Teacher Leadership
After reading Distributed Leadership and School Improvement: Leading or Misleading? by Alma Harris, our chapter on adult learning and professional development in Zepeda’s Professional Development: What works? , listening to the lecture and reading our discussions I am again finding myself very thankful to work in a school in which my Principal and vice Principals are current in research on best practices. Our office staff and our Principals have such full plates. Our Leadership committee and various other committees on campus try to help distribute the leadership around campus and teachers are encouraged to be leaders in their buildings, departments, and in our classrooms. Collaboration is encouraged and our Principals are more than willing to sit down with us and talk about how things are really going in our classrooms.
I am headed to the National Academy of Curriculum Leadership in the Tri-Cities in a few weeks and will go with more purpose this year. I want to come back to my school with more techniques for how to be a curriculum leader in my school. Distributed leadership is a great way to run a school- teachers feel their expertise is valued and one person is not completely burnt out with too much work. I want to make the most of my time as one of our science department heads this year and look forward to taking ideas to my school and district groups this week and the rest of this semester. After my fourth year of teaching I feel like I can step up and start contributing in a more leader-like role in our department.
alumpe said,
November 1, 2009 at 4:59 pm
I hope you have a great experience at NACL. It is a great program. You are becoming a real leader in your building and district.