Abstract
Exploring incidents of race and ethnicity in one’s life can help an educational leader unearth hidden assumptions and biases, resulting in transformed frames of reference that support social action. This article discusses the perceptions of the participants as they explored their racial and ethnic experiences that have impacted their understanding of bias and themselves. The purpose of this narrative inquiry was to explore how engaging in reflective written and oral discourse about incidents of race and ethnicity empowered the researcher participants to become transformational educational leaders. Data collection included researcher participants’ written racial incidents and racial autobiographies, rational discourse conversations, and meeting reflections. Reflective accounts were framed using Mezirow’s (1991) theory of transformative learning to discover common threads. Based on the information elicited from respondents, several themes were identified, namely, geography, influences of environment, feeling seen and heard, and self-acceptance, which contributed to the researcher-participants’ feeling empowered to become transformational educational leaders.