All
participants spoke of using their power to intervene when they observed teachers
behaving in ways that they considered wrong. I have grouped these teacher behaviors into
four categories: (1) teachers discriminating against Black students, (2) teachers using
middle class White values to judge inner-city youth, (3) teachers lacking an
understanding of students’ impoverished circumstances, and (4) teachers’ moral decisions
that influence the safety of children. The following sub-sections provide principal
vignettes that illustrate each of these four categories and how principals engaged their
proactive moral agency with the intention of mediating the moral decisions of teachers
for “the benefit of the kids” (see Table 2 for participant descriptions and theme one
categorizations). I conclude this section by considering how engaging in this type of work
can be a difficult prospect for principals, one that leaders may struggle to navigate within
themselves.