Chapter 3: Social Justice Relationships: Embracing a Process of Searching and Unfinishedness

Considering the continued failure of school improvements efforts (Sarason, 2004) and “inadequate to appalling” quality of university leadership preparation programs (Levine, 2005), leadership for social justice has never been of greater importance. This chapter suggests social justice is more than becoming aware of and implementing cultural competencies. It asserts social justice leaders must engage in deep collective critical reflection known as the Pedagogy of Collective Critical Consciousness (Garza, 2015) to fashion relationships of authenticity, reciprocity, and equity with the aim of claiming space for a liberatory education. This chapter highlights mentorship, which is reconceptualized as comradeship (Freire, 2000) as a strategy for developing socially justice leadership. We share their own testimonios to demonstrate how mentorship can be reconceptualized to privilege humanizing relationships in educational leadership. We contend our praxis of comradeship enables us to collectively fight against the dehumanization of education and navigate towards a more socially just world.