For these reasons, overly rigid school cultures make it less likely that teachers will progress toward leadership within an environment of support and encouragement.
Leadership requires autonomy. An oppressive admin or culture removes that decision making capacity, diminishing the need for teacher leaders to develop.
Wilson (2016) wrote, “The school culture entails not only how things are done (systems, processes, and procedures), but also the mindset behind why things are done”
See also Fullan, 2018
These studies suggest that younger, less experienced teachers and elementary-level teachers are more likely to be motivated toward teacher leadership; but older, more experienced teachers are more likely to be recognized as teacher leaders by their colleagues
Implied leadership because of experience and age alone.
Although pedagogical knowledge and skills provide an essential foundation for teacher leadership, research suggests that dispositions (i.e., core beliefs, attitudes, and values) comprise a teacher’s stance, or way of thinking and being
Valli 2008
Informal collaboration, professional development, and graduate studies support the progression from teacher to teacher leader by providing “multiple opportunities for conversation, practice, and reflection”
Becoming an expert (and a leader) takes time. Teachers need to wrestle with complex ideas with other teachers to develop an understanding of complex ideas in teaching.
In making these plans and adjustmentsto plans, teachersshould consult their learners and ask themto participate, singlyand in groups, in planning.
Including teachers in their own growth sets the same standard for operation as they have working with students.
How often do we forget this principle?
In o .ler to havesome reliable basis for helping the child, theteacher must be ableto create an environment in which the givenchild feels at home andwants to grow
The same is true for adults. Working with teachers on improving practice or learning new skills requires support in context.
A student who learnsa French word may be learning, too, that French is beautifulorugly, that wordsare arbitrary symbols, and that languagesare funor hard to leizn.
What is the unintentional curriculum included by the teacher? How do attitudes and nonverbal habits communicate those lessons?
It may even look like someone you knew in college.
See anything by Goldrick-Raab
People tend to look at obesity, drug problems, and poverty as choices that could be avoided if people just tried harder.
The grit narrative hurts students from poverty more than others. Their challenges are often insurmountable because multiple conditions are stacked against their success. Trying harder is disproportionate.
the family photo falls neatly into a hillbilly stereotype
Reality TV and stylizing poverty as entertainment has hurt our ability to empathize.
By objectifying poverty, Americans allow themselves to perceive the poor as mere stereotypes of laziness or stupidity, rather than people worthy of compassion and support
The idea that "poverty is a choice" is hurting our ability to work with the poor more effectively. This includes our work with poor students.
Imagine if 14 percent of the new housing over the next decade in wealthy Wilmette on Chicago's North Shore had to be accessible to the 14 percent of the region's population that lives under the poverty line.
Policies and the "free market" run counter to this plan. It wouldn't cost developers or managers more to produce this housing, but they wouldn't make as much money from those rentals. There is no market incentive for those plans to be enacted.
It captures how we've designed communities to pen poverty in, restricting many poor African Americans in particular to a limited number of neighborhoods.
This has political implications as well. Herding people into neighborhoods along with gerrymandering suppress votes and lock parties in.
The committee suggests that regional or local area groups get together to talk through their problem analyses, their clues for action, the blocks encoun tered and the ways of working devel oped.
This sounds a lot like Instructional Rounds.
1 he committee would welcome analyses which include descriptions covering the following items:
Codifying and asking for schools to tell their story empowers change with structured support. Led locally, by teachers on the ground, and then contributing that experience to a larger organization like ASCD can help initiate change in other buildings without being prescriptive.
Competen cies in these areas on the part of our youth could almost certainly be of major importance in years to come.
Critical thinking is a highly-sought skill, but very few schools work with teachers on drawing out critical thought from students.
How can research be more effective ly pointed up and translated into ac tion?
Translation is the key word. Most teachers are not trained academics or researchers. Translating theory into practice requires distilled reports and/or coaching to interpret and implement research-based findings.
We also need to work on patience in research. Often, we look for quick fixes and change initiatives because something "isn't working" in the near term.
How can we start improving cur riculum?
Lowering the barrier for entry to revision, changing the status quo...
What steps can we take further to clarify what the high school diploma actually stands for?
Competency-based education could be a possible fix. Rethinking transcripts and entrance requirements would also fall into this category.
How can further progress be made with regard to modification in college entrance requirements?
How much of the "previous experience" explanation tie into this?
"If only they learned this in [middle school, high school...]
How can we achieve better coordination between the various areas of the present curriculum?
UBD ties into this - what do we want students to know and be able to do by the end of the unit? Cross curriculuar connections help tell that story as students develop skills.
Can we have a child- centered emphasis rather than an em phasis on subject matter?
This is question number one, still, 60 years later. How do we drive the conversation - swing the pendulum - back to students instead of the material?
How can we deal more effectively with the wide range of differences be tween pupils in present secondary schools?
What tools and mechanisms are in place, and what are missing, to really support all secondary students?