Ten Years After: Two Perspectives on Teacher Leadership
Ten years ago, former National Teacher of the Year ('85) Terry Dozier pulled together a collaborative of teacher leaders to build an on-line national course on developing teacher leadership. Dozier, who served as Special Assistant to Secretary of Education Richard Riley in the Clinton years, believed that even identified teacher leaders--instructional coaches, Teachers of the Year, National Board Certified Teachers, etc.--needed additional knowledge and confidence to shape their own work through influencing education policy, and she had research to prove that conviction.
I first met Mary Tedrow when we were on the team that created the course. Mary has a rich, deep resume' in teacher leadership work, fortified by her daily practice in a high school classroom. Her can't-miss blog, Walking to School, is one of my favorites. Mary and I will share two perspectives on how we see teacher leadership in America, ten years after creating the Teacher as Change Agent course. Mary goes first:
"Hope is as useless as fear." (Attributed to C.S. Lewis)
So color me useless.
I understand the sentiment. Soaring emotions engendered by both hope and fear are pretty useless in the moment. They tend to cloud reality. Pink, fluffy clouds can be as distracting as imagined
thunderbolts. Better to get real and focus on what needs to be done next.
thunderbolts. Better to get real and focus on what needs to be done next. But soaring hope is what I felt when you and I, Nancy Flanagan, met in Richmond with other identified teacher leaders to craft the VCU course on Teacher as Change Agent under Terry Dozier's invitation.
It was thrilling to hear the same vision echoed by other teachers laboring in geographically distant classrooms: Michigan, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina.
I could see it, in my mind's eye: competent practitioners working together to create a profession Ten Years After: Two Perspectives on Teacher Leadership - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher: