Using poetry to reach and teach future educational leaders for social justice

The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of teaching concepts of social justice in educational leadership preparation programs, share teaching strategies from the literature, and provide new examples of graduate student activities and products with the intention to push the field forward and invite others to join the dialogue. We describe how we have used poetry in our classrooms to better understand: the potency of self-reflection; the importance of understanding heritage; the value of unpacking privilege and power, and; the responsibility of recognizing and deactivating stereotypes in the process of reaching and teaching future leaders for social justice