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?
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Institute for Recruitment of Teachers 