My Capstone, Terry F Erickson [classic novels .txt] 📗

recall several times when I needed to weigh the costs and benefits of leadership roles. When I began teaching in 1992, I was fortunate to work with a group of highly skilled, experienced teachers in a suburban-Minneapolis district. The staff was in the second year of a two-year application process for the prestigious federal designation of a Blue Ribbon School. This is an award given to schools with high-achieving students, highly qualified and competent teachers, and significant parental involvement. I felt dwarfed by the talent around me.
The school received the award the following year along with accolades from administrators, politicians, and local business leaders. I knew then that I couldn’t have begun my career in a better place. Things were far different in our district during that time. There were no Bible-inspired names given to federal education mandates. There was no hotel-rating system used to rank school achievement. Our curriculum was for the most part developed by grade-level teams at each school, and it centered on themes. Days were set aside throughout the year for teachers to integrate lessons with the music, art, and physical education curriculums. Those were heady days! For me, it was the golden age of teaching, a true marriage of artistry and skill. How was I to contribute to an already successful system and become an integral part of this organization?
My first instinct was to somehow become an essential player in the school by holding a leadership role. I volunteered for the school site council and district social studies curriculum committee. I thought the more valuable you became, the less dispensable you were. My perceived benefit of job security was greater than the cost of the lost opportunity to become a better teacher. Self-preservation is a powerful motivator.
A few years later, an initiative sprang from a group of teachers to focus the entire school curriculum around environmental studies. A task force of teachers and parents was formed to plan and implement a nature center on our school site. I was the co-chair. After an arduous three-year process, an ambitious plan was developed that called for a prairie restoration, an arboretum, and an outdoor learning and interpretive center. It was both an exciting and exhausting time in my career. The prairie and arboretum were implemented, but the remainder of the project collapsed under its own weight due to its size and scope. In addition, most of the original members of the task force were gone due to relocation, fatigue, and leaves of absence. I was tired and burned out and swore off any more leadership positions in my school or district. “Been there, done that” was my new attitude whenever I was called to volunteer. Let others fill the void. At the start of the project, the benefits to me were the eventual availability of an outdoor classroom, the capability to channel my enthusiasm and knowledge for teaching science, and being an integral part of an exciting undertaking. The costs were time away from classroom work, my family, and other activities I enjoyed. The benefits and costs remained the constant throughout the process but, near the end, their perceived weight reversed. This confirms that benefits and costs are relative to an individual’s life circumstances.

What Gets in the Way?
To hinder means to get in the way, block, or delay. It is different from the costs/benefits theory. For example, if I wanted to attain a master’s degree from Hamline University and take classes on campus I would need some type of transportation to get me there. If I lived in Eden Prairie, the only practical mode of transportation would be a car. Taking a bus would require many transfers and a great deal of time. Taking a taxi would be too expensive, and depending on others to give me a ride would be too burdensome. If I didn’t own a car, getting a degree from Hamline by taking classes on campus would be almost impossible.
Hindrances don’t necessarily have to be physical in nature. Time can be a hindrance as well. For example, if a committee meets on Tuesdays after school and you have to pick up your child from daycare after school on Tuesdays, you can’t possibly be in two places at the same time.
Conflicts with members of a group can also be a hindrance. I once resigned from a committee because the leader of the group was someone whom I found it difficult to work with. It seemed that he had already made crucial decisions before the group even assembled.
Author Carol Bly (1981) offers somewhat humorous reasons why some people may just drop out after a certain age in a chapter titled “Where Have All the Fifty-Five-Year-Olds Gone?” in her book Letters from the Country. (Growing up in a small town may be a prerequisite to understanding the humor in this piece of writing.)


It seems logical that younger people should take over chairmanships, etc., but there is one fact that has made me spend some time thinking about fifty-five-year-old leaders in volunteer organizations. That fact is that they typically do not bow out of community life graciously: they do it badly. They are angry. Instead of working well to the end, they spend two or three years dropping poison -- derision, outspoken pessimism, and paralyzing incompetence -- into the very organizations which once seemed to mean so much to them. Over and over we see a once-encouraging play director now saying, “Well, I don’t think the town is up to doing anything this year,” and the once-efficient committee clerk saying, “No way will I go to the trouble of Xeroxing minutes when no one reads them anyway!” And the once-lively member of the retail committee saying, “Oh, I don’t know, I think people are sick of shopping in small towns -- we all drive to the Twin Cities anyway -- what’s the use of a promotion?”
While the intent of the writing is humorous, it also holds truths. Will I find that senior teachers bow out of school life ungraciously? Will I find that they are angry pessimists? Let’s hope not.
Summary
In this chapter, I offered my perspective on the importance of teacher leaders and the capabilities of the staff in my district to fulfill such roles. I also profiled the community, students, and staff, and suggested possible motivators and hindrances teachers might face when presented with leadership opportunities.
While I am concerned about the possible absence of senior teachers in leadership positions, I am also heartened by the willingness and eagerness of younger teachers to fill these roles. Living is about balance. Too much of any one thing is not healthy. Balance between younger and senior teachers in leadership positions is also healthy for our schools. We need both wisdom and guidance from senior teachers and vigor and inspiration from younger teachers.
How then, do we promote and keep senior teachers in leadership positions? My own experience demonstrates that there are diverse reasons for the presence or absence of senior teachers in leadership roles. My research will identify these reasons and help me to make recommendations to ensure we maintain these key players in our efforts to improve the educational experience for all of our children.
Preview of the Capstone
In Chapter One I laid the foundation for my concerns if senior teachers are not involved in leadership roles. In Chapter Two I will review the literature to help frame definitions and concepts related to teacher leadership. In Chapter Three I will outline the methodology of how I collected data to answer my burning question: What motivates senior teachers to hold leadership positions, or what prevents them from doing so? I will present my findings in Chapter Four, and in Chapter Five I will suggest ways that administrators and teacher leaders can utilize the wisdom, knowledge, and talents of senior teachers in our school district.

Preview of Chapter Two
In Chapter Two, I review pertinent literature surrounding the topic of teacher leadership and consider several research studies to help answer the following four questions:
• What is teacher leadership?
• Why is teacher leadership important?
• Can anyone be a teacher leader?
• What are the benefits and costs of being a teacher leader?


Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO
Literature Review
“To me, leadership is about how you bring out the best in other people.” Paul Wellstone
Introduction
In this chapter I will examine several aspects of teacher leadership and its impact on students, teachers, and schools. There is a good deal of literature published about this subject since the concept of teacher leadership evolved in the 1970s as part of the reform movement in education.
Most schools operate by blending autocratic and democratic beliefs. The principal is the leader and teachers are the followers, but at the same time teachers have some autonomy in running their classrooms and implementing curriculum. Schools have operated like this virtually from the beginning -- with the exception of early one-room schoolhouses run almost exclusively by the teacher.
The current reform movement calls for change if we are to better educate our children for a changing world. I believe we are on the cusp of this change and I am excited to learn more about teacher leadership and to share my findings with my peers.
There are four questions I hope to answer in this literature review: 1. What is teacher leadership? 2. Why is teacher leadership important? 3. Can anyone be a teacher leader? 4. What are the benefits and costs of being a teacher leader?


What Is Teacher Leadership?
“It is important to be clear from the outset that what has been learned about leadership in schools over the century has not depended on any clear, agreed-upon definition of the concept, as essential as this would seem at first glance” (Leithwood & Duke, 1999, p. 45).
Before I could find answers to my question of what motivates (or hinders) teachers to seek leadership roles, I needed to find out if there was a common meaning of the term “teacher leadership.” Unfortunately, I confirmed the above statement by Leithwood and Duke and found no collective meaning of the term in the literature