Developing teachers as leaders is paramount to creating a positive school climate in which all students are valued. Teachers not only control the learning environment of their classroom, but they also dramatically influence the school culture and relationships with students and parents. As I've discovered in leading a diverse high school, mentoring teachers to be leaders of their own professional practice—what I call inside-out leadership—is the way to shape a positive school culture and increase learning.
Just as a good school ensures that all students are valued, it also ensures that all teachers are valued as professionals. In a supportive school, teachers hold themselves to high standards of practice. Formal school leaders support teachers in their professional learning and, above all, realize that teachers are competent to make necessary learning decisions for their students.
Igniting Passion
Developing teacher leaders isn't as complicated as many people suggest. Given the opportunity, passionate teachers will readily become leaders; the challenge is to reignite passion for teaching among the whole staff. Once teachers get excited about leadership, that excitement will be infectious and it will be difficult to slow them down. (Be prepared for questions like, Why are we doing it this way? Such questions are a good indicator that teachers are taking ownership of their craft and their community.)
Begin with Questions
To start promoting inside-out leadership, assess the reality of your current teaching and learning culture and the learning needs of your teaching staff. Ask questions like, Is classroom instruction visible and available to others? Is research used to inform teaching decisions, and is assessment used to inform instruction? Are teachers willing to reflect on their craft, discuss their own effectiveness, and identify areas for growth—alone or in the company of peers ? Is there a shared mission based on the understanding that all students should be valued and expected to succeed?
I began asking questions like these when I became principal at Jasper Place in Edmonton, Alberta. Jasper Place is an urban, composite high school with 2,300 students in grades 10 through 12. The beauty of Jasper Place lies in its diversity. We serve 300 self-identified First Nation, Metis, and Inuit students. We also have 300 English language learners and 300 students with special needs, 600 students taking advanced placement or International Baccalaureate classes, and everything in between. We often describe our school as a small town.
When I arrived in 2007, the school had an excellent reputation based on the diversity of its programming. However, a number of our students fell through the cracks and dropped out. Jasper Place was traditional in its approach to teaching, learning, and staff collaboration. Teachers cared about the students, but they generally taught a homogeneous group of kids. There was a sentiment among many that if certain students didn't want to participate in the learning process, little could be achieved ("I can't teach them if they aren't in my class"). Teachers took little ownership for students who were faltering. Senior staff were usually assigned the "better" classes (the pinnacle of teaching assignments was reached when a teacher taught honors, International Baccalaureate, or advanced placement classes). Most teachers began their careers teaching students who were at risk and had difficulty learning.
Professional and personal relationships between teachers at Jasper Place were fostered primarily within their departments. Teachers taught independently; traditional monthly staff and department meetings were the main places they connected. Some departments shared practices like establishing standards and exemplars for writing, but there was no consistent shared instruction or planning throughout the school. Our learning with one another happened mostly on three professional development days.
Shifting Assignments and Offering Support
My first challenge in fostering inside-out leadership was to convince teachers that all students mattered and that all teachers needed to collaborate on learning issues to reach all our kids. Our leadership team agreed that more frequent interaction among staff and meetings focused on professional learning would be beneficial. I communicated this to our staff, asked for feedback, and received a positive response to this suggestion. So we replaced the existing bimonthly after-school meetings, which had lasted up to three hours, with a weekly 50-minute professional learning meeting before school started.
Every month, for the first of these weekly meetings, all teaching staff met together. For the second, teachers met by department; for the third, we assembled in cross-curricular teams; and during the fourth meeting, the whole staff celebrated everything we'd accomplished, small or large, that month. We used the time during these professional meetings to read together and discuss articles related to issues like student learning styles, student engagement, questioning strategies, and so on. The teachers were willing to meet weekly because they knew the meeting couldn't go beyond the starting school bell. They started to enjoy the learning sessions.
For instance, to study the effect of teacher practice on student engagement, we read articles on the subject and session leaders gave teachers anecdotal information about students' responses to the question of how and when they felt engaged in class. Teachers discussed what they might do collectively to enhance student engagement—anything from implementing more classroom discussions to allowing students more choice on assignments.
I changed the way we assigned courses so that all teachers could teach a variety of students, from gifted to challenged learners—or were required to, if necessary. This change was difficult for some teachers. Some teachers felt slighted, as if by receiving "lesser" classes, they were being disregarded as "good," effective professionals. We had to keep reiterating for them that our most challenged students needed our best teachers.
The school leadership team acknowledged that teachers would need support to take on new teaching roles. Department heads coordinated collaboration among those teaching courses new to them. Beginning teachers had the chance to collaborate with at least one experienced colleague who was teaching the same course and a mentor guided each beginning teacher.
The school committed resources so teachers could effectively collaborate during their school day, giving them time to work in teams to prepare materials for their courses. We provided teachers with opportunities to visit other classrooms, either at our school or elsewhere, and offered ongoing professional development. In some cases, department heads would model a lesson.
Opening the Campus
The next step was to open our classrooms to one another. Each teacher and administrator chose an at-risk student to work with for a semester. Teachers recorded their progress with this learner and what strategies they'd found to be most successful on a simple "Student Success Plan" form. They shared with peers (including a colleague who would teach that student the next semester) why they chose this student and what had worked.
This small activity had great results in terms of sharing our practice. Teachers identified some of the most challenged learners at Jasper Place and committed to trying new strategies with them. Teachers began discussing teaching and learning inside and outside their departments.
The administrative team and I also became more visible in the hallways and classrooms. We walked around and talked to teachers and students for 25 to 50 percent of our work days, getting a great sense of the pulse of the school. Initially, teachers seemed nervous when an administrator entered the classroom; they'd stop teaching, introduce the visitor, and explain what they were teaching. However, as the visits continued—with no "gotcha" component—teachers relaxed. We asked students things like, "Why do you think it's important to learn this?" and they seemed happy to talk about their learning experiences.
I worked with the instructional leadership team (which consisted of department chairs and all members of the administrative team) to discuss these classroom visits. Some department chairs seemed reluctant to visit their teachers' classrooms, claiming that it was difficult to find the time and they didn't know what to do once they were there. The administrative team invited department heads to join them on their daily walks to get them used to this role.
The instructional leadership team talked regularly about what they learned from these visits, identifying overall themes in what students were saying in their classrooms. For instance, did students seem to understand the learning objectives and perceive their relevance? Eventually, the staff as a whole began discussing how students were engaged in learning and how classroom environments were affecting that learning. Teachers became clearly interested in what was happening in other classrooms.
Teachers' Learning Walks
We used a professional development day to allow teachers to observe a colleague at another school to see what engagement looked like elsewhere. Teachers chose whom they would visit and took their colleague to lunch afterward so they could get answers to any questions. They expressed appreciation for the opportunity to get out and see something different and for school leaders trusting them to choose where they wanted to go.
The energy teachers brought back to school that afternoon when we met to discuss evidence of student engagement they'd found in the classrooms was incredible. Teachers were buzzing! They were eager to share their findings and generated an extensive list of indicators that they agreed described student engagement.
Teachers decided they wanted to look for signs of student engagement in our school, too. How was student engagement on Monday morning? Did it differ by Friday afternoon? Was there a difference in student engagement in vocational classes compared with core or fine arts classes?
Although most teachers were excited at the prospect of seeing our school through the lens of student engagement, some were reluctant. It helped that teachers had a wide range of choice on how and when to do their learning walk. They could do it during a preparation period or request a substitute to cover their class. Walks were scheduled for an 80-minute period with 8 to 10 teachers participating at a time, divided into two teams. Each team had a facilitator and decided together which classes to visit.
We suggested teachers think of what they observed as a snapshot of student engagement at Jasper Place on one day in one period. Protocols for the walks included the following:
- All classrooms were available to visit.
- No one was warned that we would visit his or her class.
- Teachers would make no paper record of their observations. (We feared that taking notes would make it seem evaluative. After each visit, teachers discussed their observations in the hallway and wrote the evidence as a group.)
- We wouldn't make judgments, but look for evidence. Any "I liked …" comments would be redirected.
With the entire campus open to them, the teams made interesting choices of where to visit. Many chose classrooms outside their departments. (I heard comments like "I've never seen a foods class" or "What happens in math classes?")
After all teams had completed their observations, the entire group shared and recorded the evidence they'd gathered. We identified themes about student engagement at Jasper Place that emerged, such as that student engagement was higher when students felt intellectually safe and that humor and positive relationships enhanced engagement. As the most important part of the learning walk, teachers individually shared any personal "aha" moments and how these moments had caused them to reflect on their practice—and possibly to change it. Teachers said things like this:
- I understand now how classroom environment can affect student engagement. I always felt reluctant to share photos of myself or my family; I might do this now.
- Even loud classrooms can have students who are engaged in learning. I always wondered if anything was going on in those loud English classrooms.
- Students have a lot of free time if they finish their work quickly.
We asked teachers to reflect on how the observations and information they gained from the walks affected their thinking about student engagement and to choose one new practice to implement. It was interesting that many teachers chose a practice that was something they used to do in an earlier teaching assignment and had stopped doing. Teachers who had previously taught in elementary or junior high classrooms, for instance, said they had changed some fundamental practices when they moved to a high school and now decided to reintroduce some of those practices to increase engagement. Teachers were given the autonomy to make these decisions.
Ongoing Leadership
Looking at data from provincial diploma exams and student, parent, and teacher surveys, we saw that these leadership-fostering practices dramatically improved student achievement in terms of the number of students successfully completing courses; student attendance schoolwide, the number of students participating in challenging academic courses; and staff, student, and parent satisfaction with our school.
We institutionalized many of these practices for fostering teacher leadership created during my first years at Jasper Place, although we change things slightly from year to year. Learning walks continue, now led by department chairs, who lead cross-curricular teams. Weekly morning meetings remain crucial to our learning culture—and the celebration meeting at the end of each month has expanded to involve support staff and custodians.
Once a culture of professional learning is established in a school, the principal's main job is to support teachers' growth. I believe we've come to that stage at Jasper Place. Our teachers feel valued as professionals. They have become innovators, and they behave as leaders entrusted to make the necessary learning decisions for students. My job is to champion their efforts.
