TEACHER LEADERSHIP:OVERCOMING M AM JUST A TEACHER' SYNDROME

VALERI R . HELTERBRAN, E D . D .

Professor of EducationIndiana University of Pennsylvania

A well-developed literature base exists and continues to grow onthe topic of teacher leadership; however, it remains largely anacademic topic and even though inroads have been made,teacher leadership remains more a concept than an actuality.Teachers have always been leaders, but there is little evidencethat a focused, collaborative movement exists in public schoolsdesigned to promote and support widespread teacher leadershipin the profession. We know that sustained, effective school lead-ership strengthens student achievement especially when coupledwith a supportive school climate that encourages collaborationand risk-taking; teachers and principals alike have reciprocalroles in building and sharing leadership. Unless and until theconcept of teacher leadership is embraced and developed, "justa teacher" will remain the prevailing habit of mind in thenation's schools.

Eighteen Master of Education stu-dents sat in a class titled "TeacherLeadership" pondering how theycould possibly be teacher leaders.One offered, "But my principal isour leader. He leads. I follow."Another said, "Teacher leadershipis just a theory, I believe. It does notexist in real life—at least not in myschool. " A third said, "I think I havesome leadership qualities, but I amjust a teacher."I am just a teacher." This mantra is

embraced by legions of teachers across theland. Principals lead; teachers follow. Andso it goes. The guiding principles of teacherleadership date to antiquity and receivedrenewed interest in the twentieth century.Over 60 years ago, Bahn (1947) chargedadministrators with the task of "exploringabilities, releasing creative powers, tap-ping experiences, and, consequently,developing the quality of teacher leader-ship" (p. 155). In addition, numerous

reform efforts in the 1980s and 1990s rec-ommended "teacher leadership" as amechanism for widespread reform. Wasley(1991), too, almost two decades ago, leda clarion call for the necessity of teacherleadership and shared decision-making inschool improvement. She rightly acknowl-edged, however, that the body of literaturewas absent in supporting this concept.Twenty years later, a body of literature hasbeen developed and continues to grow, yetit is poorly understood and only intermit-tently practiced where it counts —inschools. Despite the many calls for teacherleadership in the literature over the years,the message has not reached teachers them-selves in any large measure. Schoolimprovement ultimately will depend onteacher leadership —a factor largelyuntapped in schools today.

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Principal leadershipand teacher leadership

Sustained, effective school leadershipsubstantially strengthens student achieve-ment (Waters, Marzano, & McNulty, 2004)as does a positive school climate (Heck,2000). Having engaged in numerous schoolreform efforts over the years, it is clearthat traditional, top down leadership fallsshort of effecting the systemic, meaning-ful reform necessary to meet the needs ofstudents in the new and challenging worldthey will face (Copland, 2003).

The principal has position, power,authority, and the responsibility of account-ability for the total school program.However, the prevailing, role-bound modelin schools depicting the principal as hav-ing the requisite set of leadership skills andteachers being passive recipients of direc-tives or prescribed professionaldevelopment must be examined. Both prin-cipal and teachers have important andreciprocal roles in the overall leadershipquotient of a school, but to do so, an openand equitable relationship must be in place.Leadership at its best takes place in theinteractions between people in the schooland the situations they face; therefore forleadership to be effective, it must be sharedor distributed (Gronn, 2000; Hargreaves& Fink, 2006); this takes certain leader-ship dispositions on both the part of theprincipal and the teachers.

Using Occam's razor, leadership can besuccinctly defined as "making happen whatyou believe in" (Barth, 2001). Consider-ing this, leadership can no longer equateexclusively with the man or woman in theprincipal's office and the tendency to focus

on the managerial aspects of the job. Bol-man and Deal (2003) assert:

If an organization is overmanagedbut underled, it eventually loses anysense of spirit or purpose. ...Thechallenges of modem organizationsrequire the objective perspective ofmanagers as well as the brilliantflashes of vision wise leadership pro-vides, (p. xvi)So, in this age of accountability where

no one person can possibly be omniscient,a "wise" principal will honor and supporta distributed form of leadership, a philos-ophy put in action where others in thebuilding are trusted and expected to bearthe burden and pleasure of leadership,which far surpasses a few "brilliant flash-es of vision."

To be clear, distributing or sharing lead-ership is not delegating responsibility.Historically this has entailed principalswooing teachers into accepting a certainprofessional responsibility or simplyassigning a task. Likewise, it is not simplygarnering extra help or providing a secondset of hands for the principal. Teacher lead-ership rises from within the teaching ranksand expresses itself in a myriad of ways forthe betterment of students, specifically,and school in general. Effective leadershipcan and should be infused among teachers.The principal, to be fully effective, mustunderstand the importance and benefit ofsharing leadership for without this under-standing to support and foster teacherleadership, little good will come. Accord-ing to Anderson (2004), a key purpose ofleadership is "set[ing] directions and influ-ence[ing] others to move in those

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directions" (p. 100), so principal leader-ship coupled with teacher leadership is alogical, rational, and productive model forschool improvement. If it can be agreedupon that the spate of recent reform effortshas been largely ineffective, maintaininga culture where "just a teacher" states ofmind prevail is a terrible waste of exper-tise, energy, and influence in the schoolcommunity.

Taking the reinsConfidence is at the heart of any lead-

ership role. Principals must haveconfidence in their own leadership skillsto encourage and support leadership with-in the teaching ranks. Teachers, similarly,must have or build confidence in extantleadership skills they embody and seekways to use them to strengthen their ownprofessional practice. For the teacher, thereare numerous formal and informal avenuesto express leadership. The most familiarare the traditional, formal, and hierarchi-cal roles in a school which may includedepartmental or grade level chair, subjectarea supervisor, mentor, or various instruc-tional coaching roles. These importantpositions come replete with a job descrip-tion and formal expectations; they alsotypically are associated with release timeor monetary compensation. The other,more informal and emergent, type ofteacher leadership runs much deeper, isself-generated, and holds the promise ofserving as a mechanism for continual pro-fessional learning and innovation in theschool.

Teacher leadership, in its truest sense,involves those informal aspects of leader-

ship, where a teacher sees a need or iden-tifies a problem and takes the reins toaddress it within his or her means. Daniel-son (2007) refers to these elements ofleadership as "emerg[ing] spontaneouslyand organically from the teacher ranks"(p. 16). Because teachers are indispensiblein improving student achievement (Gabriel,2005), this "emergence" cannot and willnot occur unless and until teachers recog-nize their own leadership potential anddevelop the confidence and skills to beeffective teacher leaders. In doing so,teachers will come to realize that takingresponsibility for their own professionallearning and collaborating meaningfullywith and among colleagues not onlyimpacts their personal effectiveness in aschool, but can produce results in the class-room nothing short of miraculous.

Awareness of leadership potentialNo Child Left Behind requires that

teachers be "highly qualified" in one ormore content areas when they enter theirfirst classroom. "Highly qualified" usual-ly translates as "minimally qualified" inmost states with certificate holders hold-ing only a bachelor's degree anddemonstrating competency on a Praxis orPraxis-type test. Armed with a quiver ofideas and the courage of their convictions,novice teachers often enter a professionwoefully underprepared for the rigors oftoday's classroom. Teaching is a flat pro-fession. Unless a teacher wants be aprincipal or guidance counselor, he or shewill spend a career in the classroom withfirst-year teachers and 30-year veteransessentially carrying out the same functions.

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Teachers have no trouble visioningthemselves as leaders in their communities,churches, or other venues, but often tendto have great difficulty identifying them-selves as leaders in their schools; the matterlies chiefly in whether or not teachers arewilling to assume the role of "teacherleader." Becoming a teacher leaderinvolves the breaking of stereotypical iso-lation familiar to most teachers.Collaborating among teachers is rare inthe depth required to produce meaningfulschool improvement. It means eschewingwhat Tocqueville (1996) called ruggedindividualism—a principle revered as "theAmerican way"— to a culture where inter-dependence is valued and a collection ofindividual teachers melds into a commu-nity of learners with shared purposes, goals,and understandings (Harris, 2002).

When educators focus on who is theleader and who are the followers, only oneperson can contribute significantly to theoverall well-being of the school. Teachersin this scenario are relegated to a sub-pro-fessional category likened much to babybirds in the nest that await as their moth-er goes to get a worm, then returns to thenest to feed them. Teachers need to gettheir own "worms," but knowing what tosearch for and where complicate the sce-nario. In the prevailing leadership model,teachers do not see themselves as mean-ingful contributors which reinforces the"just a teacher" mentality. Lambert (2003)discusses the importance of teachers own-ing a sense of purpose in their professionwhich elevates them into leadership as theymust define their own instructional prob-lems and seek ways to remedy them. This

is a matter of awareness for teachers asthey come to see that they have more con-trol and influence over their destiny thanthey give themselves credit for and thatthis control can result in purposeful agencyand positive results for students. Teacherleadership is typically not compensatedleadership and certainly generates morework for a teacher, but this is true of mostacts of professionalism and empowerment.Therefore, teacher leadership capacity inany school building is a melding of sup-port and encouragement by the principaland the willingness of teachers to impacttheir own professional vocation.

Change is goodNothing is permanent except change.

These prophetic words of Heraclitus, Greekphilosopher who lived around 500 BC, stillring true. Yet change is not comfortablefor most teachers who have been asked tomake changes in their teaching and otherareas of their professional lives time andtime again, most of which have yieldedfew measurable improvements. It is notsurprising that teachers may resist arenewed call for teacher leadership think-ing, and rightfully so, that this is simply anew way to extract more work fromthem—and unpaid work at that. Eamiliarwith the aforementioned practice of dele-gating, teachers may see teacherleadership simply as "business as usual"with a new appellation. Teachers areexhausted with the many and varied reformefforts they have experienced knowing thatbefore any new program or philosophy isfirmly in place, another will replace itresulting, in the minds of many, in equal-

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ly dismal results. Most reforms are doneto teachers and are externally imposed;teacher leadership is a practice emanatingfrom and with teachers and, due to this keydifference, can be exquisitely tailored toteachers' needs and practice.

The profession of teaching is highlybureaucratic and often crippled by the pon-derous influence of inertia. When reformefforts present themselves, the new rolesare often "simply appended to a flat, com-partmentalized school structure" (Johnson& Donaldson, 2007, p. 10) and despitebeing rallied to a point by the novelty ofthe reform du jour, we toy, we tinker, andthe results remain much the same.

Our own worst enemyIdentifying and overcoming barriers is

an essential component in encouraging andsupporting teachers in their quest to shareleadership. Leadership, according to Har-ris (2003), is an "interactive process ofsense-making and creation of meaning thatis continuously engaged in by organiza-tional members" (p. 314) and as such,impact the four dimensions of teacher lead-ership as suggested by Day and Harris(2003). These include: 1) strengtheningclassroom practice; 2) encouraging teacherownership in the change process; 3) assum-ing the mantle of teacher expert; and 4)engaging in collegiality for mutual learn-ing. These facets are not without direct andcorollary challenges. Collinson (2004)explains that exemplary teachers "seek,accept, or create leadership roles" (p. 383),but identifying exemplary teachers andharnessing or directing the expression ofleadership can be problematic.

The principal is the lynchpin in creat-ing and supporting a school climate inwhich teacher leadership can flourish. Cli-mate is related to those shared values,interpretations of social and academicactivities, and commonly held definitionsof purpose (Kottkamp, 1984). As discussedearlier, if leadership remains vested in oneperson, the principal, teacher leadership isunlikely to develop in any great measure.It is certainly possible for teachers toengage in professional learning, be collé-gial, and work in ways to strengthenpractice, but if the principal is resistant orunwilling to share leadership, it is highlyunlikely the strivings of individual teach-ers will reach the critical mass necessaryto impact the school as a whole.

However, even with the most support-ive and enlightened principal, pitfallsabound. As an example, teachers are oftensuspicious of other teachers selected tospearhead tasks needed for the effectiverunning of a school. Despite being identi-fied due to their being "competent,credible, and approachable" (Katzenmey-er & Möller, 2009, p. 14), weaker teachersoften ascribe the selection of others tofavoritism, not capability. Whereas oftenappreciated by those selected, if for noother reason than to vary responsibilities,others harbor resentment and can easilythwart the best intentions of their col-leagues. Keeping in mind that naysayersmay not have any interest in being a men-tor, coach, or any other permutation ofleadership, but they can be bitter towardsothers who do. Kelley, Thornton, andDaugherty (2005) suggest that teachersdesire consistent treatment, yet do not fully

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appreciate that "differential treatment isneeded based on the developmental levelof the teacher or the task in question" (p.23).

Teachers may also openly question whyone person was asked to assume leader-ship roles and others not. Foot-dragging,open opposition to change, the stifling ofdiscussion or problem-solving, or outrightsubterfuge are common strategies to sup-press or subjugate the change process.Collegiality, although one of the primaryhallmarks and benefits of teacher leader-ship, may be met with resistance, too, as,despite the debilitation of isolation, someteachers find comfort nestled in their ownclassrooms and feel threatened by theexpertise or actions of others. These teach-ers often lack the requisite skills, attitudes,and dispositions required to be a teacherleader and although every school buildinghas individuals who meet this description,they cannot be allowed to thwart theprocess. Colonial patriot Thomas Paine's(1737-1809) truism. Either lead, follow,or get out of the way could not be moreapplicable in contemporary American edu-cation. We are, very often, our own worstenemies regarding change and schoolimprovement. Obstructionists must be rec-ognized and, if after every attempt has beenmade to secure their involvement fails,they need to be stepped over by those will-ing to lead.

Fostering teacher leadershipTeacher leadership can only flourish in

a school culture that embraces "an opti-mistic and rigorous educational mission,and it must do so in an environment ofrespect and a culture of hard work and suc-

cess" (Danielson,2006,p. 126). This is nosmall consideration and must be grappledwith first and foremost particularly in sit-uations where faculty members cannotascribe this description to their school.Vision, desire, and support are all neces-sary in shaping and inspiring teacherleaders. However, none of this is importantif no plan is in place. Shared leadershipprovides coherence, stability, and is essen-tial for innovation (Printy & Marks, 2006).To move schools in this direction, a planto develop teacher leaders is necessary.These plans would be as idiosyncratic asthe schools in which they were carried out,but several basic and common strategiesmust be addressed as follows:

Consideration One: An important con-sideration in cultivating teacher leadersinvolves the hiring of new teachers. Theinterview process provides an ideal oppor-tunity to discuss the importance and meritsof teacher leadership especially when acandidate's exposure to this concept mayvary widely depending on the emphasisplaced on it in their collegiate certificationprogram. Every new hire provides anopportunity to increase leadership strengthin a school building. "Autonomy need andachievement motivation consistently dis-tinguish leaders from non-leaders...,"according to Rogers (2005, p. 629). Know-ing this, school administrators can designquestions or scenarios to query prospectiveteachers in determining if indicators ofthese two criteria are present in an indi-vidual. Coupled with hiring practices is acarefully crafted induction program whichhighlights and reinforces the roles andopportunities for teacher leadership.

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Consideration Two: Equally important,many schools have an established facultyhaving little turnover on a year-to-yearbasis. It is in these seasoned educators thatthe work of having them see themselves asleaders—and conversely, seeing one anoth-er as leaders, is critical. This of courserequires a paradigin shift and intentionalacts focused on the leader within specifi-cally aimed at the art and craft of learning,teaching, and collaboration. Identifyingspecific, measurable goals and approach-es to achieve them is imperative inhonoring teacher voice, empowerment, andownership of the school. Owners take careof their "property" and seek to improve it!Similarly, there must be an ongoing com-mitment to professional inquiry wherecontinuous personal and professionalimprovement is considered a point of prideand professional expectation.

Consideration Three: Model learningand coUegiality. Learning is a social activ-ity. Strengthening one's knowledge-baseprovides an excellent and non-threateningactivity to build relationships with otherson the faculty. Learning inspires confi-dence and the willingness to take risks inimproving practice—even if in the small-est, most tentative steps at first.Professional development is the corner-stone of improving practice and is essentialto teacher growth, expertise, and skilldevelopment. It would be unimaginable toselect a physician who does not study thelatest medical or surgical advances or retainan attorney who does not keep abreast ofcurrent case law. Yet, many teachers spendan entire career devoid of meaningful, pur-poseful professional development with far

too few recognizing their obligation to seekand engage in self-identified professionallearning. Stigler and Hiebert (2000) assertthat schools are places for teachers to learn,but that this is a concept almost lost in con-temporary American schools. Teachersneed high-quality, sustained professionaldevelopment throughout their careers.Unfortunately, only 12-27% of teachersin 2000 believed that the professionaldevelopment provided by their districtsactually improved their teaching (Nation-al Center for Educational Statistics, 2001 ).If district-provided professional develop-ment is inadequate in promoting studentachievement (Lee 2004/2005), it becomesvital that teachers at every level of expe-rience take a proactive role in their owncontinuous improvement (Kent, 2004).

Closing thoughtsTeachers have always been leaders, but

there is little evidence that a focused, col-laborative movement exists in publicschools designed to promote and supportwidespread teacher leadership in the pro-fession. Unless the concept of teacherleadership is embraced by the schools .ywíía teacher will remain the prevailing habitof mind in the nation's schools.

Educators must decide who they areand how they want to be perceived in theirschools and in their profession. Becominga principal or teacher leader demands acommitment to change and grow as a per-son and as an educator (Helterbran, 2008a).Talk of career ladders, differentiated payscales, master teacher designations,advanced certifications, and other incen-tive-based motivators for teachers abound

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with a goal to boost professionalism andleadership skills. However, none of thiswill matter unless there is a large-scalegroundswell of intentional effort on thepart of educators and teacher leadershipwill continue to be expressed only in fitsand starts and schools will continue toachieve at current rates.

Educators are among the hardest work-ers in America. There is little doubt thatAmerican teachers are committed to thechildren of the land. However, teaching isthe only profession where novice practi-tioners start anew every generation and aresomehow expected to know how to teachexpertly when entering their first class-rooms. In addition, little preparatory andongoing professional development (Hel-terbran, 2008b) is offered and goals tendto shift and change with political caprice.The frustration and exhaustion experiencedby our nation's teachers is palpable.

As a profession, we seem to still belooking for that magic potion as a solutionfor all that ails education—that final band-wagon that we are so well-exercised inhopping on; it does not exist. However,what does exist is a yearning by teachersto be valued, relevant, and involved pro-fessionals. For this to occur, there needs tobe a renewed effort to work and learn col-laboratively with the knowledge that witha goal, a plan, and the perseverance to takesmall, incremental steps toward an idealleadership arrangement where principalsand teachers share the yoke of leadership.That first step requires the courage to asktough questions of ourselves and our col-leagues in purging just a teacher mindsetand replacing it with teacher leader.

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