Yesterday at the DESE Teachers Advisory Cabinet (TAC) meeting we talked a bit about distributed leadership. Essentially the use of distributed leadership flattens the hierarchy in an organization and spreads out the leadership authority and effort to all teams within an organization.
I'm a big fan of distributed leadership because it closes the gap between ideas and efforts and those who the ideas and efforts serve. Essentially distributed leadership gives more voice and choice to those on the front line of an organization's work.
Our shared teaching model is an example of distributed leadership. Together our teaching team makes decisions with the learning community including educators, parents, students, administrators, and community members as how to serve all of our students well. This work is positive and benefits from our collective efforts to share ideas, maximize our strengths, and mitigate the challenges.
PLC and RTI efforts support distributed leadership. Good scheduling and leadership structures can also support this work. It is definitely a positive model that holds great potential for the work we can do in schools for children.
