“Mi Hija Va a Ser Maestra” Overview of the Auto-Ethnography

Abstract

The educator who takes on the task of the principal leader of a campus must be staunchly in touch with the inner self, the source from which they will draw foundational decisions at the most critical of times, when it is imperative that speech and action be aligned with ideals and beliefs (Marzano, Waters, and McNulty, 2005). My doctoral dissertation, an autoethnography that is an illustrative introspective exercise for instructional leaders, is a critical self-reflection that identifies the factors that informed me as a life-long educator and a campus administrator. This article is a window to the content of that dissertation.The manuscript provides legitimacy to testimonio and the concept of story to build relative context and meaning (Ellis, 2004; Guajardo and Guajardo, 2013) between my marginalized childhood in a small Central Texas town and my successful adulthood in the field of educational leadership. The methodology included critical interpretations of the literary selections, utilizing analytical frameworks to derive meaning from the stories. In order to make “personal experience meaningful and cultural experience engaging” (Ellis, Adams and Bochner, 2011, p. 277), I chose to share my story, thus giving agency to critical self-reflection as a discipline in leadership effectiveness.