A Reflection on Teacher Leadership

Teacher leadership remains a fluid, ever evolving and an ever-important facet of education. Without teacher leaders, schools will lack the necessary man power to accomplish all of the items necessary for schools to function, i.e., start and follow through with initiatives, include and communicate adequately with families, differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all students and create a safe, engaging and inspiring learning environment. By using different leadership methods, such as shared leadership, schools can informally designate leadership roles to teachers, thus reducing significant burden on administrative staff (Nappi, 2014). Simply put principals cannot meet all of the leadership needs, they need support from teacher leaders as teacher leadership affect the ways school operate and the outcomes of teaching and learning (York-Barr & Duke, 2004). “The work of leadership is to create the conditions that support continuous professional learning that results in improved classroom practice such that students engage and learn high levels” (Wahlstrom & York-Barr, 2011, p. 25).

Becoming a Teacher Leader

In order for me to become an adequate teacher leader I realize that I need to possess certain leadership skills. Ausburn (2016) articulates these skills include, but are not limited to:

• Promote a clear vision

• Take initiative

• Persevere in the face of obstacles

• Analyze and make program improvements

• Build support with parents and community

• Create a team spirit among the faculty

• Provide support and encouragement for other teachers

• Facilitate communication and reflection

• Celebrate and recognize program successes

• Use alternative strategies to build skills

• Exercise patience (p. 1)

Before this course, I exercised patience regularly as a special education teacher and I persevere in the face of obstacles. Additionally, I have always been strong at analyzing situations, proposing improvements, and providing support and encouragement for other teachers. Through the readings and presentations of this course, I have grown to learn the importance of using alternative strategies to build skills and build support with parents and community members. Furthermore, by executing our leadership initiative I have developed the skill of taking initiative, creating team spirit among my team and other faculty, facilitating communication and reflection as well as promoting a clear vision for improving behavior management in our fourth-grade cohort.

I recognize that I tend toward servant leadership and I need to augment and diversify my leadership skill bank. In light of the abundance of knowledge that I have gained from this course and the skills that I am developing, complications in achieving optimum leadership performance still exist for me. Namely my lack of confidence in leading other adults could prove to be the major obstacle that could impede my performance as a teacher leader. Frequently in meetings or when collaborating with a group of colleagues, I tend to deem my input as lacking or not entirely accurate for the matters at hand. Though I view my reflective practices very high, in my mind I do not ‘think on my feet’ in the moment very well, therefore, I tend not to speak up. Subsequently I reflect on collaborative opportunities by telling myself, “I should have said ‘this’” or “I should have done ‘that’”. I recognize wholeheartedly that my contributions during collaboration remain valuable, and though my ideas may not always come to fruition, I do contribute positively to improvements made at our school. I need to build greater confidence and eradicate misconceptions in my mind in order to become the effective teacher leader that my school needs.

I can achieve this by using relevant data to steer the ideas that I propose. Perhaps relying on my ideas alone contributed to my lack of confidence. Now I am beginning to understand that ideas coupled with appropriate and sufficient data offers a more solid foundation onto which I can perhaps submit a proposal and use more diverse data to drive an initiative for improvement.

Communication and Collaboration

Communication and collaboration will always be the vehicles by which any initiative for improvement will carry forth. Participating in different collaborative leadership frameworks will serve as the channel by which I can communicate and collaborate. After studying different models of leadership collaboration, I recognize that best practice will include utilizing multiple models. For instance, the Professional Learning Community can be optimally used at building level as we collectively address school wide concerns (DuFour, 2014). I can join a Community of Practice consisting of different special education teachers, specifically resource room teachers, from across the district and/or across the region to share ideas, glean knowledge and garner information (Niesz, 2007). Furthermore, the Critical Friends Group has the potential to prune my teaching practices by offering up necessary formal critique and analytical feedback that may not otherwise be presented in other collaborative settings (Cox, 2010).

Throughout any collaboration, I recognize that supportive communication remains necessary to keep attitudes positive and morale strong. Teaching and learning can evoke the starkest of emotions for both the teacher and the learner. That said, offering supportive communication to my colleagues will aid in the collaboration efforts for improving growth and learning for all students. Additionally, upward supportive communication remains important. Though not considered my colleague, administration can, too, be prone to discouragement and loss of morale when the minutia of daily operations becomes too burdensome. Offering supportive communication to my principals can perhaps help alleviate some of that burden to help better achieve optimal results for our school (De Nobile, 2013).

Leadership for Student Learning

Teacher leaders can and do make a positive impact at our school. Our English Language Learners (ELL) facilitator heads up our school’s ‘Madrona Welcomes the World’ campaign where we spotlight a cultural heritage every month. This spotlight includes bringing up students from said cultural region (this month is Southeast Asia and Pacific Islands) during our monthly assembly, collaborating with the librarian to showcase books and paraphernalia in the window display and centering our Family Art Fridays around the art in that culture. Besides these efforts, we have roughly six other teachers and para-educators working tirelessly on the Family Engagement team to include families of students into our school’s curricular and extra-curricular activities. Additionally, we have our school’s behavior management teams (I serve here) to provide ideas, support and systems to improve our school wide behavior concerns. All of these teacher leaders work outside of his/her expected curricular obligations to help create and sustain a more positive learning environment for students and staff alike.

Conclusion

This course will live in my practice for the remainder of my career because it managed to articulate and bring to light so many important facets of education I deemed intangible. Reading about the different models of leadership helped me identify myself as an informal leader in our school. Before this course, I never deemed myself a leader nor did I perceive that I could become a leader. Now I understand that by properly using communication, systems, protocols, etc., effectively and efficiently, I can transform myself into the teacher leader that my school needs and that my practice desires.

References

Ausburn, J. (2016). Part 4: Leadership Skills. Module 2 Presentation. Indianapolis, IN: American College of Education.

Cox, E. (2010). Critical friends groups: Learning experiences for teachers. School Library Monthly, 32-34.

De Nobile, J. (2013). Upward supportive communication for school principals. Leading & Managing 19(2), 34-53.

DuFour, R. (2014). Harnessing the power of PLCs. Educational Leadership 71(8), 30-35.

Nappi, J. (2014). The teacher leader: Improving schools by building social capital through shared leadership. Impact of Educational Reforms, 29-33.

Niesz, T. (2007). Why teacher networks (can) work. Phi Delta Kappa, 605-610.

Wahlstrom, K. L., & York-Barr, J. (2011). Leadership: Support and structures make the difference for educators and students. Journal of Staff Development 32(4), 22-25.

York-Barr, J., & Duke, K. (2004). What do we know about teacher leadership? Findings from two decades of scholarship. Review of Educational Research, 255-316.