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This chapter explores the potential impact of middle leaders on their learning environments and on learning outcomes, focusing primarily on authenticity in leadership in schools. In outstanding schools, middle leaders are very active and visible in their curriculum areas, as well as more broadly around the school. They work together to build leadership capacity through the promotion of shared leadership practices based on a collective ethic of responsibility. They actively influence others to break down silos between departments and teams within a school. It is through the quality of their engagements that they project, maintain, and sustain their presence and influence with and on others. The work of authentic middle leaders is transformational insofar as they promote and support transformational teaching and learning for their students.

This chapter details a cultural relevance of text project in-service K-12 teachers engage in during their graduate literacy methods class. Through this project, teachers, who work with emergent bilinguals, learn how to select culturally relevant texts using a rubric. They read their selection with a student and reflect on the experience. Four important conclusions came from an analysis of the projects teachers carried out. Teachers found that their students made connections and were more engaged when reading culturally relevant books. Participants found the rubric helpful in identifying what they should look for in a culturally relevant text. In addition, through this project, the teachers discovered that their libraries tended to lack culturally relevant literature. Finally, participant teachers learned more about their emergent bilingual students through the process of finding and reading culturally relevant stories. While this project was carried out by a limited number of teachers in urban environments, it has implications for teachers of emergent bilingual students in other contexts.

Prisoners experience high rates of chronic physical health problems, poor mental health and high rates of substance misuse. However, little is known about what happens to prisoners after release from custody, except that many re‐offend and a disproportionate number die from drug overdose, suicide, accidents and other causes. Using a prospective design, 160 prisoners in Queensland, Australia were interviewed prior to release then 1 and 4 months post‐release. Most prisoners had a history of substance misuse and many reported poor mental health pre‐release. The prevalence of these problems was also high post‐release and there was a high degree of continuity of impairment. These findings add support to calls for (a) population‐level pre‐release planning and post‐release support for prisoners returning to the community, and (b) screening and targeted intervention for those most at risk of poor post‐release outcomes.