Redefining School Leadership with Ann Ishimaru

When we think of school leaders, we usually picture principals, superintendents, maybe the school board. My guest today says that that idea of leadership is far too narrow. The leaders we need if we're going to make schools work for all students are not just the ones with formal titles and degrees – they’re also parents and students, teachers and community members. In this vision of leadership, the role of a principal or district leader is not to figure things out by themselves but instead to work with folks from all these groups to create solutions together. In other words, educational leadership is a kind of partnership work.

Today I’m sharing my interview with Ann Ishimaru. Ann is a professor at the University of Washington College of Education, and a prominent scholar of educational leadership. But she is definitely not your typical professor. She spends a lot of her time out in the schools, partnering with principals, collaborating with families. She's a former science teacher and organizer, a mother, and co-founder of cultural organization based around the art of traditional Japanese drumming, or Taiko.

Ann offers a vision of leadership as a collective effort. She describes what it looks like when families and educators become “co-designers” of education initiatives. And she dives into her most recent book, edited with her colleague Dr. Decoteau Irby, which explores how a new crop of district leaders across the country have been working to build equity into our school systems.

Find Dr. Ishimaru and Dr. Irby's book, Doing the Work of Equity Leadership for Justice and Systems Change at Teachers College Press

Sign up for Ann's newsletter at https://annishimaru.kit.com/9d7b4a623e

Learn more about Ann's work with the Family Leadership Design Collaborative at https://familydesigncollab.org/

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Partnership Work is an independent podcast, produced with the support of Urban Media Arts in Malden, MA. Visit them at https://urbanmediaarts.org/

The music for Partnership Work is Revolution, composed by John August Pregler and Bernard James Perry II.