New Roles for Teacher Leaders
 "Just
close your door and teach." As a new teacher in the
mid-70s, I heard this advice often, as bewildering
new mandates were handed down, or site politics
caused dissention among the staff. I think this
epitomized the culture of schools at that time,
which prized teacher primacy and privacy in their
own classrooms, and the freedom (often termed
"academic freedom"), within their own courses or
grade levels, within very broad guidelines, to teach
pretty much whatever - and however - they pleased.
In too many schools, this thinking
persists among some educators, perhaps most often
among those of my generation. I loved teaching
idioms, and the one that comes to mind here is that
"the chickens have come home to roost." With changes
in school funding over the past several decades, and
an increasingly tangled web of strings attached to
the funding we get, the interest in what schools do
and how well we do it has simply exploded. Education
seemingly has become a favorite hobbyhorse of the
majority of politicians, and every one of them
fancies himself an expert, each with a different -
often simplistic - opinion about how to "fix it."
After all, everyone went to school, right?
Naturally, with the greatly increased attention of
lawmakers has come the equally increased attention -
mostly negative - of the media.
The Coleman Report Said It
First
 With
all this unwanted attention, the biggest chicken
that has come home to roost for us has been the
exposure of the widening chasm between the results
of schooling for middle class children versus poor
children. This is not news. The Coleman Report of
1966 brought this to national attention with its
findings that poverty was the greatest predictor of
student failure in school. The unfortunate inference
was that nothing could be done about it, but at that
time, little was known - that is, proven, through
large-scale studies conducted with
scientific/mathematical rigor - about what actually
worked in schools, regardless of the socioeconomic,
cultural, or ethnic background of the students'
homes, or the specific characteristics of the
learner, such as the presence of learning
disabilities, or lack of English proficiency.
What We Know Today
Now we know what works, and it isn't having every
teacher do whatever s/he wants. Probably the most
cutting-edge entity to first tackle questions of
what works in a large-scale, systematic way was
Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning.
McREL conducted a meta-analysis of decades of
studies of teachers' classroom practice, selecting
the most rigorous from an initial sampling of 4,000
such studies. From this, McREL's researchers
mathematically distilled the handful that were found
to have a statistically-significant impact on
student learning - measured by standardized test
scores. That research is described in Classroom
Instruction That Works by Robert Marzano, et al.
What Works in Schools, also by
Marzano, describes the 11 research-based factors
shown in another large-scale research project at
McREL to be essential for the larger context of an
effective school. School effectiveness and teacher
effectiveness are highly interrelated in how a
student learns. In "A New Era of School Reform,"
Marzano also described the marked difference between
student learning with a highly effective teacher in
a highly effective school versus a highly
ineffective school, as well as the impact on student
learning with highly ineffective teachers in both
kinds of schools.
More recently, School Leadership
That Works by Marzano, et al, identified what makes
an effective principal, based on McREL's leadership
research, and April 2009 is the expected publication
date for District Leadership That Works: Striking
the Right Balance by Robert Marzano and Tim Waters,
President and CEO of McREL, discussing the attendant
findings on district-level leadership.
Other researchers, such as Douglas
Reeves, first making news with the "90-90-90
studies," have shown that high-poverty schools can
also be high-performing, and the effective practices
and policies identified in those studies are
entirely consistent with McREL's findings. Many
states now have their own systems of identifying
schools that reach and teach all students.
Can I Still Close My Door
and Teach?
 So
what are the implications of all this research for
"academic freedom" and teachers' private practice?
One of the highest-impact factors of the 11
described in What Works in Schools is "Collegiality
and Professionalism." While the phrase may suggest
that teachers simply get along and are friendly
toward, and supportive of one another, the research
surfaced specific aspects of teacher interaction
that had a significant impact on learning and
achievement. Specifically, high impact on student
learning resulted from teachers in course-alike or
grade level teams discussing student work, quizzes,
and tests regularly throughout the year for the
purpose of focusing on improved teaching practices.
In the broader context of the
school as a whole, School Leadership That Works, an
extensive discussion in Chapter four is devoted to
the role of the leadership team. Effective
principals do not lead successful change alone.
During change with second-order (think "paradigm
shift") implications for teachers, certain aspects -
termed "responsibilities" - of the principal's
leadership were found to be even more important than
others. Another handful - four responsibilities -
were found to be often perceived by teachers as
"falling through the cracks" during second-order
change. The four were culture, communication, input,
and order. Chapter four discusses ways that the
teachers on the leadership team can help support the
change effort with specific actions in these areas
of leadership responsibility.
Leadership teams are not a new
institution in schools. However, what we now know
from research about what works in classrooms,
schools, and school leadership demands a new kind of
role for these teacher leaders. This includes not
only those officially designated as the leadership
team, but also department chairs, grade level
leaders, mentor teachers, academic coaches,
curriculum specialists, and other traditional
"titled" teacher leadership positions. It also calls
for teacher leaders who may hold no formal
positional role, but are highly regarded by
colleagues, to step up to a new way of leading and
influencing.
What Do These New Teacher
Leaders Do?
The research demands that teacher leaders work to
influence and support colleagues to improve teaching
practices in their classrooms; serving as models for
professional group learning and continuous
individual improvement. Those who are grade level
chairs or course-alike team leaders are called upon
to lead the work of their specific teams in publicly
sharing how students in each classroom are
progressing through the curriculum, using hard data
and the examination of student work. All teacher
leaders must also help create demand for changes in
school, department, and grade level policies that
increase student success, even those that are at the
expense of teacher preferences, comfort, and
convenience.
PLCs
 Richard
and Rebecca DuFour, international speakers and
authors of many books on Professional Learning
Communities, refer to this as a shift from a focus
on teaching to a focus on learning. When a teacher
makes a remark such as, "It's not my job to make
sure all the kids in my class are successful," this
is evidence that the teacher has not made that
shift. When a teacher leader is told, "You're
starting to sound a lot like an administrator,"
chances are that the teacher leader has made the
shift, but the colleague has not. Unfortunately, our
tradition in public education has been that only
administrators push for changes that benefit
students, and that it is the job of teacher leaders
to hold out for what is convenient and comfortable
for themselves and their colleagues. Teacher
contract language in many districts has been crafted
to guarantee certain "working conditions" for
teachers, which too often keep the focus riveted on
teaching, and make the shift to a focus on learning
inordinately difficult.
In schools that are working to
become increasingly effective PLCs - the vehicle
most suited to putting the research-based practices
and policies in place - teacher leaders are the
lynchpin of the work. The work of each grade level
or course-alike team must be led by a knowledgeable,
optimizing, competent teacher leader. Administrators
cannot lead these teams. In the first place, there
are not enough administrators to lead them all, nor
do administrators have the time to do so. Certainly
they do not have the knowledge of individual
students and the depth of curriculum expertise that
the teachers have. The principal must lead and
orchestrate the overall effort, assisted by the
assistant- or vice-principals in schools that have
them, but teachers must lead their own teams.
Characteristics of Effective
Teacher Leaders
What are the characteristics of an effective teacher
team leader? To fulfill this role, a teacher leader
must fulfill many of the research-based leadership
responsibilities of effective principals. Teacher
leaders have significant responsibility, but without
the formal authority of an administrator. However,
teacher leaders exert tremendous influence. I use
the term "teacher leaders" to describe those who are
effective in leading positive changes for student
learning. There are also, unfortunately, any number
of influential teachers in schools everywhere who
undermine these efforts, and they could also be
termed leaders, but of the most negative kind.
Like an effective principal, an
effective teacher leader has an extensive knowledge
of curriculum, effective instructional practices,
and student assessment. S/he stays on top of current
research, and continuously provides intellectual
stimulation for the team by sharing it with them,
and/or supporting the team in seeking out answers to
tough questions about practices and policies when
student learning is not improving. S/he possesses
strong ideals and beliefs about teaching and
learning, and is not afraid to stand up for them
with cynical colleagues. Effective teacher leaders
are courageous.
"Optimizer" is a research-based
leadership responsibility that includes both
cheerleading and accepting responsibility for
student performance. Instead of saying, "The
district is making us do this," an optimizer finds a
way to interpret the initiative in a positive way.
This enables the team to meet mandates much less
painfully, and more effectively for students. An
optimizing leader constantly reminds the team of
past successes, especially those that are a lot like
those they need to create and experience in the new
initiative. Over time, this creates something in the
team that researcher Roger Goddard termed "group
efficacy." Essentially, this is the conviction that
"together, we can accomplish what none of us may be
able to accomplish alone."
Although McREL's leadership
research focused on principals, effective teacher
leaders must, appropriately to their role, fulfill
many of the same research-based responsibilities -
optimizer, involvement in curriculum, instruction,
and assessment, intellectual stimulation,
ideals/beliefs, and others. McREL researchers
believe that two of the 21 responsibilities -
optimizer, and ideals/beliefs - cannot be
staff-developed into a principal. Certainly they
cannot be instilled in a teacher who lacks them,
either, and many of our burned-out colleagues have
obviously lost them, or perhaps lacked them when
they came to the profession. Teachers who are team
leaders - or who have any other kind of positional
status - and lack these responsibilities certainly
will do more harm than good in change initiatives to
improve learning for students.
The need to step up
 Clearly,
teacher leadership roles have changed dramatically
in the past three decades, and individual teachers
can no longer simply "close the door and teach." It
is my hope that teacher leaders everywhere will step
up to these challenges. With the convergence of all
the developments I discussed at the beginning of
this article, the very institution of American
public education has become endangered because of
the failure of so many students. The larger and
graver implication is that with the growing trend of
outsourcing low-end jobs, the American way of life
is increasingly at risk as the gap widens between
the haves and the have-nots.
Teacher leaders can lead the way
to a better future by stepping up - stepping up to
accept responsibility for the learning of each and
every student, to act as models for their
colleagues, and to guide and support them in the
continuous improvement of classrooms and schools. It
is a new role requiring courage and commitment, and
it is imperative that these roles are filled in
every school: if all the responsibility is left to
administrators, public education is doomed. If you
are a teacher reading this article to the end, I
hope that I have affirmed you if you are already
fulfilling this challenging role. If not, I hope I
have challenged your thinking, and I hope you will
be the next teacher leader to step up.
|
