Collectively Building
Leadership and
Mentorship Capacity
Denise Johnson, Director of Instruction,
Vancouver School Board
Dr. Hartej Gill, Assistant Professor,
Department of Education, UBC
An overview of the
presentation:
A review of the process involved in co-creating,
implementing and researching a social justice mentorship
and leadership initiative between the Educational
Leadership and Administration program at the University
of British Columbia (UBC) and the Vancouver School
Board (VSB).
Bringing the Initiative to Life:
 Envisioned collaboratively between UBC/VSB
 Goal to bring current site based administrators and
leaders into a formal ‘Leadership and Mentorship’ role
with a cohort of UBC graduate students
 Focus on ‘Social Justice”
Institutionalizing an approach to
Mentorship and Leadership
 Focus area: Social Justice
 Finding a way for mentor-mentee relationships to be
sustained
 To build capacity in social justice leadership
The Agenda:
 Institutionalizing the Mentorship Initiative
 The Partnership and Selection of Mentors
 Feedback from the Graduate students
 Brief video clip of Initiative
 Video debrief
 Future directions of this Initiative
 Questions/Discussion
Institutionalizing the Mentorship
Initiative
 UBC/VSB Pilot Initiative- Collaboration
 How we came together (Our Story)
 The Design and Organization of the Course
- Inquiry driven
- Social Justice focused curriculum
- Relevant research/leadership topics for both
graduate students and administrator mentors
Mentor and Mentee Selection and
Partnerships
 Selection of Mentors
- Pilot initiative, build from strength
- Six mentors, 3 principals, 3 vice principals,
secondary and elementary
- Administrators who had previously
demonstrated knowledge and interest in social
justice issues and professional growth
Mentor and Mentee Selection
and Partnerships
 Mentorship matching
- graduate student input
- social justice curriculum focus areas
- mentors background and passions
- Areas of learning needs in the district –
Aboriginal education, 21st century learning
spaces, special education, etc.
The Leadership and Mentorship
Cohort Course Design
 Expectations of the students and mentors
 Course meetings and inquiry leadership projects
 School visitations
 Guest presenters
 Formal and informal mentor/mentee working times
 Formal sharing of leadership projects
Video
 UBC Graduate student production by Vincheth Sen
 Focus on reflections from the mentors
Debrief
Some key reflections from cohort participants on
the UBC/VSB mentorship aspect of EDST-532
 How (if at all) was the mentorship component of this
course valuable for you personally, professionally or
academically?
Reflections from Cohort
Participants
Value of complicating praxis
(theory/practice)
 “I valued the depth of conversations when social justice
theory and practice are complicated through the
literature and lived leadership experiences”. (5)
Reflections from Cohort
Participants
Reciprocal Teaching/Learning
 “The social justice focus of the course was crucial for me/us
personally, professionally, academically. I learned so much
about my own location of privilege/marginalization and my
responsibilities for advocacy and activism. I think the
administrators also valued this aspect and learned a lot – it
was great to see them talk about their learning in this area.
Made us feel like we weren’t the only ones who had so
much to learn about social justice leadership. Such a
complex area everyone needs more support in this area”.
(6)
Reflections from Cohort
Participants
Capacity Building
 “I was able to meet some pretty inspirational people
who were able to show a more ‘human’ side to
leadership….I gained a lot of experience and insight
and a very different perspective of the role. I never
thought of really going into administration, but because
of the experiences, comments and thoughts, they have
made me reconsider”. (4)
Key Finding From Both Mentors and Cohort
Participants
Systemic issues with regard to institutional
absences:
 “It would be important to include more administrators
with social justice and aboriginal education/leadership
locations, experience, and backgrounds…To see more
administrators from marginalized groups”. (7)
The Continuation and Evolvement
of this Initiative…
“The Gift that keeps on giving…”
What has transpired since this pilot initiative:
- conference presentations and opportunities
- presentations to UBC / VSB with an interest in
expansion of this model
- expansion and growth of the mentors and
graduate students in terms of diversity and
social justice work
The Second Cohort
Partnership
 What will continue?
 What has changed?
 The research involved
 Goal: To continue to be mutually beneficial
Our Hopes….
We hope that the research from this initiative will provide
an important model for social justice mentorship and
leadership as well as share the value of such a model for
social justice action within schools.
Questions/Discussion