Courage to Lead as Teachers: An Emerging Opportunity

by Terry Chadsey, Associate Director    

By some measures, American schools have changed significantly in the twelve years since Parker Palmer wrote The Courage To Teach, but Parker’s frame about teaching remains deeply true and provoking.  

The question we most commonly ask is the “what” question—what subjects shall we teach? When the conversation goes a bit deeper, we ask the “how” question—what methods and techniques are required to teach well? Occasionally, when it goes deeper still, we ask the “why” question—for what purpose and to what ends do we teach? But seldom, if ever, do we ask the “who” question—who is the self that teaches? How does the quality of my selfhood form—or deform—the way I relate to my students, my subject, my colleagues, my world? How can educational institutions sustain and deepen the selfhood from which good teaching comes?

Although this fundamental experience of teaching has not changed, the context of teaching in public schools is shifting profoundly, providing both new challenges and new opportunities for teachers.

I started teaching in Chicago in 1975. Over my twenty-two years in classrooms, across different districts and schools, one descriptor of my role is  “independent contractor.” Each year, I was given a classroom, some materials and a set of students. What happened in my classroom was completely up to me. There were occasional professional development days, but I remember those primarily as days of rest away from the intensity of seven hours with students.

That context allowed a high degree of autonomy but there were costs too. I had no sense of being part of a larger process. I did my best to move my students along with little sense of what happened before or after. I worked in isolation and had little dialogue with my colleagues. I had little opportunity to see others teach.  When I faced tough situations with students, I faced them alone.

In the past decade school accountability has shifted the context of teaching dramatically. Largely gone is the isolation and autonomy.  There are standardized expectations of what to teach and how to teach. Teachers are expected to be high functioning team members. Professional development is focused, coordinated and embedded in the school and classroom. Teacher mentors and coaches are more plentiful.

When implemented well, these ways of working offer teachers rich opportunities to hone their craft in an interdependent community of practice and see improved student learning. While the freedom and independence are gone, the isolation is replaced with professional collaboration. Of course, there are individual costs to teaching to a common agenda and often such changes are not implemented well.

Over the past twelve years thousands of teachers have attended CTT retreat series and brought renewed vitality to their teaching and hundreds of principals have attended Courage to Lead® retreats and found similar renewal for their own leadership. There’s more need than ever for people in both roles to renew and sustain themselves through the Circle of Trust® approach. In addition, this changing context of public education has opened a new specific application for teachers playing leadership roles and bridging the world of their teaching colleagues and the world of positional leaders.

Growing numbers of experienced teachers are coaching and mentoring colleagues, and leading the implementation of new approaches to assessment, evaluation, curriculum and instruction. The Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession recently described the unique demands of these roles:

They are energetic risk takers whose integrity, high efficiency, and content knowledge give them credibility with their colleagues…The natural curiosity of teacher leaders makes them life-long learners who are open to new experiences and challenges. Juggling many important professional and personal roles, they effectively prioritize their work to maintain a sense of balance. Teacher leaders often seek like-minded colleagues with similar positive intentions as allies, however they also value different ideas and approaches that move the work forward. Difficult challenges require teacher leaders to tap into their deep sense of courage, and their unwavering perseverance helps them to follow through.

This spring, Washington Courage & Renewal launched a four-retreat “Courage to Lead as Teachers” program. The series is led by me and my colleagues, facilitator Yarrow Durbin and program partner, Ann Healy-Raymond. We have 25 participants from a handful of districts. In most cases the program fees have been paid by the school districts on behalf of their teacher leaders.

Last fall in a meeting of 20 teacher leaders in a district supportive of this program, we asked,  “What is required to thrive as a teacher leader? What does it take to address the challenges, and navigate them well?”

Their answers lined up amazingly well with what CTT has been shown to cultivate in participants, including:
•    self awareness
•    ability to stretch and use my gifts
•    capacity to navigate between worlds
•    an open presence
•    clear authentic vision
•    resilience
•    healthy balance of work, family, personal life
•    capacity to build trusting relationships
•    ability to ask the right questions

Their words helped us plan and pitch this series to District leaders. In mid March we gathered for our first retreat, with a late winter theme of “Gathering Around the Fire.” We watched the group engage, bringing into the room both their love of teaching and their daily struggles as emerging leaders.  We meet next in mid May to explore “Living and working with the power of paradox.” We plan to capture the story of this retreat group and the ways these leaders carry their retreat experiences back into their schools and roles.

Good schools gather adults who work together with passion and curiosity about improving teaching and learning and make a difference in the lives of students. They do so through creating a network of collaborative relationships that build and sustain trust. When adults bring “who they are” to such schools, they offer hopeful answers to Parker’s question, “How can educational institutions sustain and deepen the selfhood from which good teaching comes?”