Building Teachers as Leaders

PRINCIPAL—A Stronger Team November/December 2014

The Principal is a magazine for elementary principals to support best practices on how to BE-BECOME-SERVE as an effective principal.  I read it from cover to cover, mark it up with my favorite red pen, and often take it to the gym to review the highlights. I consider this my own portable professional development tool. Those of us that are in this role understand how incredibly busy we are and how each minute counts.  The Principal helps me focus on the right work. A Stronger Team

The articles is this issue that were most reflective for me were the following:

Better Together:  National Distinguished Principals share models for effectively working with teacher leaders. By Susan McLester.  As a principal of a turnaround school I was looking for advice from those in my same position. One of the recommendations I found most meaningful was to hire “purpose-driven, self-managed teachers”. They could then be developed as leaders “through training in collaboration, data analysis, and Response to Intervention (RTI).”  Simply stated, “When you let teachers inside your world, you get buy-in. That’s the beauty of it.”

Inspired Instructional Coaching: Stimulate teaching by structuring meaningful observations and feedback that will improve instruction schoolwide. By Sandra A. Trach.

Principals

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Dynamic Conversations with Teacher

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Professional Renewal

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Build Teacher Capacity

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Improving Individual Teachers

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Improving Instruction Teams

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Improving Entire School

Multiply Teacher Talent: What if your well-intended guidance stifles gifted teaching, rather than encourage it? By Elise Foster.  It is interesting when you read something that inspires news thinking it often repeats itself in other venues. For me it is the work in The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools (2014).  “Multipliers are leaders who look beyond their own genius and focus on extracting and extending the genius of others”. Foster reminded me how by, “Shifting from giving answers to asking questions is perhaps the most powerful change a leader can make.”