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The Teacher as Leader
Over the past few weeks, I have written about teachers as creative professionals, scientists, judges, coaches, experts, and ethicists. Today I'd like to wrap up this series with a final meditation: the teacher as leader.
This, to me, is the role that best encapsulates the many other roles of the teacher. The teacher must set the direction for their class, invest their students in that direction, build a plan for how to get there, follow through on that plan, and adapt as needed to obstacles that arise along the way. This is not an original view of the teacher—it is held both by teachers' unions and Teach For America, two groups that don't often find common cause—but it is an unfortunately rare view, especially in the realm of public policy.
If this series of posts has done anything, I hope it has brought to the fore the many different areas where teachers must take initiative and lead their classes if they are to do their jobs at all. A teacher is not an automaton, lecturer, or faucet of knowledge. Unfortunately, that's how too much policy treats teachers; test score pay plans, attacks on collective bargaining, and competition-minded policies that pit schools and teachers against one another all devalue teachers and impugn their motivations.
Instead of policies that view teachers as widgets in a huge, mechanistic framework, we would do well to instead remember that, in front of their classroom, the teacher is the one in charge. Making sure that our best young people get the best possible training, the best possible professional support and compensation, and the best possible social support network to keep their students healthy, fed, and ready to learn respects this role.
Most of us over the course of our work day alternate between just some of these seven roles (artist, scientist, judge, coach, expert, ethicist, and leader). Teachers have to bring all seven every day in the service of our children and our future. Now, I believe that those who have designed today's teacher-as-drone policies do have in mind what's best for kids. However, I disagree with them in the strongest possible terms.
Our teachers are not drones, nor are they widgets, cogs, or sprockets in an inhuman education-industrial complex. They are leaders, and we ought to remind our policymakers and politicos of that every chance we get.
Posted in Education | Related Topics: Classroom Methods Teachers