EDL-805- Training and Collaboration

EDL-805- Training and Collaboration

Across educational communities, schools grow when school principals and educators understand that the power of their leadership lies in the power of their relationships and shared responsibilities. Teachers is no longer isolated in classrooms, teachers are a part of decisions and uses their influences to assist in shaping practices and strengthening main areas of responsibility within a school culture. Teacher leadership relies on teacher’s skills, knowledge, and expertise in assisting schools to achieve essential goals in offering opportunities for all students to succeed.

          The development of teacher leadership in schools and districts is a priority for a variety of important reasons, and there is a pressing need for teacher leaders to assume leadership responsibilities both at the site as well as at the district levels. The success of school systems depends on strong teacher leadership (Zepeda, R et al ., 2002). Teacher leadership is more important today than ever before because the expectations of schools and teachers is greater. These rising expectations means that our schools culture must change and teachers expected to help change them. With these new expectation, it calls for new roles for teachers such as collaborating more effectively with other teachers, help improve assessments and use the results to improve teaching and learning quality, participate in teams and school level decision making.

           Many educational communities have established structures in which teachers assume leadership roles such as master teacher. They also presented opportunities for more informal roles such as team leader, or mentors. For instance, a past school I worked for, it was more informal teacher leadership, because some teachers saw the need and assume responsibility as a leader. In addition, others did it not because they were selected to do so, but was driven by collaborative professional learning communities that left no room for isolation. Furthermore, teachers had assumed this form of leadership for more personal moral purposes which was to obtain high achievement with students. However, within teacher leadership roles, teachers can contribute a unique perspective on education that is important to improving the quality of teaching and students learning. The reason is they closely work with students and other teacher’s daily. This places them in a good position to be advocator for teachers, students, and community in which they serve. In turn, it also puts them in a good position in building partnerships with other teachers to collaborate and converse ideas for better practices.

  Inspiring and engaging teachers as leaders contributes to principals empowering them to step up more as leaders. DuFour noted “Empowering teacher leaders in class-rooms changes how we as administrators must understand, identify, and empower teacher leadership within our educational organizations. Without question, leadership in such a model must be shared: “Widely dispersed leadership is essential in building and sustaining professional learning communities, and it is important that individuals at all levels lead effectively” (DuFour et al ., 2008). By dispersing leadership gives teachers authentic opportunities to contribute, and grow as a school community. School principals must master new ways to integrate teacher leadership. Principal’s success relies in one’s ability to evaluate teacher strengths and build on those strengths to motivate teachers to exercise them in a way that permit them to leverage on skills sets and talent.        

      Leveraging on skills sets and talent not only supports a school culture of shared responsibility, but permit’s school leaders to have a chance in being more effective in their roles. In order to develop strong leaders, it requires principals to strategically build leadership capacity within and across each stakeholder. Studies noted “Capacity-building principals align their actions to the belief that everyone has the right, responsibility, and capability to work as a leader. Such a perspective requires that principals be clear about their own core values and confident in their own capacity to work well with others by influencing, facilitating, guiding, and mentoring. They need to resist using authority to tell and command” (Linda Lambert, 2003). School principals must:

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Leadership and the Development of Collaboration