Teachers Can Be Leaders of Change
By Joan Richardson

SCHOOL TEAM INNOVATOR - March 1997

By all standards, Melisa Hancock is a teacher leader.

Whenever she attends a workshop, she shares what she's learned with her colleagues at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School in Manhattan, Kansas. She presents at state and national conferences. She started after-school science clubs as a way to get kids excited by science and to provide a non-threatening place for teachers to learn new ideas. She became a clinical instructor at nearby Kansas State University and played a key role in engineering a partnership with the university that led to her school becoming a professional development school.

Why does she do all of this?

"If I really want to impact a greater number of students, I can do it best by impacting other teachers,'' said Hancock, an 11-year veteran of the classroom.

Teachers like Melisa Hancock are at once proliferating and in short supply. More and more teachers are reaching out beyond the four walls of their classrooms, and yet too many teachers are still cloistered inside those walls, isolated and unwilling to do more than "just teach.''

And yet few doubt the importance of creating cadres of teacher leaders who can lead their peers through school reform.

"This will be the key to changing our schools in the future,'' said Gayle Moller, who is executive director of the South Florida Center for Educational Leadership, which runs a teacher leadership program. Moller also has written extensively on the subject.

Growing more teacher leaders will be essential to meet the enhanced expectations for students and teachers, she said.

"Think about the complex skills that teachers are going to have to have to help their students learn. Think about how many teachers experience those skills themselves. Think about having to learn the strategies to teach those students,'' Moller said.

"There aren't going to be enough trainers and experts and consultants in this world to teach them. Teachers are going to have to help each other. They're all going to have to become staff developers,'' Moller said.

What is a teacher leader?

Moller says a teacher leader must, first of all, be competent in the classroom. "If teacher leaders lack competency, they'll never have credibility with their peers,'' she said.

Teacher leaders reach beyond their classrooms. That might begin with hallway talk. "But eventually, it moves up to 'come on down to my classroom to see what I'm doing,' '' she said.

Beyond merely demonstrating their excellence at teaching, Moller said teacher leaders are individuals who "use their skills to influence other teachers toward better practice.''

Finally, she said, teacher leaders want to be part of a larger community of leaders. "They don't want to do this by themselves. They don't want to be a star in their own classrooms. There is a real need to share what they know,'' she said.

In their book, What's Worth Fighting For?: Working Together for Your School, Canadian researchers Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves describe five principles for redefining the teachers' role to include responsibilities outside the classroom.

1) Each teacher has an obligation to help increase the degree and quality of day-to-day interaction with other teachers. "Even if done on a small scale regularly, this can make a very significant difference for other individual teachers and for oneself,'' they say.

2) Each teacher has a responsibility to try to understand and to attempt to improve the culture of the school. "Every teacher must be concerned about the health of the school as an organization. This does not mean getting obsessively involved in every aspect of school life, but it does mean taking some responsibility for the welfare of one's colleagues and the wider life of the school,'' they write.

3) Every teacher is a leader. The leadership role will vary according to the stage of the teacher's life and career. But Fullan and Hargreaves agree that "all teachers have a leadership contribution to make beyond their own classrooms and should take action accordingly.''

4) Redefining the teacher's role includes a responsibility to become knowledgeable about policy and professional and research issues. "This does not mean having a second career as an academic. But it does mean connecting with the knowledge base for improving teaching and schools. The more knowledgeable a teacher is about global educational and professional issues, the more resourceful he or she will be for students as well as for other teachers,'' they write.

5) Each and every teacher has a direct responsibility for helping to shape the quality of the next generation of teachers. "All teachers can make a contribution,'' they say, listing options that include working with student teachers, mentoring new teachers, and even supporting and praising other teachers who take on those roles.

In South Florida, Moller said her office's interest in teacher leadership grew out of a realization that change could not be institutionalized in a school if it was the sole province of the principal. "It became real evident that, when innovation happened in a school, when a principal left, that was the end of the innovation,'' she said.

So, the South Florida Center for Educational Leaders began searching for ways to move teachers into leadership roles. Moller said she learned that teacher leaders are people who don't necessarily want to move into administration. "They want to stay and learn and grow in their own profession. They want to stay close to students,'' Moller said.

Often, she believes they resist leadership roles because they lack confidence and because they fear rejection by their peers.

Even Hancock who now welcomes visitors to her classroom and enjoys presenting to groups large or small, acknowledges that lack of confidence slowed her down in the beginning.

"The first year I taught in Manhattan, I was very nervous. I didn't want anyone else to see my teach.

Ironically, her path to becoming a lead teacher at her school began when she admitted her weakness in teaching math and science. "My principal started working on me to get me out to conferences and to workshops. She kind of forced me to get involved in some things,'' Hancock said.

As she learned, she became more confident and wanted to share what she was learning and how she was putting these new ideas into practice.

Now, Hancock tries to play the same role with other teachers that her principal played with her.

But, ever conscious about the cultural restraints, Hancock said she moves slowly with other teachers.

"I don't want to force anything on them. I know if my principal had tried to force me, I probably would have resisted. It has to come from them. I just try to expose them to what I'm learning. I share little things with them. I don't push. I don't threaten.

"But I always say, 'if you want to know more about that, then come and see me,' '' Hancock said.

Hancock believes that significant changes can begin by having as few as three teachers in a building who are willing to experiment with new ideas

"It takes just three or four teachers in a building who feel like they can change their role. If they can see that they're no longer just teachers in a classroom, if they understand that they're also here to help other teachers, things can change,'' she said.

"That's very empowering.''


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copyright 1997 NSDC