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This book seeks to understand how school leaders cope with and respond to significant dilemmas in their practice and what the experience means to them. It is based on stories from conversations with self-described wounded leaders. By their accounts, these experiences are the kind that wound to the core (what some leaders call their integrity or identity). In these stories, leaders struggle to make sense of their wounding experiences. The first part of the book sets the stage for leadership wounding, describing chronic tensions that characterize school life and create a host for wounding, presenting three core understandings that form the foundation of the book, and describing the meanings of wounding as imbedded in the realms of mythology, medicine, and the person. The second part relates the stories of self-described wounded educational leaders. The third part explores questions raised in the stories and particular lessons learned, discussing the place of story in leadership. It examines the wounded leader as a wounded storyteller, addressing the implications of wounding for leadership preparation and professional development and offering hope for finding a "cure" for leadership wounding in the future. Two appendixes present research methodology and a case story. (Contains 123 references.) (SM)

This book offers suggestions for the broad integration of leadership training and opportunities into school programs. It is hoped that such an approach will allow educators to tap into the networks of peer influence that exist among adolescents and to realize the goal of citizenship education. The chapters are: chapter 1, "Introduction: The Challenge of Student Leadership" (Judith A. Boccia), suggesting that broader integration of leadership training and opportunities into school programs will allow educators to tap into the rich networks of peer influence that exist among adolescents and to give reality to the goal of citizenship education; chapter 2, "The Human Relations Club: Student Leaders Addressing Issues of Multicultural Education and Social Action" (Scott Willison), discussing how one Connecticut high school has empowered students to take a leadership role in discouraging prejudice and discrimination; chapter 3, "The Student Leadership Institute" (R. E. Daniel), describing the reform effort of one high school that led to the establishment of the Student Leadership Institute; chapter 4, "Setting an Example Worth Following: The Challenge of Teaching Leadership" (Heather H. Ordover), discussing urban high schools struggling with the question of how to turn students into leaders; chapter 5, "We Have Ideas: Students' Voices in Restructuring" (Cynthia J. Reed, David Bechtel), showing that students can make valuable contributions and serve as partners in the restructuring efforts of schools and in doing so, take on active leadership roles; chapter 6,"Empowering Students to Address Current Issues: The Vermont Governor's Institute on Public Issues and Youth Empowerment" (John Ungerleider, Ange DiBenedetto), describing students of a summer institute feeling confident, inspired, and motivated to take on community-service learning projects; chapter 7, "Understanding Student Leadership Through Peer Mediation" (Patricia Ensell Trela, Michael J. Conley), presenting a preliminary study that explores the possible linkage between the skills developed by peer mediators as a result of peer mediation training and program participation, and student leadership; chapter 8, "The Development of Nontraditional Student Leadership" (Tracey Schaub, Sukanya Lahiri, John Laurence Auerbach), exploring student leadership through the eyes of two students who made their impact outside the traditional roles offered in most high schools; chapter 9, "The View of the Principal's Desk" (Chuck Christensen), presenting the activities, words, and philosophies of two high school principals as they cope with the challenges of supporting student leadership in two very different school settings; and chapter 10, "Leading Lessons" (Thomas O'Neil), attempting to answer a series of questions about student leadership that complicate its expression and promotion in schools. (An index is included.) (RJM)