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posted by:
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Misty Sato
on October 31, 1998
at 1:05AM
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subject:
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leading in school contexts
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Hello everyone - I have been an evaluator for the Oakland, CA project for a couple of years. In most of my conversations with teachers about leadership at their schools, they tell me that they are not sure how to interact with their colleagues as a "leader" or a "coordinator" (we call this group of teachers Coordinating Teachers). Most of the 60 elementary schools in Oakland are not structured to foster collaborative working relationships among the teachers so our proejct's teachers go back to their own classrooms and rarely talk with other teachers about what they are doing in science. They tell us how different it is for them to come to professional development sessions where they have an opportunity to actually talk with their colleagues.
The idea of teacher leadership has puzzled me for a while. It seems to me, from some interviews with teachers in LSC projects, that a lot of school contexts do not have collaborative environments and that the "lead" teachers have to create ways to interact with their colleagues. These kinds of professional interactions are quite new to the teachers and have to be constructed as the teachers engage more in a leadership capacity in his/her school or district. For example, if the teachers are not used to talking about or analyzing classroom practice, then when they try to engage in conversations about pedagogy they don't have the language to discuss this with their colleagues.
Also, the idea of being a leader is unwelcomed by some teachers I've talked with because it sets them apart from their colleagues (even if you don't use the label leader) so they have to figure out how to they can represent themselves to their colleagues strategically to avoid the status problems. This is well-documented in the professinal development literature, but we seem to be facing it all over again in our project.
These are just some observations. I would be curious to know what the teachers in other projects say about their leadership roles within their school settings.
Looking forward to more comments.
Misty Sato
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Welcome
- posted by Brian Drayton
on 10/26/98 - 06:52
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