Module One Discussion

I think that a teacher leader is someone who engages with other teachers, administrators and parents and strives to keep the lines of communications open.  They reflect constantly on their work and are experts in instruction.  Teacher leaders share their knowledge with other professionals and actively participate in action research.  At times they may be department heads or some other form of official leader in a school but they don’t necessarily have to be.

Over the years I have had several teachers who would fall in the category of teacher leader.  The one that stands out the most was my high school senior English teacher.  This teacher was actively involved in everything in school from the PTA to being an assistant principal, to volunteering as the drama coach.  Mr. Whiting had been at the school a long time and all the younger teachers always came to him when they had questions or problems.  He was truly an amazing teacher and his class was the one class that the students were excited to go to every day.  In his classes, he was always doing some kind of project that at the time we really didn’t see the need for, but now it would be termed as action research. 

Leadership for meaningful technology integration is different than traditional teacher leadership.  Technology leaders must take the time to learn the new technology that’s out there and be willing to show students and other teachers how to use it and to implement it into their lessons.  Technology leaders don’t spend all their time in the front of the classroom lecturing and students taking notes.  It’s more activity based, collaborative kind of work.  It’s actually a whole different style of teaching and learning that a traditional classroom.  The students in these classrooms are learning more of the skills that they will need in the real world.

The benefits of teacher leadership for technology are unlimited.  The students learn technology that they will be able to apply and use when they leave the classroom in all aspects of their daily lives.  It will also encourage them to continue learning to use the new technologies as they develop. Students will learn new ways to problem solve.  It benefits the schools because these teachers write grants for their classrooms and the schools and they help to teach the other teachers and administrators how to implement technology into their roles. 

I would think that the biggest challenges would be funding.  Schools sometimes have trouble getting the money to buy what is considered absolutely necessary let alone finding the money to buy technology for the classrooms.  Another challenge could be administrators that don’t like change.  If they think the old traditional ways of teaching are all that’s necessary then they could make it difficult for teachers that are interested in trying new things.