Empowering Teacher Leadership

Strategies and Systems to Realize Your School’s Potential

Jeremy D. Visone

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032040561
• eBook ISBN: 9781000514438
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book explores how school leaders—both formal and informal—can create a supportive culture that leverages teamwork and empowers teachers to become leaders. By focusing on three foundational principles—empowerment, collegiality, and risk taking—schools can develop and enhance educators' capacity for success. With this practical resource, you will learn intentional and actionable strategies that empower participation in leadership at all levels through peer observation and team action planning. The book's chapters explore how to create systems that support trusting relationships, inspire distributed leadership, provide a vehicle for teachers to learn from each other and take risks, and develop informal and formal teacher leaders. This book provides a positive and proactive approach to collaborative school leadership that will invigorate your school community to work together more effectively for improved student outcomes. Rich reflection questions in each chapter help readers conceptualize the information presented and take actionable steps toward improvement

Additional tools are available online for easy download here: www.routledge.com/9781032040554.

1 So, What Kind of School Do We Want, Anyway?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003190370-1

“What is the point of this?” Greta muttered to herself, as her principal, Theodore, droned on about another initiative affecting the Language Arts department at Status Quo High School. The initiative—increasing the rigor of student work through examining the cognitive level of questions and learning activities—was surely connected to researched-based practice. Greta deduced this fact, based upon Theodore’s presentation, but she did not understand the connection between this work and the larger school goals, which she thought she remembered related to improving students’ SAT scores and the statewide accountability index score for the school. Further, she whispered under her breath to Evan, a department colleague who taught some of the same courses, “My classes are hard enough—I have about 10% of my kids failing each semester. If I make things any more difficult, I will just have to give too many Fs!”

Evan chuckled without probing Greta’s comments further, and Greta returned her attention to her cellphone, scrolling through emails and checking text messages from the day, while she listened half-heartedly to Theodore’s presentation. She had seen how the content of these professional “learning” sessions resulted in little actual learning, few classroom instructional changes, and even less follow through from administrators. Thus, she could afford to give this initiative perfunctory attention, until it went away. “Who is doing the work during your lessons? And how much cognitive load are your students exerting with a task that only asks them to describe something?” Theodore asked the group.

Blah, blah, blah. I need to think about what I am teaching tomorrow, and, oh yeah, I need to plan to lead our data team meeting tomorrow, too! Ugh. Greta thought to herself. She wished silently that Theodore would adjourn the meeting early, so she could plan for tomorrow and get home earlier.

After the meeting, Greta drove home, focusing her thoughts on the next phase of her day, which included preparing dinner for her family after a short stint at the gym, where she could work off her stress. Looking back upon her day at Status Quo High, she saw a department where each teacher, even those who were teaching the same courses, operated as an independent actor. Yes, Greta was the appointed leader of her data team, where she, Evan, and the other three teachers of Grade 9 English met to discuss assessments, curriculum, and whatever other disconnected work the administrators decided to throw at them. However, she did not really know how her colleagues taught, nor did she recognize the value of knowing this information, as she believed her pedagogy was just fine the way it was.

At the data team meeting the next day, Greta inquired, “Who has the preassessment data about literary devices?” Three of the five data team members responded affirmatively.

One of the others, Thomas, stated, “Sorry about that. I have gotten a bit behind in the curriculum, and I was not ready to administer it.”

The other was Geradine, who commented, “I really don’t care for that assessment. I’d rather use another one I used in the past. Anyway, I can predict for you that my kids will be terrible with literary devices. They always are, every year, and this group is as low as ever!”

With only some data available, the group had a general conversation about the students’ gaps with respect to the topic of literary devices, and they then shifted to the more motivating inquiry from Greta of “How should we teach literary devices?” From this inquiry, the group brainstormed ideas, which were individually described and endorsed by the teachers. With little commentary or evaluation of the pedagogical merit of any of the approaches, the conversation trailed off on its own, and the group was left to determine, by teacher, how instruction in the unit would progress. Greta did not care for the style of her colleague, Evan, who was much more “loose” in his teaching style, following many student-identified pathways and differentiating products by choice and ability. Greta found his approach to be too much to manage, and these ideas conflicted with her “tried and true” methods.

Not surprisingly, when the post assessment results were examined weeks later at another data team meeting, there was a wide range of achievement across classes (from 67% to 95% mastery of the literary devices standards for the unit). The main explanation given for the discrepancy around the table was that the higher-scoring classes had more capable students. After all, the administrators created classes that were not equitable, in the teachers’ minds, and this perspective was one that was continually referenced as a rationale for less-than-optimal student performance. After explaining away the range of mastery, the group decided to turn their attention to the next unit of study.

The only time in the week where the teachers shared or collaborated was during these 45-minute data team meetings. Not surprisingly, Status Quo High had not seen much growth in student achievement for decades. Many students were successful, but many were not. Teacher morale was low, and there was a general mistrust of administration. Knowing these characteristics of her school, Greta aimed to spend as little of her time at work and, by extension, with her colleagues, as possible.

Is Status Quo High School your school? Okay, I am not looking to embarrass anyone. Let’s say that it is the school of a “friend.” There is no judgment here. In reality, this anecdote aligns with the experience of so many educators across the United States. Many teachers work in environments where compliance is a more prevailing norm than true collaboration and problem solving. It is not uncommon to hear teachers speak about how initiatives will fall by the wayside, as new ones come along, and many schools suffer from the low or stagnant achievement that accompanies poor staff morale and lack of trust in the administration. Teachers frequently cannot see the connections among what they discuss at their data team meetings, what they learn during professional learning experiences, and what they planned for their lesson tomorrow.

However, the more important question to ask here is: Is this the kind of school I want? If you answer my inquiry with an enthusiastic:

Yes! Self, this is exactly the kind of place I want to work—one where I do what I have to do to meet the minimum requirements; one where I can spend the least amount of time and expend the least amount of effort; one where colleagues and supervisors will not expect too much of me and will never hold me accountable for what I do and don’t do; one where I don’t really value my administrators as instructional leaders; and one where I don’t feel much connection to colleagues or their work!

then please, by all means, STOP READING THIS BOOK!

Put a different way, if you are not interested in collaboration, empowerment, risk taking, and, thus, transformation of practice for the benefit of students, then this book will be a complete waste of your time! I hate wasting people’s time, so I figured I would give you an out after the first couple of pages.

However, for those of you who wish to do better—for those who aspire to create a school culture that is empowering, collaborative, and safe for pedagogical risk taking, then this book is designed to help you move the needle in this direction, whether you are a formal school leader, such as an administrator with a title, or an informal one, such as a dedicated and caring teacher, who wants to help lead your colleagues to a more successful place. That’s right. I am talking to you. No, not the person behind you. You. In this book, I will reference “leadership” often, and I am referring to all administrators, teachers, and school community members who can contribute to making your school stronger. This book is about purposefully building a team leadership disposition and structure. In addition, aside, perhaps, from the nominal cost of purchasing of this book, the methods and systems described herein are the type that a former superintendent of mine would say meet the demands of “using existing resources.” That, my fellow educators, is a euphemism for doing better with not one red cent more.

Furthermore, the most important resource you need for this type of work is already housed within your school. No, I am not referring to those new teacher laptops with lightning-fast processors—though they will be most useful, too. I am not even writing about the digital learning platform you use to connect with students remotely. Your biggest resource is the people who will do the work—the formal leaders, teachers, and support staff (Sterrett, 2015). In my work to prepare practicing teachers to become educational leaders, I spend much time in and around schools. A select few of these schools are wildly successful in terms of student achievement. Most others are in a flattened pattern of stagnation, where some students achieve and others generally don’t. Still other schools’ levels of student achievement could be described as falling somewhere between “on life support” and “dumpster fire.”

However, something all these schools have in common is that they all have dedicated and capable teachers within their walls. You all know who these “roving leaders” are. Formal leaders can count on them to support leadership efforts and what the school is, collectively, attempting to accomplish. They are working for students and their success, and they generally get the best results. They are the least likely to take all their allotted days off, and they spend much of their own time preparing for their superior instruction. If you are a fellow teacher, you know who these special teachers are, too. They are the people you go to when you need a piece of advice. If you are reading this book with intention, there is a good chance that you are one of these teacher leaders, too. No doubt, different schools will have varying percentages of the teacher leaders I have described, but, each school, invariably, has some of them. And this is the starting point for your trajectory toward greatness. With a dedicated, collegial core of like-minded individuals, your school can begin a journey to become a more collaborative, empowering, and risk-friendly learning environment for all, students and staff, alike. The burning question you are likely wrestling with is: How can we get there? I’m so glad you asked!

First, I will introduce you to three, simple principles that, when espoused often—and, more importantly, practiced with regularly—will move your school toward the type of ideal work environment described above. These guiding principles will be referenced continually throughout this book, as these principles serve as the frame of reference for all the strategies and logistics shared. The principles are:

1. (a) empowerment: Our staff members feel competent and believe that they are equipped to make decisions in the best interest of our students and school. Our teachers have sound ideas that can improve what we do;
2. (b) collegiality: Our staff works together to solve problems of practice. We do not work in isolation. What we learn, we share; and,
3. (c) risk taking: We do not advance if we do not try new things and experiment. We are not afraid to do things differently.

Figure 1.1 shows the three principles in a more compact and, perhaps, aesthetically pleasing format.

Figure 1.1 The three foundational principles to empower teacher leadership.

When I was a principal, I shared these three principles at the first and last faculty meetings each year. My purpose was to ensure our staff knew what I valued. That was the easy part. The hard part was making sure to consistently live these values during daily interactions with teachers in the context of our complicated work. For example, I could not espouse empowerment in a whole-group setting and then regularly tell teachers that they could not have input into decision making in the school. Luckily, a system of teams can be leveraged to make empowerment come alive and have concrete, tangible meaning for teachers. This systems approach is the work of Chapter 2. In terms of collegiality, I needed to make sure that, if I expected teachers to work together, I actually provided them a time and space to do so (Duh!). Setting up systems for teacher collaboration will be addressed in Chapters 2 and 3. Lastly, if a teacher came to me with an innovative way of teaching that was a bit outside the box, I needed to have some comfort with this concept and offer support, within reason. If the strategy didn’t work, as evidenced by student data, then we would abandon it, but, if it did work, we had identified a practice worth replicating! However, the key to risk taking is creating safety in trying something different. After all, we never get anywhere different than where we are if we continue to always do what we always have done. (Try saying that ten times fast!) Creating professional safety for staff that supports collegiality, innovation, and risk taking is the primary work of this chapter.

These three guiding principles are supported by literature on effective school leadership. A justification for teacher empowerment can be found within the professional capital framework of Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan (2012, 2013). Though this framework will be explored more fully in Chapter 3, its relevance here is noteworthy. First, one element of the professional capital framework is decisional capital, which refers to teachers’ ability to make sound decisions that are informed by their experiences and learning, often from each other. In order to maximize the value of decisional capital, teachers must, within reason, be allowed to make decisions for their own students and more broadly in the school. This freedom is agency and empowerment. In my own research on some of the most effective schools in the United St...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Meet the Author
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Supplemental Downloads
• 1 So, What Kind of School Do We Want, Anyway?
• 2 How Can Our Systems Support the Three Foundational Principles?
• 3 The Power of “Seeing It”: The Collegial Visit
• 4 Building a Teacher Leadership System
• 5 Amplifying Teacher Leadership beyond the School’s Walls
• Glossary