Catherine Wong, Associate Director & Manager of Programs attended a virtual workshop with Kevin Kumashiro, Ph.D. on transformative frameworks for educational leadership
What if the very act of supporting a scholar through their graduate school application is fundamentally transforming educational institutions? That’s the powerful realization that emerged from Catherine Wong’s three-day virtual intensive with Kevin Kumashiro, Ph.D. this January. Over the course of the workshop, “Impactful Leadership of Schools of Education in Difficult Times,” Kumashiro didn’t just share leadership strategies, he challenged participants to fundamentally rethink what it means to lead for justice. His central provocation? That we must name and engage with contradictions rather than resolve them, that resistance is inevitable and must be worked through rather than avoided, and that transformative change happens through collective movements, not siloed actions. For those of us committed to supporting aspiring scholars at IRT, these insights landed with particular resonance. After all, when we sit with a scholar crafting their personal statement, aren’t we doing exactly what Kumashiro describes: historicizing their journey to reveal enduring paradoxes, reframing their experiences to illuminate what others might miss and creating space to work through the discomfort of unlearning limiting narratives about who belongs in graduate education?
The workshop’s most transformative framework, the EDJE (Education Colleges for Justice & Equity) model offers a blueprint that extends far beyond institutional leadership and speaks directly to our everyday practice. Kumashiro emphasized that addressing injustice requires simultaneous work at three levels: Individual (personal biases and actions), Institutional (the structures and policies that shape our work), and Ideological (the “common sense” assumptions that normalize inequality). Think about how this shows up in our IRTA and SOPA relationships: we’re not just helping individual scholars craft stronger applications (individual level), we’re also questioning admissions criteria that systematically undervalue certain experiences (institutional level), and we’re challenging the very notion of what makes someone “graduate school material” (ideological level). As Kumashiro powerfully stated, “If only doing anti-bias training with the admissions team, how are scholars being viewed by faculty, their peers? Where’s the ideology shift, paradigm shift? Need to shift all 3.” Perhaps most importantly, he reminded us that this work inherently involves learning through resistance. Our scholars come to us with internalized narratives about their worthiness, just as we carry our own investments in existing systems. The question isn’t whether resistance will emerge, it’s whether we create intentional space to work through it together.
Here’s what this means for our work at IRT
Supporting aspiring scholars isn’t just about application materials, it’s about practicing transformative leadership at every scale. When we recognize hidden value in experiences others underestimate, when we create space for authentic stories while acknowledging the discomfort of reframing dominant narratives, when we build collective capacity rather than focusing solely on individual achievement, we’re doing the work of institutional transformation one student, one conversation, one application at a time. Kumashiro’s final insight resonates deeply: we must maintain hope while planning pragmatically, naming contradictions while moving forward, centering emotions while building concrete capacity. As one workshop participant reflected, we’re all“relationship builders, unapologetically embedding values, prioritizing intergenerational stakeholder engagement” in a climate that too often demeans this essential work. The question Kumashiro leaves us with is both simple and profound: How will we story our leadership arc? How will we build capacity not just in ourselves and our students, but in our broader community and movement? The answers to these questions will shape not just who gets into graduate school, but who gets to imagine themselves as belonging there in the first place.
For more information about Kevin Kumashiro’s work and the Education Deans for Justice and Equity Framework, please visit kevinkumashiro.com
Institute for Recruitment of Teachers 