Teaching really well is a full time job, yet I am a fan of teachers having teacher leadership roles too. How do we reckon with the two to promote greater distributive leadership while also making sure that teachers have the time they need to teach children well?
As I think of this, I return to the idea of team teaching where groups of teachers of students at similar age-levels and/or disciplines work together to promote a thoughtful program for all students in their charge. These teams of teachers would include traditional classroom teachers, specialists, and assistants. There would be a host of activities that they engage in as a team to target programming to meet students' needs and interests while also fulfilling the expectations of systems.
In addition, with respect to research and development, these teams of teachers would utilize time and money strategically to stay on top of the latest research with regard to teaching well. This distributive model would allow teachers to lead each other and teach too. I've written about this before, and am now looking more deliberately at exactly how this might occur in schools to better what we're able to do with and for each child.
