Through such qualitative methods as participant observations, open-ended
interviews, and personal documents, the phenomenologist is concerned with
understanding human behavior from the actor‘s own frame of reference (Bogdan &
Taylor, 1998). Dilthey (1985) suggested that the lived experience ―is to the soul what
breath is to the body: Just as our body needs to breathe, our soul requires the fulfillment
and expansion of its existence in the after-effects of emotional life‖ (p. 59). Thus it is
the ―after-effects‖ of Joe Clark‘s leadership, that concerns the researcher, as
phenomenology focuses on the person who is experiencing the phenomena, and in this
case it is the students, who attended, and teachers and administrators who worked at
Eastside High School during Mr. Clark‘s tenure.