quest for societal change.  

Carlos’ Take Home Points:

1. Leadership transcends ethnicity 
2. Schools are collective endeavors based on individual successes
3. Education is a community enterprise
4. Commit to create a future distinct from the past
5. Build the social fabric and transform isolation into the whole
6. Leadership is listening
7. When that “PhD” or “Doctor” front is not there, then you can be much more creative
8. Happy individuals find their way to make their job palatable or find a way out
9. Need to be psychologically active in what we do because it shows enthusiasm
10. If complaining every day, then you must go somewhere else

    In the last session with Carlos, our class delved into the principles of action and the community school utopia.  Drawing from Theresa Amabile’s theory of creativity and Peter Block’s The Structure of Belonging, Carlos shared key ideas on the power of the small group, organizing gatherings, and the leader’s role.  We debated whether community schools actually furthered racial segregation in the U.S. or whether it could serve to strengthen the racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of American society.  Carlos believes that by expanding boundaries, community schools get stronger.   The community model ultimately is a hopeful start to breaking down those barriers and reaching out to the Other.