Terry Dozier Keynote transcript 2006
Introduction - Heather Reid
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the second day of SETT 2006, the Scottish Learning Festival. Those of you who were here yesterday will know that this year SETT is bigger than ever before, more delegates, more seminars, more spotlight sessions, and more keynote lectures. SETT 2006 is also hosting the largest exhibition of educational products and resources available here in Scotland. I hope everyone is enjoying all the activities on offer this year, including a new poster session that I was just hearing some very positive feedback about, so if you haven’t been to see it please do, and we also have a Gallic learning festival. At SETT we’re also hearing the latest on current Scottish topics, like Curriculum for Excellence, but also obtaining some international perspectives on education. All that’s been missing has been the sunshine. Now I’m quite hopeful that things will brighten up a little bit during today, but it’s going to stay fairly windy – it’s that ex-hurricane Gordon’s fault, but if you’re taking a plane or a boat later today, have fun!
Now before I introduce this morning’s speaker, can I ask everyone please to ensure that your mobile phones are switched off and also be aware of where the fire exits are in the auditorium at the back and also at the side. Again we’ve not been informed of any tests today, so if the alarm rings then we will be vacating the building. And can I also remind everyone it is very busy here at SETT, so at lunchtime please make full use of all the catering outlets within the conference centre, on the concourse, upstairs at the Terrace Bar, and also at the Science Centre. Please be vigilant, security is always tight at the SECC, so don’t leave any unattended backs, including show bags.
So with all that housekeeping out of the way, I’d like to introduce this morning’s keynote speaker. Dr Terry Dozier is the Director of the Centre for Teacher Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education. She’s also a former National Teacher of the Year in the United States, and Terry served as Senior Advisor on Teaching to President Clinton’s Secretary of Education. Her more recent work aims to promote the concept of teachers as leaders of change and to develop more effective teacher leaders through access to information and high quality training. She’s actually here in Scotland for the next several days to share the findings of her latest study on teachers and leadership and its implication for Scottish schools. So today to talk to us about turning good teachers into great leaders, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Terry Dozier.
Presentation
Heather, thank you for that very kind introduction, and as I was listening to the music, I love to dance and the last time I came to Scotland I was taken to a ceilidh, so I felt like breaking out in dance but I promised my sixteen-year-old daughter that I wouldn’t do anything to embarrass her while I was here. So thank you so much for your warm welcome, I’m delighted to be back in Scotland. My mother actually, who’s getting ready to celebrate her ninety-first birthday next month, traces her ancestry back to the clan Frazer, and I know I didn’t pronounce that quite right, but she was also delighted that I was coming to Scotland.
As Heather mentioned, the mission of our Centre for Teacher Leadership is to promote and support teacher leadership in order to improve teaching and learning. And we do this in three different ways, Heather mentioned that it’s very important that we promote this concept as leaders of change because that in fact is not something that is typically accepted in the United States, and I would guess that perhaps in Scotland that may be true as well. And it’s important to support teacher leaders through the access to information and high quality training, and we work very hard to connect our teacher leaders with our policy makers so that they can make informed decisions.
I think your concept of teacher leadership is probably coloured by the role that you play in the school system, and so to get a sense of the audience I’d like to ask how many of you are teachers, practising teachers? Oh, very good. How about principal teachers? Okay. Head teachers? Deputy head teachers? How about CPD coordinators? Local authority leaders? And then anyone else; that would be Scottish Executive, other organisations. Okay, it looks like, and I’m delighted, that the majority of the audience is teachers. Oh, I forgot one other very important group, shame on me, my university would slap my hand! University people, how many university? Okay, not as many.
I’m going to try to practice what I preach and I know in a very large audience it’s difficult to have participation, but I am going to start by having you think about – and I’m going to give you a minute to just jot down on a piece of paper three reasons why you think schools should promote teacher leadership, to challenges that you feel schools face in promoting teachers as leaders, and one thing that you can do to promote teacher leadership. And I’m going to give you a minute to think about it and then I’m going to ask you in just a minute to turn to a partner and discuss your answer. So one minute to think and jot down your notes and then I’ll tell you when to start in terms of your conversation.
[Silence while audience make notes]
Can you hear that buzzer? Alright, I’ll give you two minutes and if you’re not sitting next to somebody maybe scoot down or turn around, but talk to a neighbour about your thinking around teacher leadership at this point before we really begin. So I’ll give you two minutes to talk with your neighbour and share your responses.
[Audience discusses their responses]
Okay, I’m going to ask you … I know you could continue talking, and thank you for cooperating, I know this hall is not conducive to this kind of interaction, and as Heather mentioned I’m going to be going to other places throughout Scotland for the rest of this week and next and I’ll have an opportunity in smaller groups to do some real interaction. I’m not sure, and normally I would ask for people to share their responses, but given our set-up I’m not going to do that, but I’m going to share with you the response from one of the great gurus on school change, Michael Fullan, who was a professor in Canada but very well and known and respected in the United States and I understand here in Scotland as well. And Michael Fullan says it I think as well as anybody can say it - why do we need to promote teacher leadership? Really because educational change depends on what teachers do and think, it’s as simple and as complex as that. Yesterday I had the privilege to both meet with your Minister of Education, but also listen to his remarks, and he said it as well also. He talked about the importance that teachers are central to everything that we do in education and we cannot have a framework for excellence without teachers for excellence. So it’s really important. I’ll give you one other response that’s recently come out from the American Institute for Educational Leadership, who issued a report entitled Leadership for Student Learning: Redefining the Teacher as Leader. And the whole premise of this report is that teacher led reform must become a reality if we are to be successful in improving teaching and learning. And that of course was for America, but I would argue it is also true in Scotland because you and I know, and especially the teachers in the audience, that unless teachers are involved in meaningful ways in addressing our educational challenges, very little will change, and the changes that do occur will be misguided or short-lived.
And so the answer to why teacher leadership. First, I would argue that it cultivates a largely untapped resource for change and improvement in our schools. The single biggest resource we have for improving schools is the wealth of knowledge, experience and insight that teachers bring to the table. Teachers have a perspective that we can’t get from any place else, and yet too often, at least in the United States, teachers are the last to be consulted and the first to be blamed when efforts to improve education do not achieve the desired results.
Now I’m not sure if that’s true in Scotland, but clearly, given the critical perspective that teachers have, we must seek their perspective, we must value their opinions, and we must involve them in decisions that impact teaching and learning. If we are truly to transform our educations systems, then we need highly competent leaders who reside where the problem primarily are, and that is in our schools, and leaders who can address these problems in a continuing and collective manner. So that’s the first reason I would give you for the importance of teacher leadership. We need that perspective and we need to tap that resource.
We also know that teacher leadership keeps good teachers in our classrooms, in our schools. Richard Ingersol, who is a researcher at the University of Pensylvania, has done a lot of research on veteran teachers and on teacher attrition, and what he’s found is that there are four factors that explain the incredibly high turnover rate for teachers, at least in the United States, and you see them listed up there; low salaries, lack of support from school administrators, pupil discipline problems, and lack of teacher input into decision making. Teachers want to feel that they are valued and that others recognise the expertise that they bring to the table, and that’s going to be critically important in keeping good teachers in the classroom. Interestingly enough, as we’ve struggled in the United States on our teacher shortage challenge, the only one they’re addressing is the top bullet, they’re not addressing any of the other ones, and yet the other bullets we could address and it wouldn’t cost a tremendous amount in terms of resources. So I share that with you in terms of in the United States what we’re seeing as far as keeping teachers in the classroom.
Susan Moore Johnson, another American researcher at Harvard, has done a lot of research on beginning teachers, and what she’s found, and you can see it up there, is that she’s suggesting that providing leadership opportunities will be essential for keeping the next generation of teachers in our profession. Like in the US, I know that you have your newly qualified induction programme here in Scotland, and it’s creating a new class of teachers who begin their careers believing that teamwork is important, that collaboration with colleagues is essential, and that continuous improvement, continuous CPD, is part of the responsibility of a teacher. So I would propose that their continued enthusiasm, and everywhere I travelled last year people just were so excited about this programme and so pleased with the calibre of new teachers coming in to your schools here in Scotland, but I would propose that if we’re going to maintain that enthusiasm and that satisfaction for the profession, in Scotland you will have to think about how you’re going to provide these new teachers as they mature with leadership opportunities, because I think that’s going to be important that they perceive that they’re available for them.
Another reason for teacher leadership. At the end of the day, the most important reason is that it benefits pupils. When teachers identify a need and decide to take action, good things happen for pupils. Because at the end of the day, that’s what teachers care about, their students and their learning. And good teaching matters. We all know that but sometimes it takes research to really knock us between the eyes, and I’m going to share some research on why good teaching matters with you. This comes from Bill Sanders, who did his research in Tennessee, although he now is in North Carolina, and I will tell you this research has electrified the policy making community in the United States. In Tennessee, because they test students every year, they were able to track students over time and they looked at students over a three year period who entered basically achieving at the same performance level, watched them three years later. If the student had the misfortune of having three ineffective teachers in a row versus three highly effective teachers in a row, the difference you can see is quite dramatic. It really is the difference between a pupil being assigned to a remedial track versus doing quite well in school. We also have research that’s come out of Dallas, Texas, again the same findings, students entering performing at the sixtieth percentile, three years later you see the difference, those who had ineffective teachers actually losing ground, those with the highly effective … and what you really need to pay attention to is the gap between the two, and in mathematics it is even more dramatic.
What has electrified policy makers in the United States, and one reason now we’re focusing very heavily on teachers and teacher quality, is that the research has also followed these students over time. And what we found is that even students who later get highly effective teachers, they never make up all of the ground that they lost in those years when they did not have strong teachers. So it’s really important that we promote teacher leadership and work with our best teachers to help them promote excellence in education, because it makes a huge difference for students.
The final reason I will give you for teacher leadership is that today, and I know this is true in the United States and I’ve heard it here in Scotland, head teachers are under tremendous pressure, and so identifying and supporting teacher leaders is one way of making the job more manageable, more doable. But what do we mean when we say teacher leader, and I would guess that in some of your conversations earlier you probably were asking each other, “Well what were you defining as a teacher leader?” Because the term itself is troublesome in a profession that has been conditioned to think in opposite terms, because certainly in the United States we have a very strange phenomenon where we expect the beginning teacher to have the same job responsibilities, performance expectations, as a twenty year veteran, and in fact in some cases we give them even more difficult assignments. You know, the classes that no other teacher wants to teach and all of the extracurricular activities.
So what do we mean by teacher leader? Well I thought I would share with you three descriptions by Americans who’ve written about teacher leaders, and I’ll give you a chance to just read those quotes.
[Silence while audience reading]
And then I thought I would share with you the official Scottish answer to “Who are teacher leaders?” This comes from your Chartered Teacher Standards, and you have a definition of teacher leaders here. And I’ll go ahead and read that; “Demonstrate the capacity to contribute to the professional development of colleagues and to make a fuller contribution to the educational effectiveness of the school and the wider professional community than could be expected of teachers near the outset of their career, and Chartered Teachers have acquired and display the qualities of a team leader and is acknowledged as such by colleagues.” Now I’m not proposing that the only teacher leaders in your schools are Chartered Teachers, but this definition that’s part of you standard I think is part of your attempt here in Scotland to begin to define teacher leaders.
So I’m going to ask you to turn maybe to your other neighbour, your other elbow partner, and spend just a minute or two thinking about what … if you had to consolidate in just a few simple terms how you would define a teacher leader to someone in your system? So I’ll put back the American definitions, you know the Chartered Teacher standards, spend a minute talking with your neighbour about how you would define very simply and easily for others what a teacher leader is. Okay, give you a minute.
[Audience discusses their responses]
Okay, and I know again you could continue to talk on this, but … I want to see a show of hands, how many of you started by saying that teacher leaders are excellent teachers, that from those definitions you saw they’re outstanding role models for our profession? Show of hands, was that part of your definition? Okay, a few of you there. Alright, I’m going to propose that a teacher leader has to be an excellent teacher, has to be a role model for our profession, because that’s where you get your credibility as a teacher. Others have to believe that you are competent, that you are an outstanding teacher, you’re a role model for our profession.
But then if you think about those definitions, those descriptions, both yours here in Scotland for Charter Teachers, and the three that I shared with you from American writers on teacher leadership, I think you see that teacher leadership has to go beyond individual efficacy within the classroom. Excellent teachers are instructional leaders with their students, but when we talk about teacher leaders within a school it has to go beyond that. And it has to be an individual who is an advocate for students, teachers, teaching and learning at large, and I think I would sum it up by saying that teacher leaders are excellent teachers who use their credibility and use their excellence in the classroom to influence others. If you looked at those definitions, that was a strand that ran through the various descriptions.
But here I’m not talking about leaders in the traditional sense, and none of those descriptions really talked about leaders in the traditional sense, the capital L of having power and authority over people and events, but rather leaders who have a vision of academic excellence and who have the personal power to carry out that vision and influence others to follow. Because you can’t be a leader unless someone else is willing to follow you. So I’ve thought a lot about this, and for me that is the simplest way to describe to others what I mean when I talk about a teacher leader.
So what can our teacher leaders do for us? And I started you thinking about, and you all had some conversations with colleagues about why it’s important to promote teacher leadership. And I’m going to talk about several things that teacher leaders can do in our schools that are very, very important and why we would want to nurture and support teacher leaders. First of all because they are outstanding teachers, they model effective practice, they can model it for our newest colleagues, they can model it for veterans who may be struggling. They can model for each other, because you and I know, and all of the teachers in the audience, I may be good at one thing but I’m not good at another, and especially if I’m starting a new strategy and I need to see a colleague do that and do it well. Our teacher leaders can certainly ... not all of them but many of them who have the desire and the disposition to mentor our newest colleagues and I know many of you teachers are doing that, and also working with struggling colleagues. Teacher leaders are ideal in leading CPD activities, again I don’t know if this is true in Scotland but I would guess it’s pretty true, but in the United States any time that I went to – well call them in-service days, those were our CPD days – I wanted to hear from another teacher, I didn’t want to hear from the quote “expert”, I wanted to hear from another teacher that this works in a classroom, and so they are ideal in leading CPD activities.
Teacher leaders, because they are so passionate about their practice and they’re constantly improving what they do, will raise the level of collaboration within our schools, because they want to talk about what they’re doing with others. And so part of our job is to think about, those of you who raised your hand as principal teachers, head teachers, leaders at the authority level and even at the national level, how do we create environments in which collaboration is encouraged and nurtured, and in fact expect it.
And then finally and very importantly, teacher leaders can be advocates for our pupils and our profession. And yesterday I was here and was privileged to listen to some of the questions that came out of the audience for your Minister of Education, and clearly a lot of passionate pleas, I remember the question about the school that is getting so many students that English is not their first language and how can we cope with that, a desire to help those students, and this is what we need from our leaders. So a very important role for teacher leaders.
So what do accomplished teachers need and want to be effective leaders, and in fact how do we turn good teachers then into great leaders? I have to tell you in the United States when I talk about teacher leadership, there’s always a great deal of confusion about the question, especially … not so much among teachers, they get it right away, but among administrators, and I’ve actually had administrators in my own university come up to me and say, “Terry, teachers don’t want to be leaders.” And I just kind of look at them and say, “What do you mean, teachers don’t want to be leaders” But what that statement reflects is a misunderstanding of what teacher leadership is all about. Because what that person means is that teachers don’t want to be administrators, and in the United States that’s what we mean by leader, it’s the capital L. You know, it’s the person who’s responsible for leading the school. Now it’s interesting, here in Scotland I know when I say head teachers or administrators, I’m always corrected, but in the United States we consider our principals, our head teacher’s administrators, because they make those policy decisions at a school level, you know, they are the ones leading that school. And so absolutely the gentleman is right that says to me, “Teachers don’t want to be leaders,” if your definition of a leader is that administrator who is running the school or running the authority or beyond. But that’s not what teachers mean when they talk about teacher leadership, and it’s certainly not what I mean when I talk about it.
So at the Centre for Teacher Leadership, we decided to go right to the source to find out what accomplished teachers need and want to be effective teacher leaders. And we did a survey of accomplished teachers and we looked at several things. Their own perceptions of themselves as leaders, we wanted to know do they see themselves as leaders, the characteristics that they believe teacher leaders should have, leadership roles that teachers, that they are currently playing and training, any training they might have received, the kinds of roles they like to play, leadership roles, and the kinds of training they feel they need.
Just to get a sense of how we went about doing this research, we did a purposeful sample of recognised teachers. Remember if you start with the definition of a teacher leader being a role model for the profession, you have to start with accomplished teachers. So we surveyed teachers of the year, National Board certified teachers, which is our equivalent of Chartered Teachers. Disney, Walt Disney has a teacher … a Disney American Teacher Awards every year that’s televised nationally, Milken Educators also national recognition for outstanding teachers, and Presidential Math and Science awardees. So we sent them an electronic survey, we were delighted to have got a sixty per cent response rate, and you see from the majority, vast majority of our states. Just so you can see what these teachers were like in terms of experience, and no surprise, outstanding accomplished teachers, you can be a wonderful beginning teacher but it takes some experience to really become an accomplished teacher, and so very strong experience. We looked at the areas of recognition to see if there might be some differences, if it was a teacher of the year versus a Board certified teacher. The reason why the numbers don’t add up to one seventy-nine is because many of these teachers have received multiple recognitions for their excellence.
What we found in the survey is that recognised teachers are confident of themselves as leaders. The blue is “strongly agree,” and you add the pink, which is “agree,” and you see ninety-seven per cent of them consider themselves as leaders, ninety-six per cent believe that others see them as leaders, and while they were kind of all over the map on the definition of a teacher leader, clearly, you know, they did have a concept of teacher leaders. And they were remarkably consistent on what they saw as the characteristics of a teacher leader. And pink in this case being “strongly agree,” so eighty-nine per cent most important characteristic “Being an advocate for my students and the teaching profession.” Obviously if you’re going to be an advocate you need strong communication skills, you need to be articulate about your practice. Now interesting enough, and when you raised your hands, how many of you started with the definition as an excellent teacher, I wasn’t totally surprised that you didn’t all raise your hand. Because even in this group of incredibly accomplished teachers, seventy per cent of them said you needed to be an excellent teacher, more said it was more important to be an advocate, and then you needed to be knowledgeable about educational issues.
One of the things we saw in the survey is that while these accomplished teachers clearly are being used as leaders, as you see the different roles, ninety-three per cent of them have been called on to provide CPD for colleagues and so forth, a very troubling trend we saw is that they’re not getting the training to perform these new roles. There’s an assumption that because you’re an excellent teacher of pupils, that you’re going to be an excellent teacher of teachers, that you will just naturally know how to work with your colleagues. And any of you that have done this work know that it takes a very different skill set to be effective with colleagues. And in fact research tells us that expanding teachers’ responsibilities and authority without also building their capacity results in diminished performance in the school and in the classroom and in the system.
So these are the kind of roles that teachers in our survey, of highly accomplished teachers through the United States were performing, but what kind of roles did they want to perform? Well the national Board, again that’s your equivalent of Chartered Teachers and like here in Scotland … it’s been around longer than Chartered Teacher status here in Scotland, but we still have, oh I don’t know, about forty-two thousand, and in the United States where we have three million teachers that’s just a drop in the bucket. So I know you have small numbers here in Scotland, but what we’re seeing is that that is continuing to grow and they’re beginning to influence our system in many, many ways. But our National Board Teachers, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards did a survey to ask them what kind of leadership roles are you performing, what do you want to perform? And here again, certainly from my experience working with outstanding teachers, my own experience as a teacher, they want to do things that enhance the profession. They want to mentor new teachers, they want to increase respect – a very serious problem in the United States where teachers do not feel that they are respected as a profession within the community, and they want to be involved with either training new teachers, working with universities or providing CPD.
In our survey at the Centre for Teacher Leadership we gave teachers choices of what they wanted to do and we asked them to choose three areas that you have not served as a leader but you would like to serve as a leader. And the top three, the first one quite surprising, not sure why our school systems aren’t using these incredibly accomplished teachers to recruit new teachers, I mean, they’re ideal, but they’re not being asked to do that. But clearly they want to have input into the decisions that are made about teaching and learning in our schools, ninety-five per cent of our respondents chose one of those three areas and when we asked them “What kind of training do you need?”, here was the areas they felt that they needed the training. Understanding policy, because as a teacher, and I have to tell you when I went to Washington DC I didn’t even know what the word policy meant initially. Now I’m painfully aware of the word policy and it’s implications for all of us, but especially those of us that are working every day with pupils. They need to know how to work with policy makers, what’s the best way to talk and to approach a policy maker. And research, interpreting research, because teachers have repeatedly in the United States had research used against them to try to force them to do things that in one way they did not believe was the best route. And I’ll just share one personal example. When I went to Washington, I was told that reducing … there was no research to tell us that reducing class size made a difference, and every teacher I’d ever known has always said, and I said, if I had smaller classes I could do a better job. So I was really just kind of confused about why there was no research on this. Until I dug a little bit deeper, and I was in Washington and could dig a little bit deeper, and I found out, and this is part of the problem, often the researchers have never been teachers, so they don’t often understand the important variables, they have all this data but they don’t know what the variables are. And I saw this in tests, I was so pleased, there was an article about the researchers at universities have to be connected to teachers, and I know that for a fact because when I started looking at the research on class size I discovered that they didn’t control for the achievement level of students, and in the United States our smallest classes are classes with students with disabilities. So I thought of course you’ve not seeing the impact because this is the area where it’s toughest to make that impact. So I was quite angry that people kept telling teachers reducing class size doesn’t make a difference when I realised the researchers weren’t controlling for the right factors. Every single one of our respondents chose for the kind of training they needed, better understanding of policy and how to work with policy makers.
But there are lots of barriers to teacher leadership and I don’t want to minimise those barriers because they are significant. And the first and most important, as you can see from my little graphic there, is time. How do we enable teacher leaders to do what they love most, which is to teach, but also to lead, without burning them out? What kind of structures can we put in place to encourage teacher leadership and to promote that? One of the exciting things you’re doing here in Scotland is providing the least time for, of course, both your beginning teachers as they’re learning their new craft, but also for those that are mentoring these beginning teachers. And in the United States that’s not happening by and large. However, some innovative schools are doing just that, they’re providing release time, they’re job sharing, so two teachers sharing a position so that half of the time they can work with their colleagues in leadership roles. In some schools they’re providing early dismissal so that maybe on a Wednesday afternoon the students go home after lunch and the teachers have the opportunity to work together, to collaborate.
So time is always a barrier, but there are some other significant barriers, and one of course is the cultural norms in our schools. Teachers are very reluctant to call attention to themselves, you know, they don’t want their colleagues to go, “Who does she think she is to be up there?” And I understand here in Scotland you have – I forgot what you call it, you know, you don’t want to stick your head above the whole for fear it’s going to get cut off. And that’s true in the United States as well, teachers are very hesitant. But also hesitant because many, in fact I would argue most teachers, feel that they don’t have confidence in their ability to be leaders. Now the teachers we surveyed were teachers who had already been affirmed as excellent teachers and others were calling them leaders, but most teachers, and we have fabulous teachers in our schools, do not have that confidence in their abilities.
And so I want to, since most of you are teachers, I want to speak to you in particular about this issue, because I know from personal experience that teacher leadership can be frightening, especially to a profession that has been socialised to be passive. I’ll never forget the night my superintendent called to tell me that I had been selected as the National Teacher of the Year. My immediate reaction was not one of excitement or joy, but rather of absolute terror. I thought that I would never be able to do everything that would be expected of me. You know, serving on state and national committees with some of the most respected and powerful people in the country is exciting, but equally intimidating, especially when they turn to you and expect you to say something profound. Many times I nearly froze with fear, fear that I would embarrass myself or, even worse, reflect poorly on the outstanding teachers I represented. And let me warn you that that fear never completely goes away. It does get easier but that fear never completely goes away. When I was asked by Secretary Riley to join him in Washington, I fluctuated between excitement and total panic. I remember the first three days I was in Washington I would very bravely and calmly give my advice on issues, sometimes disagreeing with top leaders in the Department, and then go back to my hotel room and nearly throw up, I was so nervous. Leadership is not something that I sought nor, I must confess, particularly wanted. I think I am typical of most teachers. I was attracted to teaching by the opportunity to teach, in fact I was one of those teachers I wouldn’t have been at this conference probably unless, you know, my principal had made sure that there was a wonderful substitute that would not make my students get behind. Because I was one of those teachers that felt like anything that took me away from my students, even for, you know, a few minutes was bad. And I have to tell you a funny story. I had a colleague, she and I taught world history together, and she came down to my room one morning and tried to get me to go to her room to talk about some issues and, you know, the bell was getting ready ring and I said, “No, Suzanne I can’t, I’ve got to go …” She tried everything she could think of, and so finally she said, “Terry, for heaven’s sakes, your students are trying to plan a surprise party for you, come down to my room.” But that’s how, you know, obsessive I was about the importance of being with my students every day.
And in fact the irony is that our most outstanding teachers are often the most unwilling to try to effect change beyond their classrooms, preferring to leave that to others. But it is exactly those outstanding teachers, teachers like all of you, that we desperately need to become leaders in our schools. Because the immediacy of our perspectives and insights on education gives us a certain responsibility, a responsibility to speak out and to work hard for what we believe in. Whether we want to or not, we must become leaders beyond our classrooms and enable others to do so.
But again, I’m not naïve, I understand. I mean, the simple fact is that teachers have not been taught to view themselves as change agents. In fact, most teachers have never been asked for their professional opinions, and after years of being treated as hired hands who are expected to be quiet and take orders, it is no surprise that as a group we lack confidence in our ability to effect change, and we make apologies for ourselves by saying, “I’m just a teacher.” But again I would argue that it is precisely because you are a teacher that you must step forward. Though we may not wish it, our teaching practice is inextricable from matters of educational policy and school reform. So our choice is not whether or not we will respond to these broader issues, but how we respond. Do we turn away and concede vital decisions to people with no knowledge of our classrooms, or do we step forward and bring our voices to bear on these issues? Do we retreat to the security and the sanctity of our classrooms, or do we work together with our colleagues to create an environment in which all teachers can be and are effective, and all share vision of educational excellence.
And let me assure you that while you may lack the confidence to be leaders, as teachers you do not lack the skills. As I’ve worked outside of my classroom, I’ve come to realise that most people are either visionaries who don’t have a clue how to make things happen, make things work, or they’re detailed people who can’t see the big picture. As I found my confidence, I realise that I already had the skills that I needed to lead, and so do you.
I want you to think about. You see the big picture as a teacher, you have a vision of what you want your pupils to achieve. But you also know how to break down that vision into manageable pieces, you’re organised, you speak extemporaneously in front of a questioning audience every day, to survive and to flourish in our profession. You’ve learned to be flexible, you explain, you discuss, you persuade, and if you’re a secondary teacher you debate all day, every day, with your students, and most importantly you have … you know what works and what doesn’t because you are at the front line and on the line on a daily basis. So like the lion in the Wizard of Oz, you already have what you’re looking for, you only need to believe in yourself, step out of your comfort zone, and determine a plan of action. Because don’t forget, one of the most important roles of a leader is to teach, you must teach others what it will take to make the meaningful and subsequent changes necessary to ensure that all children can succeed. As teachers we deserve professional status, but with that status comes responsibility. We cannot simply sit in the teachers’ lounge and criticise and complain, we must positive, we must be proactive, and we must be willing to offer alternatives. We are the ones who must act based upon our knowledge, our experience and our convictions.
So I wanted to say this to the teachers in the audience because often when I talk about teacher leadership sometimes administrators don’t understand it – teachers understand it, but they’re very frightened by it. And so I wanted to share with you my own struggles, my own insight in terms of why it is so critically important for us.
And then the final barrier that I want to talk just a few minutes about is the importance of training. And we saw that with our accomplished teachers, they lack the training. And clearly you need training when you’re assuming new roles, because again, just because you’re good with students does not mean you understand how adults learn and how to work with colleagues.
But I’m going to argue that teachers need something else. In addition to a high quality CPD, that alone does not create the conditions in which teachers can become change agents. Teachers need opportunities to break out of their isolation, to build professional networks, networks that bring together teachers who share a vision of educational excellence, but who also know first hand the struggle it will take to realise that vision. And so I hope that you’ll build on this incredible opportunity you have here at the Scottish Learning Festival to make connections and to develop professional networks.
And I want to share with you why this is so important. Last year my centre had the wonderful opportunity to receive a huge Federal grant from the US Department of Education, almost six million dollars, and as part of that grant we are piloting the Santa Cruz model of mentoring, and I know Ellen Moyer was here in Scotland last May and some of you may have met her. But we had two hundred teachers apply for twelve full release mentoring positions. So we had the most incredible teachers you can imagine, the best of the best. They had incredible training from Santa Cruz, twelve days of intensive training, but then we also brought them together every week for three hours to share how it was going, what they were learning, the problems they were encountering. And while in my head I knew that this important to support teachers, what I discovered is that it’s also important, I understood it at a gut level, because I know we could have lost at least three of our mentors had we not had that support, that professional network that came together every week as they were struggling in this new leadership role and wondering whether or not they were being effective. So very important.
And I’ll close by just kind of summarising my thinking about teacher leadership. I told you that in my mind that teacher leaders are excellent teachers who try to influence others, to improve teaching and learning, and I think of teacher leadership as a pyramid. Most teachers want to be leaders at the school level, and that’s where we need them, quite honestly. So the big base of our pyramid are our teacher leaders who are doing things every day to help improve teaching and learning at the school level. But there will be teachers who want to have influence beyond the school at an authority level, and even some who will want to have some influence at a national level. With the Scottish Executive, and maybe, you know, I’ll put a little seed in some thinking here, maybe you want a teacher in residence at the Scottish Executive to help advise the Scottish Executive about things that we need to be doing, just as I was brought to Washington to bring that perspective.
I’ll close, and I think we’ll have maybe a few minutes for questions, with one of my very favourite quotes by Roland Barth, Teachers harbour extraordinary leadership capabilities, and their leadership potential is a major untapped resource for improving our nation’s schools. The world will come to accept that all teachers can lead as many now accept that all children can learn. If we can overcome the many impediments facing teachers that block teachers leading, and if we can find conditions under which teachers will exercise that leadership.
So I want you to think about the implications here in Scotland of how you will use not only your Chartered Teachers but your other accomplished teachers as leaders within your school and the potential that has for Scottish education.
And now I’m happy to take questions, Heather, if we have time for that. I’ve lost Heather! There she is.
Heather Reid
I’m just down here, just negotiating the steps. Well Terry, thank you very much for that informative, inspirational presentation on creating great teacher leaders, and for also sharing some very special memories and insights. I think the audience have been spellbound actually. And of course you stimulated quite a lot of interaction there. So do we have time, do we have anyone with some questions? We have some fixed mikes that are all on. So if anyone would like to make their way towards a mike, or maybe we should do the one minute to think about it thing. Quite hard to see anyone’s hands going up, this is such a huge hall.
Terry Dozier
I know it’s not very conducive.
Thanks - Heather Reid
It’s not hugely conducive for taking questions, unless you have bad headlines in the morning like we had yesterday, and then the Minister was … did have a few. Do we have anyone heading towards the mike or people are having to head off to the next room? I think … well as Terry’s already said, she’s not just here for today’s keynote, and we’re very grateful that she is going to be in the country for the next several days travelling the length and breadth of Scotland, and sharing the very valuable research and the hugely important messages that she has conveyed to us all today. So if we could once again thank Terry for being here and for staying with us.
End of transcript.