A social justice leadership strategy that Wang (2018) discussed that could be applied to my professional context, is the importance of communication between those in schools and the community. “Reaching out to the external school community is the first step to establishing relationships with the parent community” (Wang, 2018). While this is something that my school strives to do through weekly newsletters to families, we are still facing many challenges such as language barriers and caregivers not checking their emails. This causes a break in the communication and is an issue staff have brought up at our meetings many times. There are individual teachers that take additional social justice leadership measures within their classrooms. They are in regular communication with the school community, but they usually feel unsupported and deterred by the same obstacles that Wang (2018) described: resources, finances, time, facilities, and personnel.
In some of the community newsletter examples, I have noted that there are options to have the newsletter translated in different languages. I think this is a fantastic idea and something my school could consider doing. At the end of last school year, we had members from the community come in and work with our social workers and teaching staff to start up an after school recreational basketball space for our students. We are located in an area of the city that does not have any recreational facilities for students. This project is still in the works but requires a lot of hands on deck to be successful. I hope that this initiative takes off within the next year so that our school can begin to gain a better sense of community.
References
Wang, F. (2018). Social justice leadership—Theory and practice: A case of Ontario. Educational Administration Quarterly, 54(3), 470-498. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X18761341
Richmond Hill, December 2014
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