Christa Boske – författare

Educational Leadership: Building Bridges Among Ideas, Schools, and Nations breaks new ground by connecting many ideas to educational leadership that have traditionally been discussed as part of leaders’ contexts by connecting them and showing how international issues can unite scholars and educators in action. The book draws on the authors’ extensive experiences in U.S. public schools, research in the field of educational leadership, and programmatic practices to prepare school leaders to commit themselves to social justice.

The book provides a forum for this important work in the ongoing conversation about equity and excellence in education, and the role(s) leadership can assume in building bridges among ideas, people, and educational organizations. Chapters center on creating spaces for vigorous dialogue. Authors call upon scholars and practitioners to reconsider their intent to empower those who live on the margins. The dynamic approaches discussed throughout the book urge school leaders, teachers, school community members, and those who prepare administrators to look within and build bridges between themselves and those they serve.

This book captures the experiences of children in U.S. public schools and how they utilize artmaking to disrupt injustices they face. These first-time authors, who represent school children, parents, teachers, and community leaders, focus on artmaking for social change. Their first-tellings provide thought-provoking insights regarding the impact of artmaking on their capacity to promote social justice-oriented work in K-12 school communities.

As the U.S. continues to experience significant demographic shifts, including increases of homeless children, children identified with learning differences, thousands of refugees and immigrants, children living in poverty, children in foster care, and increasing numbers of Children of Color, those who work in schools will need to know how to address disparities facing these underserved communities. These U.S. demographic shifts and issues facing underserved populations provide opportunities for children, teachers, families, and school leaders to deepen their understanding regarding their experiences within their communities and K-12 schools as well as ways to interrupt oppressive practices and policies they face every day through art as social action.

Authors call upon decision-makers who serve children from disenfranchised populations to utilize artmaking to create equal access for children to explore social justice, equity, reflective practices, and promote authentic social action and change through artmaking. Authors reflect on this artmaking process as a catalyst for increasing consciousness, creating imaginative possibilities, and facilitating meaningful change in schools. Authors urge readers to create equal access art spaces to build bridges among schools, families, and communities. Together, they contend that artmaking promotes courageous conversations and encourages the exploration of what it means to live this significant work.

High school students, teachers, community members, and leaders come together in this innovative book to share the profound influence of artmaking and justice- oriented work. Authors paint vibrant images of being empowered and engaging in social change. Throughout their art-based meaning making, authors pose critical questions and unlock possibilities. Their first-tellings regarding the power of art provide readers with a lens to understand how they navigate injustices they endure and ways in which artmaking is a vehicle for transformation. Their artmaking is a call for change.

Authors emphasize how artmaking bridges relationships and brings diverse community members together with purpose. Together, they engage in new understandings of self and other. Authors identify how their arts-based collaborations publicly showcase their justice-oriented work, but more importantly, promote possibility and hope. Youth explore how artmaking plays a vital role in promoting collective efficacy and engaging diverse communities in social transformation.

Artmaking mobilizes people. And once activated, these authors utilize their newly cultivated communities to foster justice-oriented work throughout schools and communities. Their justice-oriented artmaking affords community members opportunities to respond in new ways by embracing community strengths and students’ lived experiences. This authentic collaboration empowers the artmaker and community to promote justice-oriented work and practices centered on diversity and inclusivity.

Actively listening and building bridges among students, teachers, and communities provides learners with authentic opportunities to be involved, invested, and ignite meaningful change. This book celebrates students'' first-tellings of their experiences as ''students with differences'' in schools. Throughout the authors'' school experiences, they yearned for spaces to share their expertise, thoughts, ideas, talents, and aspirations. These authors emphasize the need to recognize student voice, which they contend, should permeate all levels of collaborative work in schools. These collaborations include, but are not limited to the integration of diverse assessments, differentiation, curriculum design, arts-based projects, inquiry, establishing school policies, and evaluating daily practices in schools.

What students have to say matters. However, authors reiterate how often schools attempted to silence them, especially due to the label assigned to them: ''disabled.'' How students learn matters. What students learn matters. Their untapped sense of wonderment plays a pertinent role in their growth and development. Together, these authors utilize artmaking to express how they navigate oppressive systems, such as school. They contend there is a need for K-12 students to co-create knowledge and build bridges among themselves, educators, families, and diverse communities. Their new ways of knowing through this artmaking process afforded them with a renewed relevance for learning and the need to promote authentic school reform. Bottom line: students matter. Their leadership, creativity, and capacity to think system-wide are essential to classroom, school, curriculum, and community needs. These young authors stress the need to continue this significant work and emphasize the power of student voice through artmaking.

Youth titled this book Personal Truths because they shared their personal journeys, what they think of themselves, what others think of them, and who they are when their masks are removed. Artists encourage us to recognize personal truths may differ from what society values and cultural conditioning. Intuitively, authors understand what it means to live their truth. They discovered what matters most to them and expressed how they feel when navigating these justice-oriented issues.

Putting their truths into words was difficult. Their lives, insights, and experiences were shaped by the way in which they live their lives, their truths. Artists encourage us to utilize their artmaking to make decisions based on love versus fear. They want each of us to live according to what we value and to look within and reflect how lived experiences shape who we become. Youth recognized their source of power came from within and deepened not only their sense of self, but internalizing self-worth begins from within.

Through their artmaking, authors honor their intuition, insights, thoughts, and feelings around a myriad of issues ranging from the need for culturally responsive teachers/leaders to police brutality to the need for children to be loved as their authentic selves as well as many more justice-oriented issues they deem significant to their development. Their artmaking provided space to deepen their understanding of how personal truths influence their decision making, values, beliefs, and actions. Their artmaking reinforces their beliefs and personal growth; in other words, these artists concluded the need to live their truths.

This powerful and moving artmaking taps into what youth deem significant. To be true to oneself suggests each of us be conscious of our values, beliefs, responses, and motives. As youth deepened their ways of knowing, they discovered how often society influenced their sense of self and how often society seemed insensitive and even contradicted their values and beliefs. For these artists, it was the first time they were provided space to explore how schools, communities, and society influence how they make sense of the world. Artmaking restored and strengthened that personal awareness.