What is your general definition of teacher leadership?
I view teacher leadership as essential to the successful teaching framework. Teachers must be able to communicate and collaborate while maintaining their base teaching skills and developing new skills to meet the growing needs of our students. A teacher leader is a facilitator, one who may not always know the answer, but can guide other teachers to discovering new and exciting teaching methods. I see a teacher leader as one who does not take center stage, but rather one who can help other teachers, collaborate for the good to the students, is a wealth of knowledge (especially for novice/beginning teachers), and leads by example through good teaching practices, care for the students, and goes above and beyond the base duties of a teacher.
What examples of teacher leadership have you observed or experienced?
In my school, HCALC, half of the teachers are new (only 2-3 years experience) and the remainder have banked at least 20 years experience teaching in public schools. These more experienced teachers were always checking in on the new teachers to make sure they had all of the resources, materials, and confidence they needed to get the job done. Our senior teachers willingly became teacher-mentors to the new teachers and worked closely to ensure that the teacher and the student were both serviced as best as possible. The teachers in my teaching team are ready to help one-another and introduce new technologies and methods and share their successes and failures openly, which are signs of leadership.
How is leadership for meaningful technology integration different from other kinds of leadership?
Teaching and physical materials have been used for hundreds of years in America. As the senior teachers on my team attempt to use new media and technology, the novice teachers (digital natives) offer their aid and experience to make the transition smooth. Integrating technology in the classroom has a lot to do with "leading by example." If a senior teacher steps into my room and sees that my students are performing research for an upcoming environmental science laboratory and that the students do know how to navigate the web and record new information, then perhaps the senior (non-digital native) teacher will be more inclined to introduce technology into their own classroom. Technology integration leadership is different, because of the reliance on resources is an issue in many classrooms.
From your perspective, what are the benefits and the challenges of teacher leadership for technology (for teachers, for students, for schools, for the profession)?
From my perspective, the challenges include lack of resources, pressure from school board offices to push technology use, and lack of training/interest in some senior teachers to use digital resources. Current students are digital natives, and as such, they can easily use in-class technology to goof-off, circumnavigate assignments, and misuse the technology when they should be learning. Many schools have only one or two computer labs and most classrooms only have a handful of PCs at their disposal, which makes whole-class technology experiences difficult. Benefits of teacher technology leadership include the sharing of ideas and experiences with peers, the ability to troubleshoot issues with other technology users, and team-teaching technology and traditional study practices by sharing digital resources across classrooms. By leading technology in teaching, we can better understand and address issues in our students' lives and in the community.
Hi Adam. It's a shame the school boards really push technology but don't find a way to fund it. That seems to be the one thing I always hear teachers complain about - not enough money to do everything they'd like to be able to do for their students. Hopefully as teachers retire, the new teachers being hired will be more apt to want to use technology in their classrooms because that's how they were trained.
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