Teachers Are Leaders:

Going back to Robert Fox’s seminal article in 1956, Teaching Is Leadership, it is clear that we have come a long way in education and in the wrong direction.  In 2011 teachers are not viewed in the profession, by themselves, by their principals, and by many key stakeholders in education as “leaders.”  Teachers are not factory workers who best follow orders to produce flawless goods. Teachers are not functionaries who merely deliver someone else’s pre-designed curricula.  Teachers are not order takers.  Teachers are not merely followers of school administrators.  Teachers are leaders.  However, if we had listened to Robert Fox in 1956 by now we would have developed a strong stable of leadership courses for teachers as they are being trained to become teachers.  Or, we would have developed a strong stable of professional development courses for teachers in the area of leadership development and certified these courses for continuing education credit.  We have done neither on the scale needed to give teachers the skills they need to be the leaders their jobs call upon them to be.  Our book, Leadership Development for Educators, is a start in the right direction, but with 3.7 million PreK-12 teachers, we need to gather every resource we can to fill this huge hole in teacher training.