Leading With Resilience

The trio of editors of Leading With Resilience: Voices of Leaders in Challenging Times have deep understandings of the issues this book brings into focus – the complexity and nuance of fostering professional learning and personal-social growth of school leaders. Their insights stem from each having decades of extensive yet varied experiences guiding and supporting educational leaders at all levels, particularly during these uniquely challenging times from the COVID pandemic to the present. When a trio is in harmony, there are no discords. Additionally, however, through the chapter authors and school leaders who were studied and profiled, the editors have also orchestrated a diverse chorus of voices that cross generations, gender, and geographies. These vibrant voices throughout the book’s ten chapters are heard in three inter-related movements: Understanding Resilience through the Voices of Leaders, Professional Support Structures for Cultivating Resilience, and Cultivating Resilience as an Essential Leadership Practice. This book provides cogent, engaging, and research-based analyses that will stimulate generative discussions among educational leaders and scholars alike to more fully understand how resilience is critical to the equitable transformation of schools. It also makes clear, as implied in the Foreword, that songs of resilience and leadership are not sung solo.

-- Jabari Mahiri, Professor and Faculty Director of the Berkeley School of Education Leadership Programs and Brinton Family Chair in Urban Education, USA

Resilience is my nominee for the institutional and cultural virtue of the 21st century. This collection offers rich food for thought and action, inspiring and cautionary examples of leadership in stormy weather, and reminders that the best time to prepare for the next crisis is now.

-- Christopher M. Clark, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Michigan State University,