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This chapter is a leadership story communicated between an academic and a community leader. Told by a self-described community centric leader to a university professor, the conversation was communicated over the course of a semester. It represents the power and care needed when hearing and sharing another 's story as well as the power of being vulnerable enough and loving enough to embark upon the process of sharing. It is a community partnership in action that is ultimately rendered in writing
Leadership is not a person or a position. It is a complex moral relationship between people, based on trust, obligation, commitment, emotion, and a shared vision of the good. (Cuilla, xv)
Educating black and brown students in urban centers continues to be a challenge for educational leaders in the United States. For the past 50 years, research in the field has shed light on the injustices and inequities that plague educational structures, the training of educational professionals and the lack of community partnerships, as just a few of the ills that educators have not been able to overcome. Demographically, the population in US schools has shifted (and continues to do so), while the number of educators of color continues to lag far behind that of white educators (Lomotey, 2015). Research shows that it is increasingly hard to recruit African Americans, in particular, into the teaching profession. White teachers often find that they have not been adequately prepared to work in urban school districts. Leadership is not much better. Educational leaders continue to search for the magical silver bullets that solve testing issues, school choice dilemmas, discipline challenges, and generational poverty. In the introduction to African American Perspectives on Leadership in Schools, Foster and Tilman (2009) remind us that "African American school leadership is an underresearched, underdeveloped, and undervalued topic in the discourse on school administration and leadership" (p.1). One could argue the same is true for leadership in community organizations that serve schools during in and out of school time (Gallagher et. al., 2012).
This work highlights DeVon (Von) Madden, the founder and leader behind Shadow Student Athletes, a non-profit in a city that has succeeded where many other post-industrial cities have floundered. The work is rendered in a stream of consciousness...