Teacher Leaders

Teacher leaders, based on the information I found, take their duties to their students beyond their own classroom but try to encourage improvement all around their school and community. They participate in school decisions as much as they can by working with colleagues and administrators, and they try to have a positive effect on the greater school community by working with the school board. They also work with parents and the rest of the community to make an environment outside of school that promotes learning and good citizenship. This isn't an official role, or something they're asked to do--they just do it.


The Teacher Leaders Network is a network of hundreds of teachers, and is a functioning professional learning environment aiming to connect like-minded teachers. This is a great resource, as being able to read about, share, and collaborate with teachers whose main purpose is to improve student learning will undoubtedly help me in my future teaching.

International Journal of Teacher Leadership is a good resource for keeping up with what teacher leaders around the world are doing. The current issues articles are written by mostly Americans, but also a Canadian and Swiss teacher. The articles are free for download, and as such are easily available for me to keep up with international teacher leadership issues in the future.

And, Leadership Teacher is an ongoing education program for teacher leaders meant to connect K-12 educators and empower teacher to be better leaders in their community. However, everything I read prior said that, essentially, this is something that teachers just are--you can't be taught to be a teacher leader. I think I agree, because some people are doers and some just aren't. Some put in that extra effort without thinking about it. Do you think that a teacher can be taught to put themselves in this position, or something they just do because they can't help but?