CHAPTER SEVEN:

TEN STEPS TEACHERS CAN TAKE TO IMPROVE THEIR LEADERSHIP CAPACITY AND OUR SCHOOLS


Goals of the Book…

This book has two related goals. First is for each and every PreK-12 teacher to recognize that every teacher is a leader. Second, it is the goal of this book to assist all teachers to improve your leadership skills. The payoffs may not be obvious at first, but a list of payoffs that you can reasonably expect from improving your leadership skills include:

  • improving your ability to manage and plan your time
  • improve your ability to obtain the resources you need to perform your job in an excellent manner
  • have greater satisfaction in your teaching career and in your life
  • obtaining better respect and discipline from your students
  • improving your ability to help students achieve better educational outcomes

This book is about getting the message directly to teachers throughout our nation: Teachers are leaders. Become better leaders and teaching, career satisfaction, effectiveness, and schools will improve significantly.

Ten Steps Toward Becoming a Better Leader In Schools…

1) Seek feedback from peers and others. One of the ways to do this is to create a buddy group or circle of friends who are teachers. Ask two or three other teachers to commit to observing each other teach, work with students, meet with parents, speak in public or participate in meetings, get organized for a class, and other key activities that teachers perform on a regular basis.

The group should have members observe one another ideally several times, and at least once a month. Then the member observing the other member, in private, should give feedback to the teacher who was observed. Then the group should hold a monthly meeting to discuss what each learned from observing and from the feedback. This way, when one person in the group learns something, it is likely that every person in the group will learn something.

This constructive feedback must be honest and always given with the intention of assisting the other person and all persons in the group, become better leaders. No teacher will always agree with the feedback, but almost all of it will prove to be useful in some way. Use a rubric or template to help keep the feedback focused on those things that will help all teachers improve their leadership skills...