Educational Leadership Through Love: Supporting Learners During COVID and Beyond — Lessons Learned

• In Event: Play, Poetry, and Leading With Love in Self-Study

Abstract

bell hooks (2001, 2003) defines love as a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, where all of these characteristics work (inter/intra)dependently. Enacting a pedagogy of love has proved to provide the space for student safety, social-emotional wellbeing, and relationships. During the past two years, unprecedented requirements of COVID to introduce, refine, and enact safety protocols for the wellbeing of students have become paramount. Through the process of self-study, as outlined by Samaras (2010, 2011), two high school administrators engaged in the process whereby they critiqued and interrogated the school’s culture and pedagogical practices in the hope of affording the possibility of bettering educational support and experiences for all learners—learning and growing from the crisis.

Authors

• Derek Markides, Foothills School Division
  Presenting Author

• Vincent Hunter
  Presenting Author