Author: Saadia Adnan
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Politics of Care in the Divide: Children of the Same City with Different Schoolbags and Uneven Futures
In this blog, I reflect on the quiet violence of everyday inequity—where some children walk through polished gates with books in hand, while others walk barefoot past garbage heaps, stitched into the margins of our education system. A politics of care—selective, silent, and deeply structural.
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Politics of Care Beyond the System: Answering the Call No One Made
That morning, I stood haunted by a quiet question: Why is it that those with no obligation often carry the deepest sense of responsibility? While state apparatuses perfected the art of procedural evasion, here was a man who had no reporting officer, no allocated budget, no official recognition—and yet, every morning, he showed up…
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Politics of Care and the Quiet Refusal in the Bureaucratic Labyrinth
It was 11:00 a.m. on a cold January morning, and I was only a few years into my principalship, though still considered a junior. I sat behind my desk, enveloped in the familiar routines of school life—petty urgencies, voices crackling through the intercom, stacks of paperwork waiting to be signed—when the call came. Calm in…
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Politics of Care and the Labyrinth of Policy: Discovering My Thirdspace
It was late April, 2008. The school year was gathering pace, and the tide of new admissions had begun to recede when two figures appeared at my office door — a worn-looking man and a tall, adolescent boy. The man, a Pushto[1] speaker, could not converse in Urdu, so I called on a staff member…
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Threads in the Labyrinth: Leadership, Legacy, and the Woven Indigenous Wisdom
A handwoven rug becomes more than an heirloom—it becomes a provocation. In this reflection, I explore how educational leadership, like handweaving, emerges from local memory, embodied wisdom, and refusal to forget. It is time to move beyond borrowed frameworks and honour the knowledge we carry in our bones.
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About the Reflexive Space
Welcome to the Reflexive Space, a place where I write from within the layered and often contested terrains of educational leadership and a woman leader, speaking from the margins. This blog grows from a long-standing unease with the way educational leadership is often portrayed—as a set of technical skills or neutral strategies, disconnected from the…
Saadia Adnan 