Leadership Themes Reflection Sheet
Leadership Themes
Developing Expertise
Many teacher leaders see themselves as leaders precisely
because they have expertise to share, yet expertise can mean
many different things – content knowledge, pedagogical
knowledge, prior teaching experiences, skill in working with
adults, etc. Some teacher leaders are selected because of
their preexisting expertise; others are expected to acquire
expertise. In either situation, teacher leaders typically find
themselves developing expertise at the same time they act to
develop it in their colleagues.
Negotiating New Relationships
Acting as a teacher leader calls for new kinds of relationships
with colleagues, principals, district staff, and community –
different from those in one’s previous experience as a
classroom teacher. Because teacher leaders need power and
authority to effect change or to influence others, they struggle
with questions about their own leadership authority and
wonder whether they have the power they need to bring about
change. In a profession viewed and experienced by a
majority of teachers as egalitarian, with little differentiation in
status even across long careers, teacher leaders mark out a
new category, one that makes them different in some ways
from their teaching peers. Leadership often involves
renegotiating authority relationships as new demands arise or
new players enter the picture.
Dealing with Resistant Colleagues
Resistance from teachers, administrators, and community
members goes hand in hand with the change agendas that
typically constitute the work of teacher leaders.
Understanding resistance and learning how to deal with it in
constructive rather than debilitating ways are important issues
for teacher leaders, who can draw on their prior experience in
confronting resistance from students over engaging in a
particular activity or a specific discipline. However, the
challenge of addressing resistance from peers raises
questions about the interpersonal and strategic capacities of
teacher leaders.
Building Support Among
Administrators
While teacher leaders often conceive of their work as focused
on teachers, they also know that it is critical to build wider
networks of support for change efforts. This most often
means administrators in a district or school, where principals
and district staff need to be committed to the initiative.
Without the support of those outside of the classroom, teacher
leaders are forced to rely primarily on the strength of their
interactions with teachers and their persuasive power to
engage classroom teachers in reform work.
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Personal Goal(s) and Indicators of Success
Leadership Themes Reflection Sheet
Securing Resources and Policy
Support
Teacher leadership is generally identified with the sharing of
knowledge, ideas, or skills with classroom teachers.
However, teachers are also effective leaders when they are
able to provide needed resources, influence policies that
affect classrooms, gather data about the need to change
practice, and work to transform the larger culture in which
particular teachers and classrooms function. The capacity of
teacher leaders to access and influence these kinds of
resources can ultimately determine whether new classroom
practices succeed or fail.
Developing a Critical Mass for Change
In order for change to occur in systems as complex as
schools, a sufficient number of like-minded colleagues need to
share common goals and actions. While teacher leaders
often work one-on-one with colleagues, they also need to
address building a larger community of teachers committed to
new practices. One aspect of the work of teacher leaders,
therefore, is to figure out the “mathematics of change”: What
constitutes a critical mass of colleagues sufficient to sustain
changes in practice? Another aspect is using various
strategies to reach and sustain a group of teachers engaged
in new classroom practices.