3 Steps to Becoming a More Effective Teacher Leader

TL;DR:

As a teacher leader, remember to show teachers how much you value their input and care about them as individuals.
Initiate reflection and lead your team more effectively by encouraging innovation, leading with empathy, and allowing your core values to shine through.

Defining Teacher Leadership

As a literacy coach, I thought my position was about demonstrating how much more I knew than those I was asked to lead. In my mind, this was the best way to assert myself as a leader. I thought it would ensure that teachers felt confident enough to follow my lead. As I transitioned from district support to school leadership, my mindset began to shift. I now understand it is important to remember that I will always be a teacher first. This revelation will help you to become a more effective teacher leader.

You are destined to expand your impact when you lead with the heart of a teacher. All teachers know to build strong and lasting relationships with students. As a teacher leader, remember to show teachers how much you value their input and care about them as individuals. President Teddy Roosevelt once said, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

By no means am I suggesting that the teachers in my building are my students; however, if you intend to effectively lead teachers, the formula is very similar. It is the goal of a good teacher leader to draw out their teachers’ strengths and provide the climate for success.

In this respect, my leadership position became less about me and more about my ability to impact and change other people’s lives for the better. School leaders should reflect on the things that they admired about former supervisors and never forget what teaching is like on a day-to-day basis.

The nature of our work as teacher leaders is to educate with love and integrity. Operate authentically and lead from the heart. This will always result in greater student outcomes and deeper teacher relationships.

These 3 tips below will initiate reflection and help you become a more effective teacher leader.

Step 1: Encourage Innovation

As a teacher, I bet your chief goal was to provide optimal learning conditions for students to learn and grow through failure. Good instructional leaders need to allow teachers to be innovative by providing the climate for them to be risk-takers in the classroom without fear of failure. Your first order of business should be to shift mindsets from fixed to growth to promote classroom innovation.

Most teachers are not afraid of taking risks. They are afraid of rigid building leaders who do not extend grace at a failed attempt to try challenging or new things in the classroom.

Beghetto suggests that there are beautiful risks and outright bad risks that teachers can take. It is our goal as instructional leaders to help teachers differentiate between the two. It is important that we work alongside them to design and execute instructional practices. Good instruction can both inspire and actively engage students, yet still result in content mastery. Both are possible. Effective school leaders know how to help teachers navigate this path.

Step 2: Lead with Empathy

In my career, I have had some stellar building leaders who always encouraged me. They taught me how to be positive in every situation and to strive for excellence. Those exemplary leaders spoke in ways that helped me improve my craft without discouraging or belittling me. I will never forget those encounters I had with (who I now know were) poor leaders. They haughtily puffed themselves up, making it crystal clear how insignificant my ideas and requests were as a classroom teacher.

With those leaders, my ideas were not always respected or accepted. It was understood that I should just comply and keep things easy for everyone else. To date, I am not even sure if they were always aware of how they made me feel with their dismissive attitudes and “Edu-speak.” That type of verbiage only jaded me and never led me to perform any better as an educator.

Effective school leaders know and understand that we are to educate without humiliating folks. There is a way to coach and develop a teacher who needs to improve without making the person feel small and incompetent.

Choose your words wisely and reflect on how you provide feedback to teachers. Their voices and input do and always will matter. As Dave Schmittou says, “let them weigh in so you don’t have to have to earn buy-in.”

[scroll down to keep reading]

Step 3: Allow Your Core Values to Shine Through

Our core values make us who we are. They demonstrate to others your truth and level of integrity. One of the questions I typically ask prospective teachers and applicants is: What are your non-negotiables? All of their responses vary and this is perfectly normal. It affirms the theory that teacher autonomy is really our burning desire to be expressive and creative. It is the way educators display our uniqueness.

True school leaders know that being inauthentic and lacking transparency is a surefire way to be ineffective in your position. To play on the words of the incomparable Rita Pierson, teachers will not work with or for people they do not like.

From personal experience, this can make teachers highly dismissive of your leadership. People can always tell when you are not being authentic or operating in truth. Just remember to be true to who you are as a school leader. Hold firm to your core values and allow your personality to shine through. Be sure to encourage teachers to do the same with and for their students. This way of thinking will build deeper relationships and increase engagement.

About Latrese Younger

Latrese D Younger is an instructional lead learner in Virginia. Her passion is English language arts and she believes that she will always be a teacher at heart. Latrese has a servant mindset, spirit, and attitude that she believes helps keep her grounded. She resides with her son, husband, and English bulldog. In her spare time, she loves writing, reading, and social media curating.