Teacher Leadership For Second-Career Educators

By Latonzia Beavers, Master Teacher, Natchitoches Parish Schools, Louisiana

Latonzia Beavers is a NIET 2024 Fellow and Master Teacher from Natchitoches Parish Schools in Louisiana. Beavers completed her Alternative Certification Program and Master of Arts in Teaching from Northwestern State University after working for several years in the field of social work. She began her career in education in 2011 and moved into a Master Teacher role at Natchitoches Magnet School in 2021, where she still serves. Read more about her selection as an NIET Fellow here.

As a former social worker, one of the most common challenges I saw families face was access to education and the opportunity to learn, grow, and develop new skills leading to a productive and successful life. As difficult as it was to witness the barriers so many of my clients faced, it completely changed the trajectory of my life and profession. While I was passionate about social work, I knew that I needed to impact families through a different dynamic by becoming an educator - and so began my second-career journey into teaching.

Effective Teacher Leadership: A Firsthand Account

A second-career teacher is typically one who transitions into teaching later in life, bringing valuable expertise and insights from a previous profession. These diverse experiences can enhance the classroom environment and provide fresh perspectives, benefiting both students and colleagues. 

My formal schooling had focused on social work, so I sought out an alternative certification program to obtain my teaching credentials. As a second-career teacher new to education, my first few years of teaching were overwhelming. I taught all content areas to 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders, and lacked sufficient feedback and support to grow. Many days were spent doing what I thought were best practices but not seeing student growth. I was, in many ways, struggling with being new to teaching and knowing I had uprooted my previous profession for this one. By the end of year two, I wondered if I had made the wrong decision to switch careers. There were so many areas in which my principal told me I was succeeding, but my students weren’t growing as I knew they should be. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. 

It wasn’t until my fourth year of teaching that a game-changing development happened: My school received a teacher leader - a collegial resource scaffolded through NIET’s support to help me engage in authentic learning, reflection, and growth. This teacher leader began to provide coaching sessions to me and soon my blind spot was revealed: She helped me shift the facilitation of work and thought to my students by helping me see that I was not allowing them to struggle productively and ultimately own their learning. In our coaching sessions, we worked together to determine what I could do to have the biggest impact on student achievement. We planned lessons together and then she observed and provided feedback in the moment. 

Within a month, I started to see the growth I had been working toward for the past three years. My students started to perform better on formative assessments. Their peer conversations were richer, and their writing became more focused. They were able to show their thinking, and by the middle of the year, my 4th graders were outperforming grades 3-5 on end-of-unit assessments. My teacher leader helped to build my confidence in providing quality instruction to my students. I felt successful because my students were successful. I realized that I had made the right choice in becoming an educator. I started to feel at home.

My own experience in the first four years helped me understand the gravity of intention in our work - both to build up ourselves and others. I understand the specific needs that second-career teachers might experience and how the support of a teacher leader bolstered my success and growth. For example, I needed not only support with pedagogy but also with building my content knowledge. Teacher leadership can help all different types of educators succeed in their roles by providing right-on-time support tailored to meet each teacher where they are and increasing their effectiveness in the classroom by improving student outcomes.

Second-career teachers who are new to the profession benefit greatly from the support of a teacher leader because they need mentorship in areas that veteran teachers may have already mastered through experience. Also, many second-career teachers are in the process of being certified, so they may not have yet had many classes on pedagogy. Even if they know their content, they may not have yet developed the breadth of instructional strategies to teach the content so that students own the learning. Teacher leaders act as guides, helping them develop the pedagogical skills, confidence, and emotional resilience necessary to succeed in their new role, which ultimately benefits both the teachers and their students.

Paying It Forward Through Leadership

Knowing how much of an impact my teacher leader had on me, and in turn, my students, I wanted to be able to do that for other teachers. I understand firsthand the struggles of moving into a brand new career path and being faced with the challenges that go along with being an effective educator. This is my fourth year as a Master Teacher and several of the teachers I support are second-career teachers who bring both unique challenges as well as talents to the table. I understand that it can be taxing to learn not only how to leverage high-quality instructional materials, but also how to best instruct students so that they can own the learning. The teachers I support appreciate my perspective, and I appreciate their willingness to tackle a new career that is both challenging and rewarding. 

Building educator excellence starts with teacher leaders. Now, as a teacher leader myself, I am committed to learning more through professional development to build my capacity so that I can truly support and meet the varying needs of teachers. As a teacher leader, it is my responsibility to model and promote best practices needed to help teachers succeed in their classrooms. When teacher leaders can meet the needs of educators, educators can meet the needs of students. A ripple effect occurs from teacher leadership to student success.  

Stepping into teacher leadership roles comes with learning, too, which is where NIET helps support schools and districts by building the capacity of Mentor Teachers through ongoing professional development. Mentor Teachers often shadow the master teacher to receive training in how to identify needs and effectively coach and provide feedback to their colleagues. Mentor teachers work one-on-one with the Master Teacher to research strategies and field tests to foster teacher buy-in. Mentor Teachers are also members of the leadership team in which they learn leadership skills and are provided coaching sessions on how to work with their selected teachers based on their needs. NIET has provided resources such as The Teaching and Learning Handbook, EE PASS content and videos, and various other resources to help build the capacity of teacher leaders.

One of the second career teachers at my school was concerned that students were performing well on the activities within the lesson but failing the assessments. Our first few co-planning sessions involved my helping the teacher unpack the standards and assessments to build success criteria. I then modeled teaching students to use success criteria. From there, our work progressed to analyzing the student work alongside success criteria to determine what feedback and next steps in instruction would look like.  

For three weeks, the teacher consistently built success criteria for her students, modeled using it throughout activities, and then provided feedback to students using the language of the success criteria. Within a four-week timeframe, the class average on unit assessments increased from 72.4% to 87.2%. Seeing this growth strengthened the teacher’s confidence in herself, strengthened her belief in the best practices embraced by NIET, and also helped me to see just how powerful my support and coaching were. 

Effective Support Leads to Lifelong Teachers

Second-career teachers may come from a successful career in a field that has nothing to do with education, but they are willing to enter the profession to make a difference in students’ lives. They bring the insight of their own life experiences and the wisdom they gained from their previous careers, and need support with how to best use those experiences and skills to benefit students. My journey from second-career teacher to teacher leader illuminated the rounded support leaders can offer those just entering the classroom. Without the support of my first teacher leader, I wouldn’t be the educator I am today, and that motivates me to support other educators who are following a similar path. There are multiple pathways to success in education and various roads that lead to leadership positions. Someone who first started in a field outside of education can still grow into a position of leadership and be a strong source of support to other teachers who may also take a different path. All they need is the right support to help them thrive.

I was able to flourish and raise student outcomes because of a teacher leader who leveraged my strengths while also building my content knowledge of the standards and curriculum and providing key shifts to create a culture of learners. Becoming a teacher leader is rewarding when your influence brings about a highly qualified teacher and elevated student outcomes. Build the teacher and the growth will come - one educator at a time.