Making all children winners: confronting social justice issues to redeem America's soul

Abstract

Purpose“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound with mine, then come, let's work together”. These words of Lill Watson, an indigenous activist, frame the context for this article. The purpose of this research was to examine the historical evolution of “grassroots movement leadership” model and its incarnation in the present time. A corollary purpose focused on how this model can transform urban schools by focusing on “movement” efforts of one large urban school district that espouses the values of this form of leadership. As part of a larger reform effort, the district engaged students, parents, teachers, school leaders and communities in becoming equal partners in urban school reform in an effort to co‐create schools and communities that might lead all of us toward liberation and learning.Design/methodology/approachTheory and practice come together through the lens of three researchers who operate from a similar philosophical stance for educational transformation, best described in the words of grassroots leader Ella Baker, who said, “We are the people we have been waiting for”. Qualitative research procedures (i.e. interviews, field notes and observations) were used to generate data on a “movement model” for grassroots leadership. This model is best demonstrated in various youth‐oriented initiatives (i.e. Student Exhibits, Action‐Research Projects, Algebra Project) within a local urban school district. This model, influenced by Civil Rights legend Robert Moses, has implications for educational leadership and urban school reform and simultaneously grounds our scholarship and research in liberation epistemology.FindingsIt is argued that children are often the victims of ideas, structures, and actions that come to be seen by the majority of people as wholly natural, preordained, and working for their own good, when in fact they are constructed and transmitted by powerful minority interests to protect the status quo that serves those interest. The words of Ella Baker epitomize the authors' struggles to steer away from models of hierarchal leadership in education and stay connected to the practice of excavating community wisdom through the “Movement Model”.Originality/valueThis study bears a substantive argument for community leadership efforts that focus on “grassroots leadership”. It further fosters new insights and propositions for future research in the form of a “Movement Leadership Model”.