Field Guide #11 – The Principal as the Equity Leader
The role of the school principal has always been challenging. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, the shelter-in-place orders, teacher and staff shortages, students with social-emotional challenges, mandatory vaccinations for adults and children along with vaccination resistance, technology playing an increasingly larger role in at-home and in-class instruction, and simultaneous pressures to both include and exclude social justice (following the unjustifiable police killings of unarmed African Americans) as a requirement in the principal’s job collectively make the “juggling act” of a contemporary California principal extraordinarily difficult.
PUBLICATIONS & RESOURCES
Preparing and Sustaining Social Justice Educators spotlights the challenging and necessary work of fostering social justice in schools. Integral to this work are the teachers and school leaders who enact the principles of social justice—racial equity, cultural inclusivity, and identity acceptance—daily in their classrooms. This volume makes the case that high-quality public education relies on the recruitment, professional development, and retention of educators ready to navigate complex systemic and structural inequities to best serve vulnerable student populations.
gen/activist podcast invited Dr. Rita Suh to talk with them about her experience with educational inequity and her work to design a more equitable education system. gen/activist is an intergenerational podcast with women of color activists, advocates and pioneers for racial and social equity hosted by Virginia Cumberbatch, Meagan Harding and Dr. Sylvia Rousseau.
Dr. Suh co-authored a new book, “Establishing Equitable Learning Opportunities for all Students.”
Directions to purchase ($25):
- Go to www.grlcontent.com
- Scroll to bottom and click on “Purchase.”
- Select “University of California Los Angeles” as the institution, and then select the title: “Establishing Equitable Opportunities for all Students“
Dr. Orange co-authored an article titled Coaching for Equity in The Learning Forward Journal Vol. 40, No. 6 (Dec 2019).
Dr. Orange authored a chapter in the book, All Students Must Thrive: Transforming Schools to Combat Toxic Stressors and Cultivate Critical Wellness.