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Being equitable is not about giving the same support to everyone. Rather, it is about providing the support each individual student needs in order to experience success.

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Capper, C.A., Rodriguez, M.A., & McKinney, S.A. (2010). Leading Beyond disability: Integrated, socially just schools and districts. In C. Marshall & M. Oliva (Eds.), Leadership for social justice: Making revolutions in education (p. 175-193). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Peters, A.L. (2010). Rethinking transformational leadership in schools: The influence of people, place, and process on leadership practice. In S.D. Horsford (Ed.), New Perspective in Educational Leadership: Exploring Social, Political, and Community Contexts and Meaning (p. 29-46). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Sergiovanni, T. J. (2000). Leadership as stewardship. In M. Fullan (Ed.), In The Jossey-Bass reader on educational leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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

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The Perspective of a Special Education Teacher and Aspiring Leader
I firmly believe that students should have access to a rigorous education in a safe learning environment. I think it is important that all students have this opportunity, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, native language, or disability.  As a special education teacher, I'm used to having to fit my students into the placement options available as opposed to being able to provide truly individualized supports. I'm also used to the overrepresentations of certain student populations in the special education and academic level classes I teach. I believe, like Capper, Rodriguez, and McKinney, that inclusion is the best model for service delivery (2010, p. 187), but true inclusion is more complicated than just sticking students with IEPs and English Learners into a general education classroom, even if that class had a co-teacher.

Inclusion takes a real commitment from educational leadership because it requires system changes to staffing, scheduling, and the mindset of every teacher involved.

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The picture above is from a co-taught experimental Algebra I class where all of the students had previously experienced failure. It was an amazing class that allowed students from a variety of backgrounds to experience a lot of success in math, in some cases for the first time. This would not have been possible without support from our school's administration.  My goal as a leader is to create as many opportunities as possible for teachers and their students to experience this kind of success.

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My personal social justice leadership philosophy draws on several different leadership philosophies: servant leadership, transformational leadership, and transformative leadership.

Servant Leadership: Leadership does not have to look like leadership; servant leadership is about supporting and empowering others through service (Sergiovanni, 2000, p. 273-274). I think that being a steward or a servant leader can be important way to meet the needs of families and the community, especially opposed to the traditional authoritative school leader.

Transformational Leadership: In some ways similar to servant leadership, transformational leader uses charisma and inspiration to empower employees to work together to further the mission of the group (Peters, 2010, p. 30). Transformational leadership is an integral part of my idea of being a social justice leader, as social justice leaders should inspire and empower others to share that vision, not through force, but through building others up and fostering their own ideas related to social justice.

Transformative Leadership: A transformative leader makes remedying marginalizing conditions the focus of their leadership (Shields, 2010, p. 558). Regardless of leadership style, I don’t believe that any educational leader can hope to meet the needs of students, teachers, families, or the community without a commitment to social justice.