Teacher Leadership
Across the country, a growing number of educators are transforming student learning and the teaching profession in new ways through teacher-powered schools. The teacher teams in more than 120 teacher-powered schools across the country—including Esperanza and Hope Academy—have secured autonomy to design and run their schools and make decisions influencing school success and student learning. Learn more about the Teacher-Powered Schools Initiative at www.teacherpowered.org.
Authors and researchers, Kim Farris-Berg, Edward J. Dirkswager, and Amy Junge (Trusting Teachers with School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots) have identified fifteen areas of possible teacher autonomy.
These autonomies are:
Learning Program
School-level policy
Schedule
Determining work hours
Selecting colleagues
Choosing school leaders
Professional development
Evaluating colleagues
Setting tenure policy
Terminating/Transferring colleagues
Setting the budget
Determining compensation
Setting staff pattern
Determining assessments
Broadening assessments
MCRSD Teacher-Led School Autonomies
Teachers at Hope Academy and Esperanza have the following autonomies for the 2021-2022 school year:
Learning program
School-level policy
Schedule
Determining work hours
Selecting colleagues (After philosophical alignment screening)
Setting staff pattern
Choosing school leaders/roles
Professional development
Setting the budget (Partial autonomy)
Determining assessments (Partial autonomy)
Broadening assessments
🌟Joy
Teacher-Powered Practices
The following is a summary of Teacher-Powered Practices; How teacher teams collaboratively lead and create student-centered schools, published by Teacher-Powered Schools.
1. Keep Students at the Center of Decision-Making
Teacher-powered structures put teachers, those working most closely with students, in charge of decisions impacting student success. Teams consistently keep their shared purpose in mind and focus on what is best for their students and community.
“When there is a mutual accountability and a shared commitment to the common goal of meeting the needs of all students among all stakeholders, schools can begin to realize the goal of excellence through equity.” -Alan Blankstein and Pedro Noguera, Excellence through Equity
Teacher-powered teams have an intentional practice of grounding each decision, big or small, in their co-created and identified shared purpose.
For some teams that means reading their shared purpose before all staff meetings, for others it means assigning one person on staff to intentionally remind people about their shared purpose before big decisions.
When faced with hard decisions, challenging situations, and controversial options, these teams consistently reframe the question and the conversation back to what is best for the students at our school.
2. Meaningfully Involve Families and Communities
Many teacher-powered schools are considered community schools. Community schools embrace collaborative leadership as part of their model and are committed to serving the
whole child.
In community schools, "students have a voice in what their school looks like; where families are respected and engaged; where neighbors gather; where the wisdom and assets of the community are respected; and where students, families, neighbors, and community partners work with school staff to shape the school’s priorities.”
- Institute for Education Leadership, 2017
Meaningfully involving students, families, and communities means:
• Intentionally involving them in the ongoing design process
• Actively encouraging families and community organizations to be on campus and involved
in student activities
• Valuing families as experts in their broader communities
• Creating opportunities for families and community organizations to serve
on committees and teams with students and staff
• Regularly scheduled events during non-school hours where the physical building is used for adult education, community training, or social services
• Developing mentors for students
• Inviting in community leaders to co-lead projects with teachers
• Opening school on the weekend for conferences, and offering phone or video conferencing options
3. Honor Student Voice and Choice
Teacher-led teams understand the benefits of meaningfully including student voice and giving students choices in their learning. These teams actively hold up student voice and choice in designing learning and making school decisions.
At the middle and high school levels this practice can look like self-directed, project-based learning where students research and design their own projects based on what credits or standards they need to meet. Some schools use a modified project-based curriculum where students do this for part of the year or only in certain subjects. Student voice and choice extends beyond learning programs to other areas such as school policies where students help set and enforce community norms.
In elementary school, many teams allow students freedom of movement, choice in ways to show content mastery and avenues for students to express their opinions on everything from school activities to their experiences with their teachers.
Student-led conferences and community presentations are common practices at all grades, giving students the opportunity to own their learning and be able to describe it to an audience.
4. Cultivate a Collaborative Culture
High-performing schools— similar to high-performing businesses— organize people to take advantage of each other’s knowledge and skills and create a set of common, coherent practices so that the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts.
These teams:
• prioritize collaboration
• learn collaborative skills
• practice and refine these skills
• address the inevitable tensions that arise when working with other humans
Investing in these collaborative practices not only creates better working conditions for teachers but models this skill to students and leads to better learning environments for students. These teachers use the collaborative practices they utilize with their colleagues and apply them in their classrooms. This creates a positive cycle of building on colleagues’ ideas, try out new teaching methods and lessons, and encouraging students to do the same.
High-performance organizations have an open, trusting, and collaborative environment, which lends itself to the ability to be innovative. All team members feel that their input and point of view are valued, and they are encouraged to come up with new and better ways of doing things. There is an understanding that innovative ideas can spring from all levels of the organization and that having a mix of employees with different styles and strengths is a breeding ground for developing innovative products.
How to cultivate a collaborative culture:
• Schedule planning time, time to discuss, time to design, time to try new things.
• Create a space, both physical and mental, for colleagues to gather, debrief, and plan.
• Use protocols to work through conflicts such as COIN conversations.
• Engage in informal collaboration throughout the day. Co-teaching, leading projects together, debriefing over lunch or coffee.
5. Embrace Transparency in Decision-Making
Many teams choose to use committees (school-level policy, curriculum, assessment, etc) to spread out the workload and then these committees report back to the whole group. Decision-making done in committees is documented for transparency.
For important decisions impacting the whole group, there is often a time for discussion and feedback from the larger group before final decisions are made. This not only creates more buy-in, but allows teams to debate and build consensus.
Teams prioritize being transparent with each other through shared documents, co-created agendas, and when possible open spaces designed for collaboration. This practice is one that permeates the culture of the school. Open door policies, personal accountability, being willing to talk through hard topics and ask challenging questions contribute to overall transparency.
6. Create Shared Leadership Structures
Shared leadership structures are one of the defining characteristics of teacher-powered schools. These schools use shared leadership structures to fully empower their teacher team at every level. This leads to a more engaged staff willing to take accountability for their decisions. Every program and initiative needs the often discussed “buy-in” of the people doing the work. Teacher-powered takes this concept to the highest levels by creating ownership of decisions because the teachers are actually making them.
The success of shared leadership structures depends both on the structure itself (does it work for the team of teachers currently using it?) and the relationships of the people in those roles. Teacher-powered teams nurture the relationships as well as support the actual roles.
Most often this practice looks like democratic decision-making and representation where teams value the collective decisions over individual decisions. Shared leadership structures occur with small teams of less than five teachers or large teams with over fifty teachers. No matter the staff size there are clear pathways of accountability and communication which are communicated to parents and community members to avoid questions around, “who is in charge here?”
7. Reimagine and Rotate Leadership Transitions
Rotating leadership positions is important for sustainability, helps diffuse power, and builds an understanding of each position’s unique responsibilities. When teachers serve in a variety of positions this helps everyone see the bigger picture beyond their own classrooms, subjects, and interests.
Teams recognize that institutional knowledge needs to be spread amongst themselves for long-term sustainability. Teams take turns filling key roles to build the collective leadership capacity of the whole group. Some teams have term limits for committees, positions, and roles.
Some teams embrace a completely flat leadership structure, others’ organizational charts look more traditional but the accountability doesn’t take hierarchical pathways. Teachers often take on a wide range of administrative or leadership tasks contributing to the distributed leadership model. This includes attending district meetings, coordinating state, district, and authorizer testing, creating budget proposals, ensuring compliance for special education laws, and much more.
It is also important to note that at many teacher-powered sites students take on roles beyond the normal student activities and student leadership. Students often serve on hiring committees designing questions, interviewing candidates, observing lessons, and helping to make the final decision. Students also lead restorative justice programs, research and plan off campus trips and events, and leading community engagement activities.
8. Engage in Peer Observation
Eventually, we hope to offer evaluation as an autonomy to both schools. Even at schools where teacher evaluation is not an autonomy, almost all teams engage in the practice of peer observation. Instead of observation having negative connotations, in teacher-powered schools teachers welcome this practice as one that allows them to learn and grow, whether they are the one being observed or the one observing.
Successful teacher-led schools are ones in which teams are dedicated to improving their craft and learning from each other, through spending time in each other’s classrooms and discussing challenges. Teachers wander in and out of each others’ classrooms so often that students aren’t distracted by the presence of other adults, it is just part of their normal day. This informal open classroom mentality allows for a general sense of the different teacher styles, lessons, and practices each teacher at the school has.
Peer observation also takes a more structured approach where teams have small cohorts or partners. In these groups they identify areas they want to improve in or students that may be struggling in their class. Timelines, pre and post meetings, and training in specific observation strategies help facilitate a smooth process. Some teams also pair teachers with coaches or mentors, especially for newer staff members.
9. Take on a Learner Mindset
This part, you got! The very fact that you signed up for this ambiguous, rigorous and cognitively taxing opportunity shows that you have the learner mindset. The teacher-powered network mentions the following two areas that you should keep in mind:
A. Time is always a valuable resource, and teacher-powered teams know that learning and growth flourish when there is dedicated time to discuss, reflect, and engage with all stakeholders. Planning for this process is part of how these teams prioritize their learner mentality and model the value of continuous improvement for students.
B. Self-care is an important area for all educators, and teacher-powered teams take this seriously. Learning to name their limitations, taking time away from school, and encouraging each other with kindness, smiles, and thoughtfulness go a long way to keep people working at their best.