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When teachers are equitable and are social justice leaders, they are planting seeds in their students to grow and continue the positive cycle of peace and justice for the future.

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Injustice has no place in education, yet it happens daily across the country. As social justice leaders within their school buildings and districts, teachers can help put an end to the countless injustices against students of color. "Having the courage," writes Shields, "to address, head-on, situations that are unjust and marginalizing is not easy" (2010). Transformative leaders not only concern themselves with the academic achievement of their students, but they also understand the whole child's well-being and contribution to society as key components in their classroom.

Social justice leaders involve parents not only at the fundraising and school support level but also at the decision-making and curricular level (Cooper, 2010). These leaders do not view parents' willingness to become involved at the school level as an annoyance but rather as an inclusive partnership in which each person wants what is best for the child. Keeping separate the worlds of family and school hinder the success of the child and creates tension and mistrust between both parties (Cooper, 2010).

Transformative leaders are ready and willing to take action as well as change and better themselves to meet the dynamic needs and challenges of their student population. It is inequitable for teachers to continue to teach the same content in the same ways that they have for years. Especially for leaders who are part of the dominant culture, they seek professional learning opportunities and constantly critique their own practices to ensure they are being equitable and just to each and every student with whom they come into contact. Social justice leaders reach out to their school community and become involved.

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"Schools in the United States have historically responded to dimensions of diversity by privileging some and marginalizing others [...] School leaders need the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to create schools that eliminate marginalization across these multiple dimensions of diversity" (Scanlan & Theoharis, 2015).

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Rita Pierson embodied the idea of being an advocate for her students. She applauded each of their successes and championed each students' struggles so that no student felt the disappointment of failures.

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Every kid needs a champion | Rita Pierson | TED

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Teachers must do the right thing for students, even if that means going against the status quo, leading colleagues to see issues from a new and sometimes uncomfortable perspective, and demanding more time outside the working hours to bring about real change.  Shields (2010) contends "being a leader is not about popularity but about doing what they believed was right and just for students." Doing what is right may be the hardest action to take at times, and teachers may not be viewed positively for being outspoken, but if you don't speak up, who will?

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Many districts provide teachers with curricula for each subject area. Oftentimes, teachers are able to make decisions about how thoroughly they dig into specific topics, specifically in social studies and history, and they may choose to supplement provided curricula with other enriching resources. When linguistically, ethnically, religiously, sexually, and culturally diverse students are not represented in the materials used in class, their ancestors' stories are erased from history.

"Academic and intellectual work is located in a space that is affected by political, social, cultural, historical, and economic realities. Social justice demands deconstructing those realities in order to disclose the multiple ways schools and their leadership reproduce marginalizing and inequitable treatment of individuals because their identities are outside the celebrated dominant culture" (Dantley & Tillman, 2010).

With the majority of U.S. teachers falling into the dominant culture (white, Anglo-American, heterosexual, Christian, English-speaking), teachers must decide whether they can begin deconstructing these realities in their schools and districts or if they want to continue to perpetuate the inevitable favoring of students who look and live like them. Additionally, although teachers may not speak all languages represented by their students, they can still create space in their classroom culture for their multilingual students to share their language and create cross-linguistic connections in all subject areas.

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"Socially just leaders who view students' home language as a resource promote pedagogical strategies that support ELs' native language in the class and school and view EL students' native languages as assets to peers" (Kelsey, Campuzano, & López, 2015).

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Teacher Has Incredible Handshakes With Each Student | ABC News

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Whether positively or negatively, teachers influence the lives and paths of their students every single day. Every interaction with students shapes the way they view themselves, the world, and others. This is a daily opportunity to place students on highly successful, or unsuccessful, trajectories. All teachers are "busy," and all teachers do hard work every day, but without building a personal relationship with each and every student, personal growth and academic gains will be less accessible.

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Teachers hold a position of power, and they should use their voices to advocate for whatever is best to meet the needs of each and every student. Students and sometimes parents may not know how to access resources to help their child be successful in the educational system. Teachers must stand up and speak out against injustices and fight until each child has equitable access to their educational human right.

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Cooper, C.W. (2010). Educational leaders as cultural workers: Engaging families and school communities through transformative leadership. In S.D. Horsford (Ed.), New Perspective in Educational Leadership: Exploring Social, Political, and Community Contexts and Meaning (pp. 173-195). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Dantley, M, E. & Tillman, L, C. (2010). Social justice and moral transformative leadership. In C. Marshall & M. Oliva (Eds.), Leadership for Social Justice: Making Revolution in Education (2nd ed.) (pp. 19-34). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Kelsey, I., Campuzano, C., & López, F. (2015). Inclusive leadership and English learners. In Taylor & Francis (1st ed.), Leadership for increasingly diverse schools (82-100). New York, NY: Routledge.

Scanlan, M. & Theoharis, G. (2015). Intersectionality in educational leadership. In Taylor & Francis (1st ed.), Leadership for increasingly diverse schools (1-10). New York, NY: Routledge.

Shields, C.M. (2010). Transformative leadership: Working for equity in diverse contexts. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46, 558-589.