Mainstream educational leadership has lost much of its footing as a
progressive practice. More managers than wisdom-keepers, educational
leaders no longer have authority to critique the toxicities of the
present and imagine alternative futures. In public schools and higher
education, the neoliberal emphasis on measurable outcomes shrinks the
radius of concern for what educational leaders are leading toward.
There's a planet missing in mainstream discourses of sustainability in
educational leadership, and this book aims to resituate the work of
teaching/leading in the place where we stand.
In a period of overlapping social/environmental crises, this book takes
inspiration from Robert Jensen's call for teachers and intellectual
leaders to "go apocalyptic", i.e., to face head-on the calamities that
threaten our shared future on Earth. When leadership is situated within
an apocalyptic context, we are called to reflect on educational
injustice and unsustainability, while envisioning more hopeful futures.
The work of apocalyptic leadership, though, isn't all about future
vision; it's also about attending to what hurts and what heals in the
present moment. Intended for aspiring and practicing educational leaders
in both K-12 and higher education settings, as well as scholars in the
fields of social justice and sustainability, this book begins mapping
and traversing the affective, spiritual, pragmatic, and organizational
geography of apocalyptic leadership. Such leadership holds dear the
radical belief in our shared capacity to work gracefully with the
painful awareness that tremendous challenges are inevitable, and yet, we
have every opportunity for inching toward a more habitable future.
