Leading From Where We Are Challenging The Status Quo

Leading from Where We Are: Challenging the Status Quo is an invitation to school leaders to interrogate their current professional practice in light of the persistent achievement gap being produced here in Ontario. I use the term "production of inequitable schooling outcomes" instead of "achievement gap" to shift the focus to systemic and structural change. It avoids a binary framing of achievement tied to race. This shift facilitates the agency of students to maximize their benefits from culturally relevant schooling practices.

Leading from Where We Are: Challenging the Status Quo, is a pedagogical support for anyone seeking to change the status quo and lead schools to produce equitable schooling outcomes for all students with a focus on Black and other minoritized students. I want us to be clear that a focus on Black and other minoritized students is not a "zero sum game" or a practice of producing winners and losers. It is a focus to ensure the culturally responsive and relevant professional practices are engaged in the production of schooling outcomes. It is a way to meet the challenge of making the curriculum outcomes constant, and time and resources the variable in order to persistently ensure the production of equitable schooling outcomes.

There are six concepts from this text that I wish to emphasize because I consider them foundational to the work of leading schools to effectively engage in schoolwide practice of culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy. They include: 1. A Guiding Philosophical Support-system (GPS), 2. Critical Education Research, 3. Critical self-knowledge, 4. Critical self-care, 5. The practice of Ableism, and 6 a Culture of Accountability.

One of your most important responsibilities as a school leader is your own critical professional self-care. This is the deliberate and strategic cultivation of self-care and professional practice in life giving ways. It requires Balance! Strategic self-reflection on your personal needs and on professional practice within the context of daily life and work.

Your state of readiness is correlated to your professional self-care and critical self-knowledge operating iteratively to support your health and well-being. Critical self-reflection therefore needs to be embedded in your daily routine in order to support your health and wellbeing.

When social justice conversations are conducted, the voices of people with disabilities are to be included. Resources to navigate power arrangements to secure education that meet the learning needs of students with disabilities are to be provided. School leaders should therefore make student accommodations matter in their schools!