If a parable is a story that reveals a single, unambiguous principle, then the example of Sandra Mitchell is my parable about developing teacher leadership. Sandra began her career as a high school English teacher. Her goal was not to become a leader, although perhaps she had tacit knowledge that great teachers are leaders of learners. So she set out to learn to teach well.
Sandra was sharp and creative and a bit of a boundary breaker. By nearly any standard, she was a strong beginning teacher, but that wasn't her yardstick for self-assessment. She knew there were ways to be more effective in commending learning to adolescents and so persisted in discovering those possibilities. She also knew she'd be more successful in that pilgrimage if she didn't go it alone; besides, she was a great respecter of people. So Sandra did what was natural for her. She enlisted her students in figuring out how to make their classes more compelling. She provided vision for the class, but she trusted the students to be coarchitects of the vision and empowered them for that role.
Sometime in the early part of Sandra's career, an observant principal asked her to be department chair. The move was risky. Her colleagues were all her seniors, all strong teachers, and all convinced of the soundness of their pedagogy.
Sandra never told her colleagues how to grow as professionals—or even that they needed to grow. She began department meetings by saying, "Here's something I've been wondering about in my teaching," or "I tried something new the other day, and it didn't work well. I'm trying to figure out why."
In other words, Sandra continued to be Sandra. She respected, trusted, and empowered the people she led—a group that now included both students and colleagues. She listened well. She used her capacity to read people and to build community by uniting people around a desire to know more and do better. It helped that Sandra's self-effacing sense of humor and steady optimism infused any setting with both calm and possibility. She was still quiet, unassuming, and classroom-focused, as well as an inquirer in search of stronger pedagogy. Of course, she honed her leadership skills in her expanded leadership context. And she now had earned confidence that the approach to shared leadership she used with her students was effective with colleagues as well.
Keeping to Her Internal Compass
In time, a district administrator asked Sandra to apply to be assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. There was still some risk that the role wouldn't suit her. Sandra was never a flag-waving, mandate-bearing, boat-rocking kind of person. All she had was an internal compass in search of better ways to reach young people.
She did the same kind of work in the new job as she had in past positions—engaged people in conversations about teaching and learning, listened to their ideas, trusted them to be coarchitects with her of a shared vision, and built a team that carried out aspects of that vision. Sandra also showed leadership by maintaining loyalty to the team, demonstrating consistent honor and integrity, and laughing when everyone needed the wind to shift a bit. And, of course, she honed her skills as a teacher and a leader.
Eventually, an astute school board asked Sandra to serve as interim superintendent at a time of transition in the district that she had by then served for more than 30 years, and—you can see where the story goes.
Again, inviting Sandra into this post was risky, and she took a risk in accepting. After all, she was still just a really good teacher in disguise. She never became a bureaucrat or someone who demanded a prescribed change from a group of educators who felt no ownership of the change. She never became self-enamored. All she did was ask good questions, listen to and respect the people she worked with, and model accountability for and loyalty to those people—and to the cause of improving teaching and learning.
Sometimes things really are simple. Great teachers have leadership potential. Great leaders recognize that potential and multiply it in the teacher's classroom. It's a gift to acknowledge leadership and support its growth right within the classroom's four walls. But real education leaders extend the four walls of the classroom so a promising teacher's leadership can extend to colleagues—formally and informally.
I think the best emergent leaders are the ones who never really leave the classroom. They don't become someone teachers can't recognize and don't want to follow. Accepting a new role always carries risk. A developing leader always knows that role is too big for him or her—and it is. But a teacher leader like Sandra can grow into a too-big role with the help of mentors who support that leader's success, not by advising her to become something she's never been, but by continuing to evoke the characteristics that made 6-year-olds or 16-year-olds follow that teacher eagerly into the morass of change we call "learning."
