Teacher Leadership

TeachersTopic is a periodical feature about a subject of interest to the teaching community written by a prominent expert in the field. As National Teacher of the Year, Dr. Rogers’ platform has been “All Children-An Equal Chance.” As a part of this equity in education platform, Dr. Rogers believes one way to close the gap between the affluent and impoverished schools is to recruit our strongest teachers to our weakest schools. Based on this belief, she requested to teach at Brighton Elementary this year. Brighton is the neediest school in Jefferson County. Dr. Rogers is currently serving as Curriculum Specialist at Brighton. We are featuring this piece by Dr. Roger’s, who answers questions about her experience and teacher leadership.

Q: How would you define “teacher leadership?”
A: It is almost impossible to define teacher leadership in a few words. There are so many different ways that teachers can lead in and outside the classroom. In just the last few years, we’ve seen the term used to describe teachers who work as coaches or instructional leaders; teachers who serve on school, district, state or national advisory or policymaking groups; teachers who chair departments or school teams; teachers who provide the energy to sustain professional learning communities—and we could cite many more examples. For me, personally, my goal is to be an active and effective teacher leader so that I can directly impact my school, its teachers and most importantly the students.

Q: To what extent do you feel that the public school system is set up to support the development of teachers as leaders?
A: In the world of accountability that educators live in today, there is much pressure for administrators to be instructional leaders. I have listened to many debates questioning whether this is truly possible, given the huge burden that is often placed on administrators. So it’s not surprising that we’re seeing more and more discussion about using teachers as leaders of school improvement. It makes sense. Accomplished teachers have knowledge and insights about effective instruction that can really help us improve learning throughout a school.