Latest / New Teacher Talk / Ep 194: Level Up Your Leadership as a New Teacher

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Ep 194: Level Up Your Leadership as a New Teacher · New Teacher Talk

Hi, I'm Bill Curtin,
and I'm the Policy Director for TeachPlus Illinois.
Before taking on this role,
I spent 13 years in the classroom.
I'm a National Board-Certified English teacher and also
taught Spanish and history across three different districts
in Illinois.
Today,
I'm going to talk a little about how you can grow into a
leader in your profession and some early career steps you
can take to get started.
TeachPlus is an organization dedicated to teacher
leadership,
and we studied how teachers begin to be leaders and
published that in a report called the DICE Role.
I hope the editors can link that report in the show notes,
but you can also Google TeachPlus DICE role to find the
report.
Essentially,
we held focus groups with teachers across Illinois and
found that leadership opportunities are haphazard.
They're not intentional.
Most of the folks in teacher leadership roles either came
in with existing leadership skills before they even joined
the profession,
or they got tapped on the shoulder because somebody needed
someone to fill in along the way in some sort of leadership
role.
The principal would come by and say, hey,
we need someone for a committee and you're a great teacher,
why don't you step in and do that?
And then they just figured it out as they went.
It's important to note that both of these approaches are
very inequitable because those early opportunities for
leadership experience that people have before they become
teachers, well,
those most often go to those with wealth and privilege as
they're growing up.
And leaders that are tapping someone on the shoulder and
saying, hey, you'd be good for this position,
are most often tapping those who look and think like them.
TeachPlus is working with a coalition of advocates across
the state to build more intentional paths to teacher
leadership.
But in the meantime,
you can bring intentionality to your own career path.
That's important for everyone,
but particularly important for teachers of color and first
-generation college graduates who are statistically less
likely to luck into leadership through one of those two
pathways.
I also want to debunk this myth that you need to wait to be
a leader.
You don't need 10 years of experience.
You don't need to be tenured to be a leader.
Anyone can be a leader.
I would argue that every teacher is a leader,
as I'll get to in a minute.
But I want to share a little bit of my story.
I was part of that first pathway.
I came into the education profession with some leadership
skills that were already fairly well developed because I'd
been preparing for leadership since I was age 10 when I
joined the Boy Scouts.
I had very formal leadership training from a very young
age.
I was put in leadership positions and told to experiment.
And that was a really powerful experience because when
you're out camping with a bunch of other kids and you're in
charge, if you don't get the job done, you don't eat.
So we were really motivated to learn leadership.
When I came into teaching at my second school,
I was three years into my career.
It was a little bit chaotic.
We had hallways that were out of control.
Some students went to six lunches, no classes,
and spent the rest of the day hanging out with the hall
monitors that were supposed to be urging them to get out of
the hallways.
Because that environment was a little bit out of control,
a lot of teachers were closing their doors and saying,
look, I can't control that.
What I can do is make my classroom a place where students
can learn.
But it was clearly bringing everyone down.
In my second year in this building,
I had begun to make some connections.
I knew a fair number of teachers.
And one day I went around and I started talking to all of
them.
And I said, look,
I heard the new assistant superintendent is going to be
coming to school and sitting in the teacher's lounge for a
whole day to listen to what we need.
Let's all get on the same page,
meet in my room after school on Tuesday,
and we'll talk about what they can do to fix this.
I knew that was a hook.
They came into my room and we spent half an hour coming up
with a list of eight or ten things that the administration
could do to improve the school, make it more secure,
make it more safe, and make sure students were learning.
And that was powerful.
But in the second half of the meeting,
that was the part that I was really proud of,
because then I said, look,
we made a list of what they can do,
but we're not powerless.
What can we do as teachers?
And by the end of that hour,
we decided that each teacher would spend one planning
period a week just walking the halls after the bell ring,
approaching students with a script we developed so that it
was fair, it was equitable,
we treated every student the same and with kindness.
And within two weeks, those hallways were clear.
I had teachers coming down the hall to me and saying, hey,
when are you going to go get your administration degree and
become a principal because we need you?
We need this kind of organization.
And why was I ready to do that?
Because I had taken the time to prepare myself as a leader
to develop those leadership skills.
Now, I had a very structured way to do that in a program,
but anybody can do that.
And one thing I wanna note is that, as I said,
I would argue every teacher is a leader.
Leadership training that I'm gonna talk about doesn't just
prepare you for the front office or even for a teacher
leadership role.
Teachers lead from the classroom with or without formal
roles.
And more than that,
being an effective leader makes you a powerful teacher in
the classroom tomorrow.
Because classroom management is leadership.
You have 25, 30 students in a room,
and managing all of them requires a lot of leadership
skills.
The same skills you use to keep a classroom on track,
things like clear communication, conflict resolution,
setting a vision that others will buy into,
those are the foundations of leadership.
And they're applicable across young children, teenagers,
and adults with some slight tweaks.
As a teacher, you do a lot of leadership moves.
Just a few examples,
you set up structures to enable students to be able to
achieve their best.
Those aren't just rules to follow,
they're systems for success in your classroom,
and those become systems for success in an organization.
Effective teachers are building a team and a culture in
their classroom,
skills that are really important and leading adults as
well.
You coach those individuals that you're leading to grow
personally, both academically and as humans.
You organize your classroom into smaller groups for
projects and activities.
You provide feedback that will help them grow.
Great leaders give actionable feedback,
and so do great teachers.
So learning how to do that for students,
do all these things for students,
helps you navigate those same conversations,
those same skills with colleagues later on in your career.
Just one example, when students come into your classroom,
you probably want them to be intrinsically motivated and to
be driven forward,
not just following rules or following orders.
Well,
leadership training can teach you how to inspire both students
and your peers to join a cause rather than just checking
boxes.
So investing in growing as a leader is investing in your
students too, investing in great teaching.
And there are lots of ways to do this.
But to get you started,
probably the easiest to do this on your own early in your
career is by reading.
I'm gonna name three specific books that I recommend that
are great leadership development tools.
The first is Leadership and the One-Minute Manager.
Leadership and the One-Minute Manager is not only great for
leadership, I think every teacher should read this book.
It's about understanding where people are in their
development journey and meeting them where they are with
the appropriate leadership style.
We do this all the time as teachers,
whether we know it or not.
But when working with other adults,
a lot of teachers like to move right to that delegation
style of leadership and trust others that they just know
how to do it.
But maybe even if they've been teaching for 40 years,
if this is their first time working on a certain kind of
task,
that right leadership style for them might be a lot more
directive than you would initially think.
And that kind of thinking is leadership thinking and
effective teaching thinking.
The second book I'd recommend is called It's Your Ship.
This is a military-based book which I recognize is not for
everybody,
but it has a lot of really great ideas from an innovative
leader operating within a rigid bureaucratic system.
And in that way,
the military has lots of parallels with schools,
which can also be very rigid and bureaucratic.
So I found it extra valuable to learn how someone navigated
a system like that while preserving the innovation that
made them great in the first place and turned the
organization around.
And the final one that I'll recommend today is called Good
to Great.
This is a classic business leadership book with lessons
about what it takes to build a strong organizational
culture.
Now,
a lot of this book assumes that you have some level of positional
power,
so it may be more on the preparation side than immediately
actionable earlier in your career,
but it's still really good to reflect on how these things
happen.
And I would recommend grabbing the companion.
It's a much smaller paperback pamphlet usually called Good
to Great for the Social Sector,
which acknowledges that leadership is different in business
where you can just give orders and fire people that don't
follow them than it is in the social sector like government
or schools.
Good to Great lays out a lot of great principles that you
can begin to put in a place in your classroom tomorrow and
in a larger organization later on.
The other really extremely powerful learning tool that I
want to pose to you is journaling.
Again,
something you can do on your own doesn't require much
investment, but I was a high school teacher,
so I used to have a lot of students come to me and say,
hey, I want to be a teacher someday.
Do you have any advice for me?
I always told them, start a journal.
Not about what you want to do as a teacher,
but what you are doing right now as a student.
What are your reflections on the teaching you're observing
every day?
Because you can't go back and reclaim that.
We have some memories of what it's like to be a student,
but not in that level of detail.
And if you start journaling now about what it's like to be
led,
what you observe from your leaders that either works well
or doesn't,
it will not only give you something to reflect on later as
a leader,
but it's gonna bring your focus to the skills of leadership
and make you more aware of what you're seeing,
which is one of the first steps to effective learning.
Another good journal prompt beyond just observing the
leadership you're experiencing is to self-reflect on your
own approach to leadership now.
What kind of leader do you wanna be?
What are your strengths now?
And where are your opportunities for growth?
That can help you chart a path forward.
As a leader, you can also be a learner.
In fact, you should be.
And when you treat your classroom as a laboratory for
leadership, when you tell your students,
I'm working on being a better leader,
your students can see a model of professional growth.
That's gonna help them.
It's gonna help build your classroom culture and it's gonna
help you be a better instructor, let alone leader.
Try asking them for feedback on your leadership,
which both helps you grow and models vulnerability and
learning and growth for them.
Now, as you're going on this journey,
another thing to keep in mind is,
how can you make a network that's going to support you?
Create one.
First, I would recommend finding the connectors.
I mentioned in my story,
I had maybe 30 teachers that I was well-connected with
across the school.
It certainly wasn't all of them.
We had a staff of about 100.
But I knew that about a dozen of them,
they were the ones that knew everybody else.
And if I could connect with them,
I really had much larger networks than I appreciated or had
directly.
So identify the people in your building who get things done
and learn the invisible structures of the school.
Certainly be nice to everyone by default,
but be aware that just like in our own high school
experience, clicks into school staff can be common.
Don't lean into every invitation.
Not all of them are where you wanna be.
Get the lay of the land first and find the folks that
everyone respects.
There are some of them,
connect with them and find out why that is,
just by observing, by watching them,
seeing how they operate.
And then seek out mentoring.
You don't know at all, I promise.
You came into teaching with some exciting ideas,
probably you've had promising results from some of them.
You're likely eager to help others by sharing those ideas.
But to a veteran teacher,
this could come off as condescending and disrespectful if
they didn't ask for it.
Instead, ask them to share.
The research is pretty clear.
Asking someone for a favor is one of the most powerful
things you can do if you want them to like you more.
It builds connection,
it increases your likability because you're showing
vulnerability.
And opening yourself up with a little vulnerability is one
of the first steps towards a connection.
So ask them to share something.
And if you've identified somebody that's a respected leader
in your building,
you can ask for some more formal mentoring,
especially if you know where you wanna go career-wise.
The other thing you can do is invite them to see you in
action and watch a specific strategy,
not because you wanna share it with them,
but ask them for their feedback so that you can grow.
Again, modeling vulnerability,
which is a hallmark of strong leadership and relationships.
As you begin to develop into a leader from the classroom,
one thing that's really important is mastering the why.
When you can explain the research and the why behind what
you're doing as successfully in the classroom,
people naturally begin to look to you for understanding the
how.
So as you become more successful in your practice,
have more to share,
make sure you can understand why all of those things work.
And another good step to take early on from the classroom
is volunteer for some kind of substantive committee.
It's important,
but I would not classify the Sunshine Committee or the
Party Committee as being part of that.
I mean something substantive like a curriculum committee,
a school improvement committee,
something that is critical to the work of the school.
It puts your name on the radar of decision makers,
principals, administrators early on.
But once you're there,
spend more time listening than speaking.
When you do open your mouth,
a good default strategy is to do a lot of summarizing and
connecting ideas that multiple people have set.
It'll help move the group along,
acknowledge the expertise of the veterans in the room,
and make you a hub for information because it's flowing
through you through the summary.
One of my power moves as a leader that I've reflected on
over time and realized I was doing is listening to what
everybody else has to offer, understanding what they want,
and summarizing that while proposing a path forward with
gentle language like,
I wonder if this might bring all of these ideas together.
And if I've done a good job of understanding what everyone
wants and can find some solution that brings that all
together, then all of a sudden people say, well,
that was a great idea.
That's what we wanna do and go forward because they all see
themselves in it.
So that summarizing and connecting can be really powerful.
Finally,
I wanna talk a little bit about taking charge of your
trajectory over the longer term,
not necessarily 30 years from now,
but let's talk three to five.
You do not have to leave the classroom to be a leader.
You do not need to be an administrator.
You can explore other roles like instructional coach,
department head, formal mentor.
Not to mention all of the informal roles that teacher
leaders take on all the time.
If you're not sure,
take some time to explore and identify what those pathways
are.
What's your niche?
What's the thing that really you're excited about and you
want to be the expert in?
You can probably,
if you've been in your school for any length of time,
identify who are the tech teachers.
If you had a computer or tech question,
who would you go to?
Who would be somebody you'd talk to about classroom
management or restorative justice?
What about literacy?
What about assessment?
Is there an area of expertise that's important to you?
If so,
deep dive and grow expertise for positions you might want
to grow into.
If you can identify those people, like I just named,
ask to shadow those folks or join them for meetings or
training so that you can watch them in action and develop
expertise that way while also building a relationship.
As you grow into a leader, think about how you can grow,
but it's hard to be that self-reflective to see everything
honestly.
So ask someone else.
Be proactive.
Don't wait for a formal evaluation that is all about
whether you're going to continue to have a job.
No, go find a trusted peer and say, hey,
what's one thing I could do to be a more effective,
whatever, assessor, classroom manager, instructor,
or leader?
And let them give you some ways that you can start
improving.
And then audit your professional development.
Think about how you want to grow.
Yes,
your school is going to deliver professional development to
you,
but think about over a three to five year time span where
you want to be and think about what you want to do in order
to get there.
That doesn't always need to be a thousand dollar
conference.
It could be a book.
It could be a class.
So if you want to lead in equity, AI, numeracy,
whatever it is,
get the certification now so that you're prepared to step
into a role when it becomes available later on.
One note,
that probably should not be a master's too early in your
career.
A master's degree is a lot of investment,
and you should be pretty darn sure that that's the path you
want before you go into.
For instance, me, a lot of people told me, hey,
why don't you go be the principal?
Why don't you get that admin degree?
Well, I did,
and I learned I did not want to be an administrator and
took on the student debt to do it.
So think really carefully about what you want to commit to
before you do something like that.
Unless, of course, what you really want is a lane change,
in which case that is its own reason for getting a master's
in the system we have.
But you might consider anchoring in your instructional
expertise first and earning something like national board
certification could be a really powerful way to lift
yourself in the eyes of your colleagues who can now see
like, oh,
they're externally validated as a really good instructor by
earning this certificate.
Or whether it's a tech coach,
maybe you go get that Google certificate,
whatever it might be.
So certify your skills.
Whatever the path is that you choose,
I want to leave you with this.
Find a low stakes first step or two or three.
This week,
find something low stakes to take one step forward and get
started.
Some ideas,
you might volunteer to serve on a committee or volunteer to
facilitate a five minute wind sharing session at a staff
meeting.
You might identify a role you're interested in,
email somebody that has that role now to ask for a 15
minute chat to just better understand what they do.
You could ask your evaluator department chair principal for
one next step they think would help you grow.
You could order a leadership book,
whether one of the ones I've suggested or another,
or put in a library hold.
Or grab a nice notebook and start a journal for your
reflections on leadership.
Because leadership is a muscle.
It can feel heavy at first to get that first lift in,
but it gets stronger with every yes you give to your own
growth as a leader.
So taking that first step now will make all the difference
down the road.
Again, I'm Bill Curtin.
I'm the Policy Director with Teach Plus Illinois.
We do offer teacher leadership opportunities for teachers
who have completed at least two years in the profession.
So if you've taught for at least two years and you want to
continue growing yourself as a leader,
you can visit teachplus.org slash IL for Illinois
opportunities.
Thank you for this opportunity and good luck on your
journey to leadership.