Lead with Me

A Principal's Guide to Teacher Leadership

Anita Pankake, Chuey Abrego

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138785588
• eBook ISBN: 9781317664321
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Lead With Me, 2nd Edition provides courageous principals with the tools for partnering with teachers in the student learning and improvement process. This practical guide explains the skills teacher leaders need and offers advice for principals who wish to engage teachers in learning these skills. Packed with stories and examples from educators in the field, this second edition explores how to:

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• Build mutual trust and accountability with teachers and faculty

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• Encourage and facilitate professional development

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• Carefully manage the distribution of power and authority by involving faculty members in decision-making.

The revised second edition provides a variety of helpful tools—PowerPoint presentations, reflection questions, activities for professional learning sessions, and annotated lists of additional resources—that can be downloaded as eResources: www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138785588.

Part 1 Taking Responsibility for Intentional Leadership

Part 1 Taking Responsibility for Intentional Leadership

The Framework for Intentional Leadership, located on the opposite page, is a graphic interpretation of the principal leadership promoted in the first and now second editions of this book. Within the figure are circles representing the principles on which the original work is based: building positive relationships, distributing power and authority, and aligning teacher leadership and professional learning. When these three conditions converge, teacher leadership emerges and thrives, as denoted in the overlap of the circles. A portion of each of these three circles stands alone, indicating that some concepts and activities within the area are unique to that principle. Additionally, a portion of each of the three circles overlaps with the others. This overlapping indicates the interdependency of many of the concepts and activities in all three circles. None of this will happen, however, without the principal’s purposeful actions in each of the three inner circles. Intentional leadership is on the outside of the graphic, in order to represent how it drives the development of teacher leadership.

Part 1 consists of three chapters that provide the knowledge base needed to make the best use of the recommended actions proposed in the other parts of the book. In Chapter 1, “Ushering In a New View of Leading and Learning,” the rationale for the Framework for Intentional Leadership is presented. In Chapter 2, “Investigating the Vision, the Roles, and the Reasons,” the Markham Middle School (MMS) vignette, used in the first edition, describes a school where teacher leadership is well developed and, thus, clarifies the vision. We have added a scenario intended to update and extend the original MMS story. The focus remains on Markham Middle School (MMS) but shifts to Theresa’s continuing development as both a teacher leader and a developer and supporter of teacher leaders. This is followed by definitions of teacher leadership, and descriptions of those who emerge as teacher leaders, the roles they take, and the benefits of teacher leadership to individual teachers, the school, and the principal. Chapter 3, “Developing a Culture of Continuous Improvement,” begins with a scenario chronicling Theresa’s teacher leadership journey and provides an overview of the complexity of introducing change in a school culture due to the diversity of individual teachers’ reactions. The principal is offered interventions to consider for dealing with this diversity of reactions.

1 Ushering In a New View of Leading and Learning

“Although some teacher leaders may seek administrative roles, most teachers in leadership roles do not view these opportunities as steps up the ladder to the administrative ranks. These teachers want to remain close to students and are willing to assume leadership roles that will affect decisions related to their daily practice with those students.”

Katzenmeyer & Moller in Awakening the Sleeping Giant

Whereas the old models of leadership may have encouraged building the capacity of a single person, specifically the campus principal, the problems facing education today require principals and teacher leaders to work side by side as a community of practitioners.

What is teacher leadership? How is it defined? Why is teacher leadership important in a school? Are teachers comfortable talking about teacher leadership with other teachers and campus administrators? What role does a principal play in developing and supporting teacher leadership? How does a typical campus go about identifying, building capacity of and supporting teacher leaders? What actions or specific strategies can a principal carry out across the campus in order to enable teachers to lead? These and other questions are answered in this second edition of Lead with Me.

The initial hard work in Lead with Me by Moller and Pankake published in 2006 focused on the premise that teacher leadership plays an integral part in a successful campus, and is best supported when principals are deliberate in their efforts in creating the right conditions so that shared leadership flourishes.

The second edition continues to acknowledge that Intentional Leadership in managing and leading a school is not just the work of one person, namely the principal. The principal is the person at the top of the hierarchy in most schools. He or she directs and evaluates the work of the faculty and staff in all facets of the school’s mission. Historically, the principal was responsible for management responsibilities, maintaining order, hiring teachers, working with the community, and addressing any unanticipated problems that only the principal could resolve.

Why We Should Be Concerned

While these expectations still exist, over the past decade there have been the added burdens of grade retention, issues related to poverty, international comparisons of student achievement, high-stakes testing, gangs, high school graduation rates, increased numbers of special interest groups—especially English Language Learners (ELLs), issues with lack of preparation for universities and college, expanded local, state and federal regulations, and heightened parent demands. Additionally, the principal must be the liaison for school system demands, the instructional leader, and an innovator in operations. Every element of the organization appears to be dependent on the strengths and talents of this single individual.

Most principals struggle to meet these ever-expanding expectations. Data from 500 principals interviewed in The 29th Annual Met Life Survey of the American Teacher (MetLife, 2012) reported 75 percent of the principals polled felt the job is too complex, with nearly half, 48 percent, reporting they were under great stress. Unfortunately, many leave the position, resulting in recurring turnover and a shortage of highly qualified principals. They are not being replaced because teacher leaders recognize the undesirability of these administrative roles. In the same MetLife survey (2012), 69 percent of the teachers asked were not at all interested in becoming a principal.

Long gone, however, are the days of a single hero leading the charge. Instead, schools in the twenty-first century deal with complex issues and challenging problems requiring a bolder approach to problem solving. Schools require a community of practitioners focused on shared leadership to create opportunities for teachers and principals to engage collaboratively and collectively as learners and leaders of the school. Thus intentional leadership encourages purposeful collaboration and the redesign of the educational environment into a learning community. However, before teachers and principals can do this work, they must redesign and reculture schools with regards to attitudes and perceptions about shared leadership and teacher leadership. Creating and implementing structures that encourage a team to collaborate, share leadership, and improve relationships are the critical challenges of intentional leadership for both principals and teachers.

The time has come for a change in the way we structure school leadership. Currently, the structure is not working effectively for principals, teachers, or students. Rather than trying to do it all, principals should follow the precept that “good principals are more hero-makers than heroes” (Barth, 2001, p. 448). We believe principals can intentionally support these “heroes,” or teacher leaders, to help move schools beyond this current leadership quandary. This, however, will happen only if they begin viewing leadership as more than just a few people in formal roles.

This new leadership structure emerges within a community of learners focused on the moral purpose of schooling which is improved student learning. While a principal’s attention to this work could certainly be grounded in a variety of goals, such as reducing the work overload, preventing chaotic interactions or many others, the most important aspect of everyone’s efforts at the school is to ensure a sustained focus on the school’s vision for student learning. Consequently, the improvement of teaching and learning in schools cannot be left to chance, but rather, requires that principals’ actions focus on meeting this goal. Whatever the motive for seeking the principalship, the primary responsibility, once in the position, should be providing leadership that builds an ongoing commitment to continuous improvement of teaching that results in increased learning for all students.

In this chapter, we explore the expanding instructional leadership responsibilities of principals and discuss how teacher leaders are essential to success in achieving accountability for the learning of all students. Then, we present three principles that support a framework for principals’ actions. Finally, we put forward the major premise of the book: principals can learn to be intentional in their leadership to promote, build, and sustain teachers’ leading and learning which will ultimately affect student learning.

Shifting Scope of Principal Responsibilities

The main difference between highly effective and less effective principals is that the former are actively involved in curricular and instructional issues and the latter spend most of their time on organizational maintenance and student discipline (Cotton, 2003). Additionally, effective principals really don’t work any harder than less effective ones, they just work smarter. Essential to working smarter is encouraging and enlisting teachers’ leadership as a means of leveraging their own (Ackerman & Mackenzie, 2007). Too often, principals can become consumed with issues not directly related to instruction. However, to be successful, principals must make students’ learning needs the top priority.

From the Field

Ensuring that every student achieves such targets and has such experiences in our schools is beyond the scope of any one individual working in a school building. Even the best building principal, if working in isolation, will find such goals nearly impossible to achieve and sustain.

Brad Hurst
10th–12th-grade Science
Grimes, Iowa

Historically, the principalship role responsibilities have evolved more toward indirect support for the teaching and learning process rather than direct involvement in that process. One consequence of this is the lack of opportunities for principals and teachers to work together, often resulting in adversarial roles. Now, with the increased emphasis on accountability for student learning, bridges must be built between the administrative and the instructional functions. Effective principals and teacher leaders are the pioneers in these developing but fragile relationships.

We have created Venn diagrams to represent principal leadership and teacher leadership in varying relationships. When little or no overlap between teacher leadership and principal leadership exists, the two circles of the diagram barely touch (Figure 1.1), indicating both classroom activities and school operations are functioning but there is no overlap between the two entities—principals manage school-wide issues, and teachers take care of their individual classrooms. This situation sometimes occurs when well-meaning principals try to protect teachers’ time by doing as much as possible alone so teachers are not burdened. It also happens when principals do not know how to collaborate, or fear the risks inherent in such interactions.

When principals increase the time they spend on instructional activities and teachers participate in leadership responsibilities, the two circles begin to overlap (Figure 1.2). This indicates both principal and teachers are beginning to view instructional and management issues as closely related. Teachers’ classroom leadership experiences may bring an important perspective to the decisions and activities being initiated at the school level. In Cage-Busting Teacher, Hess (2015) claimed that teachers find ways, inside or outside their classrooms, to bring all their ideas and experience to bear. Thus, it makes sense that principals help create environments that provide teachers opportunities to grow, learn, and lead without having to leave the classroom or their school. As success with individual projects and processes reveals the positive impact teacher leadership can have, and as school-wide issues and programs move into classrooms, the amount of coordination and collaboration between teacher leaders and principals increases.

Figure 1.1. No Interdependence

Figure 1.2. Beginning Stages of Interdependence

When implemented, a range of 30 to 50 percent overlap of the two entities— administrative leadership and teacher leadership—exists (Figure 1.3). Placing an upper limit of 50 percent is purposeful. More than 50 percent overlap might intrude on the teachers’ energy and time needed to focus on their fundamental work of instructing students.

Figure 1.3. Principal and Teacher Leadership Interdependence

Principals must both address day-to-day demands and provide leadership for instructional improvement. Consequently, they are faced with three options:

• ♦ Do everything themselves or with a few teachers they select. The impracticality of doing everything alone becomes evident as the principal’s responsibilities expand. Working with only a few selected teachers establishes a kind of elitism and can create the illusion that there are “insiders” who influence the principal. This discourages other teachers who might lead.
• ♦ Sit back and let leadership occur in a chaotic manner. Letting leadership emerge haphazardly may result in dysfunctional teacher leadership creating a toxic school culture.
• ♦ Intentionally plan and facilitate the process of collaborative leadership. Effective principals are intentional in their efforts to build collaborative leadership. Teacher leaders influence others; therefore, we advocate principals exercise intentional leadership to ensure teacher leadership is focused on student learning.

We suggest that principals not hold “leadership rights,” but be responsible for creating opportunities for teachers to lead and learn. This is not a quick-fix program; instead, developing teacher leadership demands high energy and devoted time over an extended period. None of this happens, however, unless the formal leader, the principal, is intentional about facilitating the effort.

We want to point out that teachers’ perspectives regarding leadership in the school must also change. Teachers must believe they can be or realize they already are leaders in the school.

Next we describe three related principles that, when coupled with the principal’s intent, can result in effective teacher leadership.

Principles for Promoting, Building, and Sustaining Quality Teacher Leadership

The guiding principles we offer provide the framework for this book. Building positive relationships, distributing power and authority, and aligning teacher leadership with teacher learning focus the principal’s actions on increased teacher leading and learning.

Principle #1: Leadership Through Relationships

To promote, buil...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Meet the Authors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• eResources
• Part 1: Taking Responsibility for Intentional Leadership
• Part 2: Putting the Principles into Action
• Part 3: Supporting and Sustaining Teacher Leadership
• Afterword
• Bibliography