Question: In her interview, Moller discusses the role of the principal in teacher leadership. What have you observed in your experiences? Did you observe principals or other administrators supporting teachers in leadership roles, sharing the responsibility for providing leadership to initiatives in the school with teachers, engaging in what we call "distributed leadership" with teachers or other specialists? Moller also includes a list of three things she thinks need to occur in the future to promote teacher leadership (near the end of the interview transcript). Think about these three things and whether or not you think they would make a difference from your perspective.
Response:
This is a hard one for me to answer because I am not based in a K-12 school. My experience in a K-12 school is minimal, I have partnered with teachers to provide media workshops in their classrooms, and two years ago I volunteered as an Americorps worker in the local high school 2 days a week, but I have never worked as a teacher in one. During most of my experiences in a K-12 school I worked directly with individual teachers. I did not have any idea as to what the culture of teacher leadership was in those schools. In my work as an ABE teacher, my supervisor does an excellent job of encouraging teacher leadership. One way he does this is by providing opportunities for teachers to travel for trainings in order to learn new trends and techniques. For example, last summer, two fellow ABE teachers attended a special needs conference in the Midwest. As part of the training, those teachers were required to present a workshop to the ABE teachers in our region that covered the information they learned. In relation to technology training, we have several Technology Integration Specialist teachers in our region who regularly teach workshops to their teacher peers and have the opportunity to attend ongoing technology trainings on a national level.
In response to the three things Ms. Moller thinks needs to occur in order to promote teacher leadership, I agree. I think that these three things are common sense thinking that would make a difference. I have always been interested in education, but I made a concious effort as an undergrad (and new graduate) to pursue alternative, non-school based, teaching opportunities. One reason I am not a teacher in the K-12 system is because I have always been concerned with job satisfaction in the public schools. For right or wrong, I have always perceived the school system as a top-down bureaucracy that does not appeal to me. I think the “measurement of and attention to working conditions in schools” and that results would be taken seriously would go a long way to changing the perception of the school system in this country. That perception change, paired with an opportunity for teachers to “advance” in ways that aren’t purely administrative and see their salaries increase as a result of added responsibility and training could also improve teacher retention and recruitment, along with job satisfaction.
Question: How do Professional Development Schools (PDSs) and/or PLCs create opportunities for teachers to become leaders? What examples of teacher leadership do you see in your PDS, or what do you think might emerge if your school were to become a PDS? What examples of PLCs do you see in your school or organization? Have teacher leaders emerged from these PLCs?
Response:Professional Development Schools create opportunities for teachers to become leaders by integrating leadership into the school day. Teacher leadership is demonstrated on a daily basis by involving every classroom and teacher in new teacher training. In addition, it encourages teacher leadership by simply being a model of effective teacher collaboration. Professional Learning Communities create teacher leaders by building a collaborative culture that give teachers a voice in their curriculum implementation. PLC’s are continuously evaluating the effectiveness of their collaborative teaching and contributing creative solutions to improve their teaching. Although I have not experienced either a PDS nor a PLC (although I think I would appreciate, benefit and welcome them into my professional career), I have always worked best with a group of people to “throw ideas around with” and I like the idea of formal, collaborative assessments and benchmarks for teacher effectiveness. I don’t know if my local k-12 schools have anything of this nature, but when my son was in Kindergarten in a different school, they had just implemented once-a-week, early dismissals in order for the teachers to have group planning sessions. I now assume these were PLCs, and as a parent I liked the idea that the 3 kindergarten teachers met once a week to talk about classroom planning etc. In my current position, I am the only full-time ABE instructor for the county, although there is another ABE instructor that works 7 hours a week. We are both new to the job, and the few times we do have time together are always super productive and helpful for both of us. We have both expressed interest in having time that was set aside for us to do joint curriculum planning, unfortunately budgetary constraints combined with are an issue.
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