Leadership and Growth Tips for Teachers

By Dr. Sylvia Diaz, Superintendent in Residence at McGraw Hill

The start of a new school year often gets teachers thinking about their career trajectories and whether they want to pursue leadership roles. In the schools where I worked, there was always a variety of opportunities for teachers to assume leadership roles. Opportunities included department chair, grade level chair, team leader, leading a professional learning community, new teacher mentor, and many more.

Assuming these types of roles not only allows for personal and professional growth but also provides opportunities to collaborate and interact with peers, something that is often missing in the day-to-day world of classroom teachers.

Research shows there are many benefits to becoming a teacher leader. Teacher leaders report feeling empowered and more satisfied with their work. Teachers who assume leadership roles also report that they improve their practice and learn more about pedagogy (Wenner & Campbell 2017).

Becoming a Teacher Leader

For a teacher who is considering a move to a role in school administration, assuming a teacher leadership role first may help you decide whether you are suited to the work and if you actually like it. While these roles do not provide insight into all the various duties and responsibilities of school administrators, they do provide experience with leading groups of people, typically teachers, and that is the most important aspect of the job of a school administrator. The best school leaders I have known have been those who love working with teachers and who are skilled in developing teachers and inspiring them to do their best for students.

Becoming a School Administrator

Many educators consider moving into formal leadership roles as school administrators as a way to increase their influence or their pay. While assuming an administrative role may do that, if you do not enjoy the work, neither more pay nor more influence is going to provide real or lasting job satisfaction.

Assuming teacher leadership roles before pursuing expensive graduate degrees or certification programs can not only help you decide if you like the work, but it can also provide valuable experience in leading people, delegating responsibilities, managing conflict, and more. These types of opportunities also very often come with chances to interact with district leaders to learn about practice, policy, and what is new and coming to schools in the future.

Growing Your Network and Pursuing Training

Whether you decide to pursue administration or remain a classroom teacher or teacher leader, growing your network of connections is valuable. Some teachers, rather than pursuing roles as school administrators, opt to pursue leadership roles at the district office as subject area experts, coaches, or teacher trainers. Often times those teacher leaders are tapped for those district-level roles by district staff they have worked with while performing their duties at their schools.

You can learn a lot about leadership by observing the behavior of skilled leaders. If you think that a principal position is in your future and you have an opportunity to take a position where you will work for a high-performing, well-liked school leader, you should pursue it.

Better than just working for a good principal is getting specialized training, mentorship, and work experience under the direction of a skilled principal. Some states have these types of formal training programs and the federal government, specifically the Department of Labor, has made offering these types of programs easier by approving “K-12 principal” as a qualifying occupation for federal apprenticeship programs.

The apprenticeship designation will open the door to using state and federal funds for principal-preparation programs. Those funds may be used to cover the cost of tuition and books for teachers who may not be able to cover the costs or take on additional debt to participate in leadership preparation programs. North Dakota will be the first state to offer such a program this fall. Hopefully, other states will soon follow.

Anticipating Conflict Resolution

Conflict resolution is mentioned briefly above and in today’s polarized society, with schools constantly caught in the middle of culture wars, I believe that effectively managing conflict is more important than ever. While classroom teachers are often times very skilled conflict mediators when it comes to disputes between students, being able to manage adult conflict and especially anger directed at you is another important skill of an educational leader. No matter what you do, where you live or work, or how smart, knowledgeable, fair, kind, and well-liked you are, you will experience conflict. How you cope with, and handle conflict may be a significant factor in your success and longevity in the role.

Leadership matters in all its different forms. Assuming a role as a teacher leader may provide satisfaction in an area that is missing for you as a classroom teacher or enhance an already fully satisfying career. In either case, you will be contributing to the betterment of yourself, your school, and the profession.

Sylvia Diaz, Ed.D., currently serves as Superintendent in Residence at McGraw Hill. As a member of the School Impact! Team, Dr. Diaz serves as an internal voice of senior-level educational practitioners and an external representative of McGraw Hill steering its strategic vision. Before joining McGraw Hill, Dr. Diaz spent over thirty years as a teacher and district administrator with Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation’s fourth-largest school district with over 331,000 students across 480 schools. Most recently, she served as the chief academic officer (CAO), managing a portfolio that included all academic programs, early childhood, Title I administration, innovation, school choice/magnet, information technology, student services, school turnaround efforts, school improvement, and leading district efforts to promote academic recovery.

References

Wenner, J. A., & Campbell, T. (2017). The Theoretical and Empirical Basis of Teacher Leadership: A Review of the Literature. Review of Educational Research, 87(1), 134–171. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654316653478