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Recommendation Three: Encourage the inclusion of teachers in community, school, district, and state level discussions related to helping all students learn at the highest possible levels.
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Role Group Strategies
Principals
Pursue involvement in decision-making groups from across your faculty. Seek out teachers who have not traditionally been active in leadership roles and encourage them to participate.
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Building Trusting Relationships for School Improvement: Implications for Principals and Teachers
Brewster, C. and Railsback, J. (2003, September). By Request. Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
http://www.nwrel.org/request/2003sept/index.html This booklet addresses issues of trust between principals and teachers and among teachers themselves as an element of school improvement. The authors draw on recent research and highlight several schools working on trust building, including a “critical friends group” established at Southridge High School in Beaverton, Oregon.
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Forms of Teacher Leadership Paulu, Nancy & Winters, Kirk. (1998). Department of Education
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/TeachersLead/forms.html In this section of Teachers Leading the Way: Voices from the National Teacher Forum , the authors describe 14 forms of teacher leadership ranging from taking part in school decision-making, to sharing ideas with colleagues to becoming politically involved. An example of actions from real teachers accompanies the definition of each role.
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Principals who Know How to Share Leadership
Alabama Best Practices Center. (2004, Spring).
http://www.bestpracticescenter.org/pdfs/wte4-1.pdf The Spring 2004 issue of "Working Toward Excellence" profiles several principals who've discovered (some late in their careers) the power of teacher leadership to revitalize teaching and learning. The issue also describes the Alabama Reading Initiative's principal coaching program, which is helping dozens of principals gain the confidence, skills and knowledge they need to lead reforms in literacy instruction.
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Critical Issue: Building a Collective Vision North Central Regional Educational Laboratory
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/leadrshp/le100.htm The creation of a collective vision is critical to the success of any school. Collective visions help to unite faculty, parents and community members behind a common goal and help to keep the complex work of schools focused and on track. This website examines the importance of collective visions, and walks through the process of establishing a collective vision. Links are provided throughout the document, connecting to supporting documents and definitions related to the concept of shared vision. Also included are links to illustrative cases and explanations of possible pitfalls.
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Leadership Audit Tool: A Participatory Management Checklist
Center for School and Community Development, North Central Regional Educational Laboratory
http://www.ncrel.org/cscd/proflead.htm This online tool helps school administrators and leaders reflect on the degree of participatory management that they allow for within their own schools. Covering areas related to decision-making and problem solving, survey takers get a chart showing their personal areas of strength and weakness. This tool can be used multiple times during the course of a year, tracking progress and growth. It can also be effective to identify the individual strengths of administrators across an entire county.
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Leadership Matters: Building Leadership Capacity
Barkley, S., Bottoms, G., Feagin, C.H., and Clark, S. (2001).
http://www.sreb.org/main/Leadership/pubs/01V18_LeadershipMatters.pdf This guide outlines practical strategies for building leadership capacity in schools that pertain to administrators, teachers, students, parents, and the community. It also includes a description of the importance of establishing a shared vision and a checklist that can be used to evaluate the supports that a school has in place to encourage risk-taking by teachers and administrators.
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Building Teams to Rebuild Schools Maeroff, Gene. Phi Delta Kappan 74.7 (1993)
http://www.teacherleaders.org/misc/team_building.pdf This article describes the need for teams made up of teachers and administrators to lead school change. The piece gives tips on what types of activities these teams should be engaged in and how to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to be successful.
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The Rocky Road To Empowerment Willis, Scott. Education Update 36.2 (1994).
http://tinyurl.com/cvj4x This article summarizes highlights from a presentation by Jerry Patterson, superintendent of schools in Appleton, Wisc., at ASCD's 21st Annual Symposium on Urban Curriculum and Instructional Leadership. Patterson contends that although many schools believe they have opened up participation in decision-making, such participation is still closely controlled by school leaders. True empowerment, he states, encourages teachers to voice conflicting opinions on important issues to yield more truthful and productive conversations. He also emphasizes the importance of creating an environment of trust and providing training in reaching consensus.
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School-Based Management: Rhetoric vs. Reality
Education Commission of the States
http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/26/58/2658.htm This article is one in a series investigating the progress of education reform from the end of the 20th Century to the start of the 21st. Of particular interest in this piece is the list of factors crucial to successful school-based management, and the case studies on Kentucky and Chicago.
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