Who are teacher leaders?

Teacher leader.

It's a big term. One you can practically drive a truck through.

Of course teachers are leaders. Step into my classroom at 10:15 (or 11:00, or 8:30, or 2:15) on any given weekday.

You'll find me leading.

Leading a game. A learning activity. A dance, a rehearsal, a class discussion, a peer-peer discussion, a reflection. The opportunities for leadership within the classroom are endless. When you are in charge of the daily learning and development of over 500 8. 9, 10 and 11-year-olds, how can you do anything BUT lead?

Here's the thing, though: How often do we, as teachers, find ourselves leading our own colleagues?

According to The Glossary of Education Reform, a site owned and managed by the folks at the Great Schools Partnership, a teacher leader is a teacher who has taken on "leadership roles and additional professional responsibilities".

(I love this resource, by the way. Developed for a variety of stakeholders, including educators, parents and families and even the media, the Glossary provides definitions of terms we all hear floating around in order to help all those stakeholders come to a shared understanding.)

Traditionally, opportunities for leadership and professional growth in schools were limited. Think about it. Teachers are generally a group of equals, working toward a shared goal: student growth. A teacher with experience who desired the opportunity to lead others, then, would become a principal, a department chair, a curriculum director. The idea of teacher leadership, though, allows teachers to stay in the classroom and do what they do best -- that is, teach.

In a building like mine, where there are very few top-down (principal-driven) decisions, we've got leaders all over the place. They're on committees, facilitating staff meetings, influencing decisions and mentoring new staff members.

In some buildings where teacher morale is low and some are giving all they've got to just make it through a day in the classroom, the leaders are those who go above and beyond for others. They're there to lend a helping hand, to make building decisions, and to model effective practice.

In some buildings, leaders are building curriculum, leading professional development and building initiatives.

Ultimately, these leaders may choose to serve as instructional coaches or department chairs. They may choose to formalize their leadership positions and pursue a principalship.

Or, they may choose to stay in the classroom, doing what they do best: teaching and inspiring kids.

I don't think the late President John F. Kennedy was necessarily thinking of elementary school or secondary teachers when he wrote, in his last speech which he would never deliver on that fateful day in Dallas in 1963, "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."

But how can we have one without the other? It's a sentiment that sticks out to me when I think about leadership in schools. Teacher leaders, ultimately, advance student learning and teacher learning through a variety of means.

I look forward to exploring and advancing our understanding of teacher leadership together through this blog.