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Teacher Leadership: Ideology and Practice

The skill clusters we have been describing are based on interview and observational data from the 17 teacher-leaders we studied from 1983 to 1985. We can get another view, perhaps more integrated and dynamic, by being there, by seeing these people in their own contexts. We did several case studies of these teacher-leaders in 1985 and 1986. The following summary of two of them will help round out the picture we have drawn thus far (Miles, Saxl, James, & Lieberman, 1986).

Urban High is a large comprehensive high school that also serves as the special education center for the entire area. It is in a blighted area in a large urban city. There are 3,500 students in the school, (62 percent Hispanic and 30 percent black. Achievement is low overall. The majority of the students (2,000) are enrolled in general education. Reading, math, and writing scores are low. The principal is young, energetic, and extremely receptive to innovative ideas and any means to improve the school. He is very concerned with raising the level of instruction and increasing the professionalism of teachers through staff development and increased teacher control of the curriculum.

In March 1985, a teacher center opened in the school. Brenda C., a former English teacher at Urban, became the teacher-specialist–a full-time teacher-leader hired to run the teacher center and work with the staff. Because the school was in the process of reorganizing from departments to clusters, experienced teachers were becoming the coordinators or heads of special projects, causing them to leave teaching and move to these new positions. (Given the harsh conditions of the school context–crime, purse snatchings, noise, pitted chalkboards, lack of necessary supplies, prisonlike rooms, and other difficult teaching conditions–it is not hard to see why teachers would want these positions.) When they left new teachers replaced them.

Brenda wanted to do three things during her first year: improve morale, facilitate communication between the various groups in the school, and encourage the staff to utilize the center for professional growth. Subtle resistance plagued her efforts in the beginning. There was the natural resistance to being "improved," as well as the notion that being a high school teacher–a subject-matter specialist–somehow made one already expert.

She began, during her first month, by just offering free coffee and refreshments to the teachers. (The principal had supplied a large room and the coffee.) She spent a great deal of time and money (her own) buying materials that would be of interest to the teachers. She tried hard to get materials that would engender self-help as much as possible, attempting to be sensitive to the sensibilities of her peers. She spoke at department meetings to advertise the availability of these materials to the teachers.

Little by little the teachers began to come to the center. At first they came only for coffee. Brenda wrote personal notes to people to encourage them to come back and to participate in other activities. To enhance communication, she formed a site committee made up of representatives from the various cluster groups. (Finding a common meeting time for everyone was impossible, so staggered meetings went on during the day.)

With encouragement from the director of the teacher center consortium, Brenda helped create a workshop, given after school was over in June, to teach teachers about the latest research on classroom management, mastery learning, and learning styles. The workshop was planned in such a way that the teachers had an ohligation to attempt one or more of the ideas in their classrooms in the fall. In this way, Brenda hoped to begin to build a core group of teachers, encourage professional development in the center, and work on greater communication among the teachers.

The impact of these efforts, and others, has been to draw more and more teachers to the center. They read the bulletin boards, look at materials, use the machines, plan lessons, talk together, and work with Brenda. Informally, teachers come for afterschool courses from other schools, which indicates that the center is reaching out to a larger network in the district.

Teachers from the site committee have been instrumental in disseminating information about the center to other teachers. New teachers have talked about being offered nonjudgmental assistance by Brenda in the center. Experienced teachers have spoken about the amenities that make their life easier: a quiet place to work, rexograph machines, and new materials and supplies. All of this has greatly increased the morale of the staff. (An indication of the center's growing popularity was the success of a party for the staff that was given at the end of June. Almost all the teachers came–a highly unusual occurrence.)

Brenda, who has been a teacher at Urban High for 23 years and knows the social system of her school as an insider, has been using this knowledge to create an "oasis in the desert." We see the special role that a teacher in a leadership position can play–encouraged and supported by a sensitive principal–as she gently and cautiously plans for and takes on the function of building morale and professionalism among the staff. She helps alleviate the tensions of a large, experienced staff trying to deal with the tremendous problems that exist in a school in a depressed community. She builds trust among the faculty, recognizing not only the classical resistance to new ideas, but also the special nature of high school teachers (subject-matter specialists with advanced degrees who have their own special reasons to resist being "improved"). Although just a beginning, Brenda's leadership has begun to fill in the tremendous gap between a professional environment and the bare level of subsistence in a complex, difficult high school.

At Parkridge Elementary School, Andrea G., a teacher-leader who came from another part of the city, also runs a teacher center. She has been at her school for four years. Her school has always been known as the showcase school of the district. It is a school with 1,500 children. The ethnic mix of the neighborhood has changed over time from Jewish and Italian to Hispanic and black, with a small percentage of Caucasian children.

The school has many fine teachers, many of whom have been there since the 1960s, when additional resources were given to particular schools, including this one, to help with their special problems. These teachers were attracted to the school because of the supply of specialists and the support they would be given. They came because they felt it would be a good place to teach. To this day, the school is still quite special for the area, but it is manifesting problems that are eroding the quality of the program. (Because of the positive reputation of the school, many parents want to send their children there; as a result, the school is suffering from serious overcrowding.) The principal is known to be a real "professional." He is very hard working and the school is remarkahly stable. The principal has been there for fifteen years, which is almost unheard of in this area.

Andrea, unlike Brenda, came from the outside to work at Parkview, but, like Brenda, she, too, had the problem of legitimating her presence to the teaching staff. Because the staff was large, and because many had been there for a long time, there were numerous cliques among the teachers. There was also a group of eight new teachers who had taken over classrooms with little preparation for the job. (There was a massive teacher shortage in this city at the time.) An all-day kindergarten program had just been implemented, and the district had called for the school to involve the parents in working with their children at home.

In looking over this situation and figuring out her goals for the year, Andrea decided that the new teachers would be a focus for her work. She also decided to take on the responsibility for working with the parents of the kindergarten children to facilitate better understanding of what the school was doing and what the parents could do to reinforce student learning. In addition, she continued to maintain the teacher center–although it was a small, crowded room, teachers would know that at least there was a place to come where they could give and get help, put their feet up, and share some hot soup from the corner deli. Everyone speaks of Andrea as the "glue" of the school: "She has made the school a family. Everyone feels a sense of gratitude and loyalty to her." Because she is a very giving person, her mere presence and her way of working fill a great void in this large, three-story building. Her first words are always, "How can I help you?" An hour and a half with her illustrates the point.

On this day Andrea arrives at the center at 8:15 A.M. She is immediately involved in a "major" problem. One of the teachers, who has a refrigerator in his room, is complaining that because people leave food in it his room smells, thus disturbing him and the students. Andrea gets into the conversation to try to sort out who is responsible for cleaning the refrigerator and what needs to be done to get it cleaned. (This may seem like an insignificant problem, but no problem is insignificant. The message to the teachers is that all problems can be worked on in the center.)

Andrea goes downstairs to the auditorium. She is due to hold a meeting there to teach parents how to provide for reading-readiness activities for their children. When she gets there she finds someone else is rehearsing a play.

Instead of complaining that the auditorium was reserved for her, she quickly negotiates with the teacher to use his room and runs to the front door to alert the parent sitting there to tell the parents what room to go to. Stopping off at the photocopy room to see that the materials are being run off for the parents, she finds a paraprofessional having trouble with the photocopy machine and also with someone in the office. Andrea helps her fix the machine and then intervenes to ease the problem with the staff person. She then makes her way to the new room, where several parents are waiting, and quickly makes arrangements for one of the parents to translate for one who does not understand English.

In this one-hour period, Andrea has already made four interventions that do not go unnoticed. She has helped a teacher (with the smelly refrigerator), changed her room (by negotiating with the teacher in the auditorium), helped the paraprofessional with the photocopy machine (and a small problem with an office person), and provided for a translator (so that her work with the parents could go on in two languages). Such sensitivity does not go unnoticed, even in a faculty of this size. As a matter of fact, it turns out to be a mode of leadership that is felt by everyone. The principal is extremely respectful of Andrea's good work with the faculty. The supervisors find her presence welcome, since she helps them with their work without overstepping her authority. The specialists know that Andrea and the teacher center can support their work and also help them deliver services. And the new teachers come to the center because they know they can get help and support from both Andrea and other teachers who serve as a support group for them.

THE TEACHER-LEADER AS LEARNER

From this initial look at teacher-leaders, we see that they are not only making learning possible for others but, in important ways, are learning a great deal themselves. Stepping out of the confines of the classroom forces these teacher-leaders to forge a new identity in the school, think differently about their colleagues, change their style of work in a school, and find new ways to organize staff participation. As we have documented, it is an extremely complicated process, one that is intellectually challenging and exciting as well as stressful and problematic. Changing the nature of an occupation turns out to have the possibilities for both "high gain and high strain" (Little, Chapter 5 of this volume). The gain is mostly in the personal and professional learnings of the leaders themselves: the technical learnings about teachers, instruction, and curriculum; the social learnings about schools as social systems, including how to build collegiality and manipulate the system to help teachers do a better job; the personal learnings about their own professional competence as they learn new skills and abilities and find new approaches to being a leader among their peers; and even, in some cases, the satisfaction of learning how to create structures that alter the culture of the school.

But the strain is there, too. Building trust among teachers, who have long felt that they have little or no voice in choosing what is best for their students or themselves, is not easy. Initial hostility and resistance is always there, and it is hard not to take some of it personally. (What works with students does not necessarily work with adults.) Dilemmas of being a colleague and also being an "expert" are not easily negotiated. Being nonjudgmental and helping are often in conflict with making value judgments that affect the priorities for one's work. Listening to teachers–rather than giving advice–and working with them on their terms is sometimes in conflict with personal style. Learning to negotiate from a position of leadership–in a school where there is little precedent for teacher leadership–without threatening those in existing administrative positives takes skill, courage, and nerve. Teacher-leaders have to learn that these tensions and dilemmas are an inevitable part of the drive to professionalize schools and of the change process itself.

THE TEACHER-LEADER AS PROFESSIONAL MODEL

Part of the ideology developed in these new roles is the belief that there are different ways to structure schools and different means to work with teachers and other members of the school community. This involves such characteristic themes as:

We are only beginning to understand the nature and impact of these new roles in schools and the subtleties of fashioning new ways of working with the school community. From studying these teacher-leaders, we see that some sort of team, teacher center, or site committee–a structural change–appears necessary to the creation of collegial norms in a school. More cooperative work, increased interaction across department lines, and support groups for new teachers require new modes of collaboration to replace the existing isolated conditions prevailing in most schools.

What we have, then, is a new leadership role that can help in the creation of new collaborative structures. It appears that a combination of these new roles and structures is necessary to professionalize the school culture and to bring a measure of recognition and respect to teachers–who may be, in the final analysis, the best teachers of teachers as well as children.

REFERENCES

Darling-Hammond, L. (1987). Schools for tomorrow's teachers. Teachers College Record, 88(3), 354-358.

Goodwin, A., & Lieberman, A. (1986, April). Effective assistance personal behavior: What they brought and what they learned. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco.

Lieberman, A., Miller, L. (1964). Teachers: Their world and their work. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Little, J. W. (1986). Seductive images and organizational realities in professional development. In A. Lieberman (Ed.), Rethinking school improvement: Research, craft, and concept (pp. 26-44). New York: Teachers College Press.

Lortie, D. (1975). School teacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Miles, M., Saxl, E., James, J., & Lieberman, A. (1986). New York City Teacher Center Consortium evaluation report. Unpublished technical report.

Miles, M., Saxl, E., & Lieberman, A. (in press). What skills do educational "change agents" need? An empirical view. Curriculum Inquiry.

Rosenholtz, S. J. (in press). Teacher's workplace: A social-organizational analysis. New York: Longman.

Saxl, E. R., Miles, M. B., & Lieberman, A. (in press). ACE–Assisting change in education. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.