Elevating and engaging teachers as leaders through Distributed Leadership
Edit the paper and more information should added to the distributed Leadership Section: What is it and how can it improve school culture, and how can it be implemented so that teachers will feel valued and elevated as teacher leaders?
Provide a section added about school culture: what is the difference between culture and climate, and how can a teacher leader help create a more positive school culture through
Paper: I am presenting at a conference on Elevating and Engaging Teachers as Leaders to improve school culture through Distributed Leadership.
Elevating and Engaging Teachers as Leaders Elevating and engaging classroom teachers to teacher leaders increase teacher retention, improves student outcomes, and fosters positive school culture. How do we achieve this without making teachers feel like more is being added to their plates? Using the way Anthony Muhammad looks at the four types of teachers, one can develop a way to use a distributed leadership style that will benefit all stakeholders. An educator’s career path does not always follow the same gradual climb to the top that is common among other professions. When looking at education, an experienced instructor with years of experience will have practically the same responsibilities as a new teacher.
The skills one develops throughout their career are crucial to the development of the culture of the school. The administrative team must acknowledge this, leverage these talents, and help build educators as leaders in the field. The classroom teacher’s quality and strengths significantly impact students; academic success. Teachers who are also educational leaders seize the opportunity to step outside the classroom to influence the education system. Growing teacher leaders and utilizing a distributive leadership style is a way to develop a culture that prioritizes growth for students, colleagues, the school, and its systems.
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) states that there are formal and informal teacher leaders. Traditional teacher leaders – or those administrative leaders who occupy roles such as instructional coaches, deans, or school administrators. Educators who are informal leaders emerge more organically. For example, an educator can take the initiative to address a problem or propose a new program. Influence stems from the respect teachers have garnered from their colleagues through their teaching expertise rather than their official role. There are several overarching competencies educational leaders often exhibit. As educators seek to impact their teaching practice, true teacher leaders also master skills such as Reflective Practice, Personal Effectiveness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Communication, Continuing Learning and Education, Group Processes, Adult Learning, and Technological Facility.
However, administrative teams must look at the faculty and staff and see who they are working alongside. Once they know each educator and staff member’s talents, the administration can lean in and leverage their abilities, promote them, and elevate them to teacher leaders. Competing ideologies are seen in the cultures and sub-cultures within schools. Administrators must adopt a distributive leadership style for a teacher-leader model to work within a school. They have to figure out who carries the weight of influence and determine who can influence the outcome of the school’s goals.
Anthony Muhamad explains that healthy versus toxic cultures depend on four kinds of people. First are the believers. These people embrace change and self-reflection and are determined to contribute to improvement, leading to personal student outcomes. In healthy cultures, believers have the most influence. However, in a toxic culture, the ideas of believers are drowned out by those who are pessimistic, egotistical, and selfish. The challenge for a believer is that they must learn to speak up and amplify their ideas and the mission and vision of the school. The next group is what Muhammad calls the Tweener. This group of educators are open, optimistic teachers, typically new members of the school faculty or new teachers to the field of education. Administrators who spend time and effort on proper socialization and professional development of new staff will see more positive outcomes. The Survivors group includes educators who have burned out or become disillusioned by education. Often survivors are placed in positions outside their skills or passion areas. They feel overworked and under-appreciated and always question why concepts and routines are ever-changing. This group struggles with motivating themselves, thus creating a toxic environment for everyone around them. These people work from a place of hopelessness. The Final group Muhammad discussed are the Fundamentalists. This group includes educators with a Me first; versus we first; attitude who care more about personal outcomes than team goals or aspirations. Maintaining privilege and autonomy is primary to any other organizational plan. Fundamentalists gravitate toward one another to defame, destroy or sabotage those who oppose their individual aspirations. A fundamentalist can be very skilled, but if they are selfish, this undermines the goals of the entire school.
Elevating and engaging classroom teachers to become teacher leaders increase teacher retention, improves student outcomes, and fosters positive school culture. First, looking at the four types of teachers Anthony Muhammad describes in his book Transforming School Leaders and creating a distributive leadership model will help elevate teachers to leadership positions. Skilled teachers have the power to make a real difference in the lives of students. But educators who exemplify leadership skills and are allowed to share those skills can make an even greater impact. Teachers who can transfer successful classroom practices into a shared vision can help drive the progress of the school, the district, or even the industry, and these practices benefit students far beyond their classrooms. This will also allow teachers to hold more ownership of what they give to the organization and can thus have a larger impact on the retention rate of teachers and staff.
However, if Distributed Leadership is given out as more of voluntold dealing of assignments, rather than assigning of leadership based on the skills of the teacher – this will hurt the organization, the student interest and progress will decline, and teacher retention will dwindle.
Must-Have Sources:
Danielson, Charlotte. ;The Many Faces of Leadership; ASCD, ASCD, 1 Sept. 2007, https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/the-many-faces-of-leadership.
Muhammad, Anthony. Transforming School Culture How to Overcome Staff Division. 2nd ed., Solution Tree Press, 2018.
The Will to Lead, the Skill to Teach Transforming Schools at Every Level By: Anthony Muhammad, Sharroky Hollie
