Unleashing Teacher Leadership Featured as Back-to-School Resource

By NIET CEO Dr. Joshua Barnett

Throughout this back-to-school month, I’ve highlighted the importance of reflection and routine - key strategies to help set us up for a successful new school year. But what about the importance of high-quality resources? As educators, we regularly seek opportunities to continue to improve our practice and address our students’ needs, knowing that we are most effective when we are engaged in our own learning and professional growth.

Unleashing Teacher Leadership: A Toolkit for Ensuring Effective Instruction In Every Classroom, captures NIET’s proven practices in training and supporting more than 35,000 teacher leaders over the last two decades in communities across the country. This resource presents best practices and tools for teachers to use throughout the year. As many of you may have seen, I am excited to share that ASCD has featured this new book in its catalog of back-to-school resources.

ASCD is a leader in professional growth and development resources for educators across the globe. With a wealth of thought leadership and perspectives on trends and best practices across the educational landscape, this organization has supported educators at all grade levels and in all roles and positions for nearly 80 years. The decision to include Unleashing Teacher Leadership as an essential new resource in ASCD’s catalog of instructional leadership and coaching only reinforces the effectiveness of the practices and skills outlined in this book to support student learning.

Unleashing Teacher Leadership offers best practices and tools that teacher leaders can use to unlock their power and drive lasting instructional improvement across schools and districts. Curious what lessons it might unlock for you in the new year? Let's unpack some topics that are covered in this recommended back-to-school book - from reflections on leadership types to in-depth real-life examples of how to implement strategies in the classroom.

Equipping teacher leaders with evidence-based instructional practice

We know that teacher leadership requires a solid understanding of evidence-based instructional practices - those grounded in research and validated through rigorous studies, resulting in student achievement. However, there is more to an effective teacher leader than just understanding evidence-based instruction. Effective teacher leaders share this knowledge with others - both students and teachers - prompting a domino effect of progress within their communities. 

One effective approach in helping teachers to begin to understand evidence-based instruction is through rubrics, which are a powerful tool for educators to improve practice and reflect on how well an approach is working - especially when trying new strategies, or entering a school year, or being a new teacher. The NIET Teaching and Learning Standards Rubric offers a detailed roadmap for educators and includes practices that can be applied to any instructional framework, serving as a versatile tool. In addition, Unleashing Teacher Leadership covers critical instructional practice aspects, including how teachers can motivate students to have ownership over their learning, present instructional content, and design effective lesson structure and pacing.

NIET’s teacher leadership model incorporates both strategies that research has found to be effective - collaborative learning teams and instructional coaching. But NIET also takes the next critical step by helping schools create the structures that enable teacher leaders to work with principals to plan, deliver, and support job-embedded professional learning, and provide classroom coaching so that teachers and students consistently benefit from it. In Unleashing Teacher Leadership, teachers can find real-life examples of how teachers and teacher leaders use evidence-based instruction in their classrooms - which is one of the many effective pieces of this book for teachers entering the school year.

Deepening teacher leaders’ understanding of high-quality curriculum

When students see the value in their lessons, they're more engaged in learning. This means teachers need to know what students are expected to learn, explain why it's important, and use good materials to help them learn. A great way to model this is by having teacher leaders focus on their own learning, or being the “lead learner,” first. To teach effectively using high-quality curriculum, teachers need to learn how to use the materials and resources provided. The district and school leaders play an important role in allowing teacher leaders to be lead learners, by protecting time for teacher leaders to engage in school-based collaborative professional learning, converse about new curriculum resources and instruction, and provide the feedback necessary to guide teacher leaders through new material. 

When district and school leaders can identify the stages of learning and curriculum implementation occurring within schools, they are better able to respond and support teachers in their instructional learning. Unleashing Teacher Leadership offers learnings for both teacher and school leaders interested in strengthening understanding and widespread implementation of new curriculum. 

Optimizing the learning environment 

Creating an optimal learning environment is key for all students to do well. While classroom spaces may vary from school to school, there are three common characteristics of an ideal learning environment: the space is positive, fair, and inclusive. These qualities help students feel valued and engaged in their learning. Teacher leaders emulate how to build strong connections with their colleagues and students, and the importance of listening and being open to different viewpoints and experiences. 

“With the support of teacher leaders in my school, I was able to establish a classroom environment focused on student ownership of learning,” notes Amber Mosqueda, Fourth Grade Teacher from Mansfield Independent School District (TX). “In doing so, I was more capable of meeting the learning needs of all of my students while creating an environment that felt inclusive and supportive.”

Establishing a culture where students are expected to meet teacher standards leads to an optimal learning environment. When teachers can navigate and identify the needs of students in the classrooms, it leads to more opportunities for effective learning to occur. Chapters throughout Unleashing Teacher Leadership are mindful of the classroom environment and which characteristics of the learning setting are most effective for students, providing teachers a blueprint for how they may create an optimal learning environment in their own classrooms. 

Prepping for success, one page at a time

Teacher leaders help make great classroom teaching the centerpiece of schools - and the pursuit of great teaching is a sentiment shared by ASCD. In Unleashing Teacher Leadership: A Toolkit for Ensuring Effective Instruction in Every Classroom, the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) and publisher ASCD show how to execute change through a proven teacher leader model. Investing in teacher leadership has proven effective in a diverse range of settings including rural, suburban and urban school districts, tribal districts, public schools and charter schools. It works because it leverages the expertise and knowledge of teachers in a building to create a support system that is school-based and responsive to the needs of teachers and students. Teacher leaders know the needs of students and teachers in the school and can provide professional learning and coaching to address those specific needs. 

The true impact of Unleashing Teacher Leadership is the versatility of all the strategies and learnings inside, brought to you by educators and leaders from their very own classrooms. Be it week one or year 10, we all know that learning never ends - and Unleashing Teacher Leadership can be the companion to carry you through new strategies this school year. 

I look forward to engaging with you all on these topics throughout this year, always providing our students with the most optimal opportunities for success. I look forward to visiting your campuses and seeing all the incredible work and practices put into place this year - with NIET by your side!