Culturally Proficient Leadership: The Personal Journey Begins Within

by Raymond D. Terrell, Eloise K. Terrell, Randall B. Lindsey

Becoming a culturally proficient leader requires the kind of courage, clarity, and insight that can only come from looking inward first. It’s a personal learning journey of will and skill, and if you’re up to the challenge, one that will change how you see your school, your students, and yourself as you build your own cultural competence. Consider this second edition of  Culturally Proficient Leadership your personal road map for navigating that journey.   

Each chapter of  Culturally Proficient Leadership  invites you to put your experiences up front and challenges you to reframe your story based on multiple viewpoints―now, notably, with the addition of new coauthors Delores Lindsey and Eloise Kemp Terrell, who have their own remarkable stories and insight to share. Overall, all four authors will help you answer the critical question "Is what we say what we do?" utilizing the tools of Cultural Proficiency to  The central "inside-out" premise of Cultural Proficiency is that engaging in deep introspection around one’s personal beliefs, values, and behaviors in response to human differences is the first step toward systemic educational reform. We invite you to embark on this journey of self-awareness, of moral courage, and of the life-affirming power of human diversity.    
"I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together―unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and may not come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same toward a better future for our children and our grandchildren." 
―Barack Obama, Los Angeles Times, 2008    

Genres: Education, Textbooks, Leadership

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read it for a class.

[Ms. Brown]

Outstanding! It compels leaders to make just educational decisions from the heart!

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a tough book to get through. I admire and respect the dedication and knowledge the authors bring about culturally proficient leadership, but after a semester of reading about these issues, and my previous knowledge about them, I found this book to be very simplistic. When the authors shared parts of their autobiography to relate to the issues, I found the book very interesting and relatable. However, these passages were too few and far between. So for me, I would recommend this to someone starting out as a teacher or leader, but not for someone with any real knowledge background in the field.

[Lara · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was required reading for a Master's class. It makes a large number of assumptions about where the reader is starting in their cultural proficiency. For those of us who teach in highly diverse urban schools, we already know and live most of this. It doesn't hurt us to revisit and reflect, but the assumption that we're starting from a very sheltered place rankled and led to this being less useful than it could have been.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Addresses the deep work that we must do to create more equitable schools. I took one star off because some of the material is dated, so a new edition is warranted. For instance, they talk about sexual orientation as if it’s such a taboo that no one feels comfortable talking about it. The cultural landscape around that issue, in particular, has shifted significantly in the past 10 years since this was published.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book as a part of my course work for my Master's of Education.

This book on equity in schools and in life is more of a workbook designed to help education leaders understand their personal beliefs and experiences with culture. I really appreciate that Terrell and Lindsey focus equally on several different sorts of cultural issues, not just with race. I found this book to be well-intentioned and helpful for understanding my own cultural beliefs. It was an excellent text for my coursework.

My criticism for the book is that it feels very repetitive. The introductions seems like it spans the first three chapters. Do not read this book expecting to burn through it and come out knowledgeable on the other side. To engage with this book requires self-reflection and intentionality.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book really did make me think about experiences that I had not really taken time to reflect on before, and helped me understand those experiences matter a lot more to other people. I think 40 pages of the book were relevant, the rest just restated what was expressed in those pages. Interactive book, just not that compelling.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

good start to my autobiography