Chapter 8: Enduring Unsustainable Leadership: Enacting a Pedagogy of Hope Through Mindfulness, Artful Inspiration, and Compassionate Leadership

This chapter serves as an apocalyptic moment of hope (Jensen, 2013) as it works to cultivate new cultural narratives of leading and learning that transpose¹ education as a life-generating practice. What sticks most with educational leaders like me are the embodied experiences of transcendence, those crystallized moments of working beyond the paralyzing effects of the pain (Braidotti, 2006) toward something more hopeful and positive—maybe even sustainable. This act of working beyond the frustration and pain each day engages our leadership potentia (positive power) (Braidotti, 2006, p. 239) and enables educator/leaders to begin to enact an ethics of sustainability, which flows into all aspects of our lives.