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Leadership for Social Justice in Education

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Leadership for Social Justice in Education

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Leadership for Social Justice in Education involves pursuing and engaging in constant actions, at micro and macro levels, that advocate for equitable opportunities and learning experiences that will lead to the empowerment of black and brown youth, their families, and communities.

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Equity

Opportunity

Cultural Relevance/Competence

Development of Self Advocacy

Black and Brown Learner Empowerment

Passion

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Social Emotional Learning & Social Justice

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Social Emotional Learning & Social Justice

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Social Emotional Learning & Social Justice

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Social Emotional Learning & Social Justice

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Self Advocacy and Empowerment for Black and Brown Youth 

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Self Advocacy and Empowerment for Black and Brown Youth 

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White allies need to understand their place in the movement for social justice. This includes white teachers serving students of color. Educators of color are key in the progression of social justice through our education system. Educators who resemble and can relate culturally to their students can create culturally relevant learning experiences that not only engage learners but empower them to become self advocates. These learning experiences are based on common understandings, experiences, struggles, and barriers faced as people of color in a society that oppresses and marginalizes them. In order to be an educator and leader or social justice, we need to begin by guiding students through recognition of their self identities. Once that is done, they will be able to better understand the role they play and the power they have to make a change towards equity. Does this mean that this educator becomes a savior? NO. Savior complex, whether its for advantaged educators of color or privileged white people, is something that needs to be addressed throughout each educators and leader’s  journey through social justice engagement.

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The role of a leader that serves those that are often “othered” and  whose work is influenced and is fueled by social justice is to equip each stakeholder with the proper, equitable tools to transfer educational equitable experiences into environments (the world) outside of classroom and schools that foster social inequity. One first step leaders can take is to follow a framework similar to Kumashiro's framework for anti oppressive education. The framework, as addressed by Marshall and Oliva (2010), lays out key components that should be addressed across all levels of the education field:

Education of the other

Education about the other

Teaching about how only some groups are othered but some groups are favored

Education that changes students and society

Another step towards this that Leaders in education must must take is to actively recruit and retain teachers of color. The leader must encompass and share in the values of each stakeholder groups- teachers, learners, families, and the community and vice versa. Shared values of equity and justice will allow for power structures to be broken down thus creating an environment in which the leader is not seen as the only holder of knowledge of power. Leaders must inspire and fuel that passion for social justice.

April L. Peters (2010) mentions leaders must engage staff and learners, but I believe each stakeholder (including families and community members) needs to be engaged, in a way in which we are transforming and changing them for the better. Leaders must inspire others with their actions.

A social justice leader should lead by example, making day to day action that move toward engaging themselves and others in social justice learning experiences. Leaders should lead in a way in which they build relationships founded on trust & perspective understanding. Social Justice leaders must value equity, justice, dedication, and vulnerability.

One might assume that there needs to be a certain level of “wokeness” and knowledge regarding social justice and its branching topics in order to engage in equitable change. As a leader and promoter of social justice education, one must come to the realization that it is a learning process that involves the breaking down of one's own biases as advantaged individuals and the reflection of one’s own understandings/misunderstanding.

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Social Emotional Learning & Social Justice 

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Social Emotional Learning & Social Justice 

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Social Emotional learning plays a huge role in social justice education at all levels of knowledge and ages.  Social emotional learning provides humans with the ability to understand emotions intro and retrospectively but more importantly it focuses on being able to understand others’ perspectives. In order to be a leader for social justice, one must be able to understand one's own biases, others’ biases, and analyze the root causes for those biases. Essentially, social emotional learning focuses on the development of human beings as individuals that possess foundational qualities of kindness, understanding, and empathy.

In combination, social emotional learning and social justice education lead to higher student engagement. Higher student engagement will lead to better analysis, application, and problem solving of the social justice issues discussed with learners.

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Stop the Cycle by engaging each stakeholder in equitable learning experiences

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Stop the Cycle by engaging each stakeholder in equitable learning experiences

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Horsford, S. D. (2010). New perspectives in educational leadership exploring social, political, and community contexts and meaning. New York, NY: Lang.

Marshall, C., & Oliva, M. (2010). Leadership for social justice: Making revolutions in education. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Theoharis, G., & Scanlan, M. (2015). Leadership for increasingly diverse schools. New York, NY: Routledge.

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In order to lead effective learning communities, leaders need to provide equitable opportunities for each stakeholder to not only access information and resources but to be involved and engaged in the effort to uphold the core beliefs.

According to Martin Scanlan and George Theoharis (2015), leaders needs to constantly lead each stakeholder of the learning community into thinking that we learn and grow in knowledge and as human beings better as a group than individuals. Each stakeholder of the learning community must learn to reflect on these questions:

What are we learning to pursue?

Who is engaged in the learning?

How are we pursuing this?

Leaders need to engage stakeholders in Anti deficit thinking.  Social justice work can often lead to burnout and frustration or hopelessness therefore it is important for leaders to stop and think about what has worked and how can we create equitable systems/structures to support each learner and stakeholder in our learning community. Keeping the anti deficit perspective will allow leaders to provide the proper supports for teachers of color. With the proper cultural, social and emotional supports for educators of color, leaders will be able to increase recruitment and retention rates. Increased retention rates of teachers of color will allow for better learner engagement and a more diverse learning community. In order to lead and manage and effective learning community, leaders need to assure that it is composed of diverse individuals on all aspects and realms of diversity- in regards to culture, education/knowledge, gender, experience, etc. A diverse learning community will create an environment in which different perspectives can be involved to assure equity and justice at a school level. Community partnerships with families, businesses, etc are crucial in order to lead and manage an effective learning community. Leaders need to incorporate all stakeholders by provided opportunities for their voices to be heard. Specifically for stakeholders of color. To manage effective learning communities, leaders need to assure that voices that would often be silenced or talked over/disregarded in spaces created for white individuals, are heard. People of color in learning communities must be given the space to speak their mind and truths and leaders must provide various modalities of accessing and requesting input from these individuals in learning communities

In order to nourish the reflective thinking of those in the learning community leaders need to provide opportunities for experiences in which each stakeholder can discuss biases, trauma informed practice, restorative justice, and learned behavior. This can be done through workshops or sessions for any and all stakeholders.

Finally, in order to manage and lead effective learning communities, leaders must know when to let go of individuals that don’t believe in the work or that aren’t open to start breaking down their biases in order to better engage in social justice work. They have no business serving youth that we want to inspire and motivate to become advocates and social justice leaders themselves.