The Emerging Teacher Leader with Kathy Perez and Margaret Coughlan
Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in everybody to The Authority Podcast here on the Be Podcast Network. Thanks as always for being with us. I'm pleased to introduce you to a conversation here about teacher leadership, a topic we've talked about on the show here before, and which you showed us with your your listens and your downloads.
That was something that was of great interest. So I'm excited to explore it here and explore it here from an angle. Specifically, where we'll talk a lot about how teachers can take initiative in developing their leadership skills and taking advantage of opportunities at leadership and all the great things that can do for schools.
My guests today are Dr. Kathy Perez and Dr. Margaret Coughlan. Dr. Perez is a [00:01:00] professor emerita at St. Mary's College in California. She has extensive teaching experience. As both a general and special educator, a literacy and ESL coach, an administrator, and a curriculum and staff development coordinator, and Dr.
Coghlan is a classroom teacher, district leader, researcher, and adjunct faculty, also at St. Mary's College in California. Her professional work includes teaching elementary students, teachers, and graduate school master's level candidates. Their book that we're talking about is called The Emerging Teacher Leader, Six Dynamic Practices to Nurture Professional Growth.
Kathy and Margaret, welcome to the show.
Margaret Coughlan: Well, I'm glad to be here. Thank you.
Ross Romano: So I want to start with who this book is for, because it's a little different from some of the things we cover in the past, which were more about how school leaders would create the infrastructure for teacher leadership. And this one really presents a lot of ways for teachers to take charge of that.
Margaret, maybe you [00:02:00] can fill us in on this one and kind of describe the way it's written and who, who it's really speaking to.
Margaret Coughlan: So thank you for that. The book is written for our people who are teacher leaders and teacher leaders work in a lot of capacities outside of teaching the class in the classroom and within. The book is a way to bridge all of the ways we can support our own teacher leadership growth through the tenure as teacher leaders and in our work.
It was designed with different chapters in mind that build a way to connect ways of learning about yourself ways of nurturing your health, creating a growth mindset, learning more about teaching and collaboration and relationships. So you have this ongoing path of teacher leadership throughout your life.
We came up with the idea about the book because we both really we both love teacher leadership and we've been working in the field for a while and we can learn a lot about [00:03:00] teacher leadership, but it does wax and wane throughout our tenure because of the different dynamics that go on within schools and learning and different kind of mandates that come out.
And so. Teacher leadership itself is a path and this book is designed to be like a handy handbook, a guide, something you could go back to whenever you want to tap into a way to continue the path and the journey in your leadership development.
Ross Romano: And along those lines. Kathy can we define further, what is a teacher leader currently and traditionally, and how does that, I guess, compare or contrast with what it should be as far as whether it's a, a positional role or a formal thing, more informal are there. And should there be a few teacher leaders in the school?
Should it be everybody? How, how would you define what this. Really does look like now and if it's [00:04:00] If it should look different, you can kind of indicate that as well.
Kathy Perez: Well, about 20 years ago, Ross, I had a vision that our university really needed another master's program for teachers who want to empower themselves as agents of change and make a difference in their classroom, their school, their community, and whatever facet that is. Teacher leadership is not top down.
It's not traditional leadership as we envision it. I wanted teacher leaders, as our book suggests, they bloom and grow like the butterfly on our cover. And they could take many different roles in impacting the growth of their students. Their school, [00:05:00] their classroom, their community it could be they could take the role of coach.
They could be a mentor, they could be, as Margaret is, an agent of change in her curriculum development at her school site. They're It could be any one of a number of things. So it's all about empowering yourself as a dynamic educator. And this book is designed to be a pathway, as Margaret mentioned, for the teacher's journey in education that can take many different routes.
But we like to see them excel and perfect their own skills.
Ross Romano: And we're going to discuss some of these practices and [00:06:00] how teacher leaders can develop their skills and the relationships and all the various things that help them make an impact. But I also want to introduce your view on who Initiates teacher leadership and how how a teacher starts to take on the role, whatever it is in their school, but a teacher who who determines right that they want to step into more leadership and they want to establish and expand the impact they're having at their school.
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Ross Romano: Like I alluded to earlier, we've had previous conversations here that were a little more about how the. Principal and you know, the other school level administrators would create a teacher leadership infrastructure and recruit teachers into that.
And we also touched a little bit on in cases where that's not happening, how teachers [00:07:00] may. Self initiate or indicate that they're interested in that, but I think your book presents a lot more of that. Piece of how teachers can take that on and take that initiative and begin. to pursue it. But I would love to hear from each of you a little bit about what that might look like and, and how teachers can, I think, self select and determine that they're interested in teacher leadership and then begin to take the steps to indicate.
to the others in their school, the the stakeholders who are relevant, that they want to do that and begin taking those steps as they're also, of course, going about developing their skills and, and what that might look like. Maybe Margaret, you want to start with that? And then Kathy, you can, can add to that as well.
Margaret Coughlan: So, teacher leadership is extremely cool. It's [00:08:00] developmental. So as teachers, we think about becoming a teacher and we start to carry on this identity hat about teaching and we do we have reasons for becoming a teacher. A lot of times that are altruistic or intrinsic and we're drawn to education because we want to make the world better.
We want to help children and we want to make our schools thrive and the world better. And create great thinkers. So I think teacher leadership is an inward outward movement. So whether it's positional or not, the first thing is it's in the person. So you have you, you're motivated to become a teacher.
You, you create your identity as a teacher. You learn about teaching. Teachers develop their teaching efficacy, their ability to teach well through ongoing practice and reflecting about their practice. And through that process, they start to know teaching really well. And it works great in their classroom.
And all of a sudden there's this energy bubble that just wants to go outward out of their classroom. And teacher leadership in this sense is an [00:09:00] outward movement. It's a way to connect. Our learning about teaching and our understanding about children and our agency to help the world and the education world be better for kids and learning and for us as teachers outward out of your classroom to connect with other educators.
So it begins kind of as a seed. Being a teacher leader in your classroom and originally that was like one of the big definitions of teacher leadership was that it resides in your classroom. That's the foundation for teaching and then for teaching leadership, but we've learned over the years that teacher leadership can't be contained.
It has to be something that is an outward movement. So adding on to the definition of having roles or positions, it's the purpose filled educators who demonstrate this growth mindset about teaching and leadership and want to learn more about leadership so that they can learn skills and ways of connecting through relationships and knowing themselves better and their time management.
To keep the balance going to [00:10:00] be ongoing and to connect with not only other teachers, but the vertical and the horizontal hierarchy of school systems. So they're the catalyst for change and we have wonderful people all through our school districts who are in all kinds of positions and it can be positional or non positional, but it's an embodiment.
That what we do matters. Teaching matters. Every child matters and together we can build this collective efficacy to make schools thrive and to help students learn. And I think that's the agency that Kathy's referring to when she says teachers are agents of change.
Kathy Perez: Yes, indeed. I applaud everything you said, Margaret. And I think a teacher leader embraces four C's. And you mentioned Catalyst, and I think a teacher leader is a Catalyst at their school site and what they do, and they are a collaborator, they are [00:11:00] creative, and they're a clear communicator, because in order to get their message across to their students as well as to their colleagues, They need to fine tune that communication skill.
And in this book, we embrace all of those facets. And as a matter of fact, we take it to the next level in our We talk about being in purpose and what is your purpose as an educator? And why did you become a teacher? And we've got to personalize it. We've got to press the pause button and give teachers.
Time to reflect. And that's what this book does. It throughout the pages and throughout the chapters, it has space [00:12:00] for the reader to interact and to reflect and to connect with their own purposeful being why they became a teacher. And then, are there, are they willing to take it to the next level? It's not an anointment, it's inter, inter, inter qualities,
Ross Romano: Yeah.
Kathy Perez: qualities.
Margaret Coughlan: It's trying to, so leadership is like this infinite horizon, no matter what field you're in, and teacher leadership is part of that. And for teachers, we talk about leading your classroom, but it's also about learning about your own leadership. And when we talk about developing our own leadership capacity, it's being able to be a great communicator and a collaborator.
It's also being able to build healthy relationships with people who might not agree with you. And that involves a lot of self knowledge. So part of our book is like, what can you do to develop your [00:13:00] emotional intelligence to be a good listener? So, because a lot of times we might be able to tell people what we think, but in, in really listening to teachers other stakeholders in education, we can really start to understand things we haven't considered before or different paradigms or different ways of doing something that we might have done.
Long term one way. So building and sustaining healthy relationships. And just making sure that when we're on this path for teacher leadership that we continually dip into our purpose story. So part of it is writing a purpose story. And when you were aligned with our purpose as educators, we actually have an agency.
And so that agency creates some leadership opportunities. So there's the clear transference right there, tapping in to why, knowing when the split happens, when you're kind of misaligned with your why, like Simon Sinek says, and then moving into what I need, reflection, what do I need to do to keep moving [00:14:00] forward?
How can I keep growing in my skill set, my knowledge, my development as a teacher, and as a human through healthy relationships?
Ross Romano: And so you both have, have referenced the purpose filled educators piece and that's the kind of, of the six practices. That's, that's one of them that's laid out here. So I want to talk more about that. And a lot of it that stands out to me as there's a lot of opportunities here that are at least in establishing oneself.
As a teacher leader, it's leading by example, by clearly committing to some of the foundational pieces of what it means to be an educator with the purpose being a big part of that, right? Then, and for all educators, it's Important in that role to understand your purpose and what's bringing you to the profession to reconnect with it consistently and and stay connected in an alignment with that purposes and in then going on and defining it.
You mentioned the [00:15:00] purpose story, right? Being able to articulate what that purpose is. And, and I think. Explain how it's leading toward the things you're, you're looking to achieve in that role, and I imagine that that is part of the, I guess, opportunity to really influence peers and make an impact is their ability to clearly see, okay, I can see how this other teacher is really staying in alignment with their purpose.
They're giving me some insights on how I can do the same, particularly when we know the challenges around teacher burnout, right? And the things that are making it difficult to maintain energy in the profession. And then we're saying, okay, we want to go even further, right? And, and have more of an impact and be more of a leader.
[00:16:00] That's certainly You can't tell other people that they need to reconnect with their purpose unless you're clearly demonstrating that you're doing it and showing how to do it, but that it'll be pretty obvious, I would think, to peers. Okay, I can see what's happening here. I can see how This person is navigating through the challenges of the role.
I can see how they are taking that clear understanding of purpose and then using that as a way to aspire to the next thing, right? Or the next role. But can you add a bit about. What that focus on your purpose is about and that purpose story, what does that look like? If I were a teacher and I'm trying to think about, okay, how do I, I kind of know what my purpose is, right?
But how do I really activate that? And, and tangibly bring that to the surface and you really use that in my day to day,
Margaret Coughlan: So once I have what [00:17:00] we have a purpose story and it's refined and revisited and we redeveloped through our tenure, hopefully as teachers, but this story is actually very grounded because if you have a. If you have an alignment with your purpose and your vision and your actions want to follow, you're going to seek ways to learn more about teaching and develop your pedagogy.
And that's where you have the second chapter grow as a teacher leader comes into play, as do the other ones. They all follow because you're developing you teachers gaining, more knowledge about their content area, increasing their funds of knowledge. Looking at different pedagogies of teaching and understanding that there's a growth edge to their, there's learning that can happen.
There's new things that come out. And if you want to make a difference for every student in your class and you want all kids to grow you become an avid learner. That's as simple as it. And by being an avid learner, you develop as a teacher and a leader. So leadership, [00:18:00] you, it's like this parallel path.
One is to understand teaching better and to get, take professional development, do classes and learn. And then the other, and that then rolls into the other one called the leadership path, because they're so closely connected in teacher leadership. The leadership path involves being able to be collaborative and having relationships and being healthy, but the collaborative part, then you start to go, how can I share this learning?
How can we get it, build a bigger message about literacy or math development or something? That's when you might start to do something like a lesson study or a book club, where you apply some of your professional learning with a group of educators, where you can have collegial discourse and critical dialogues about what it means to be learning this area and to work on your practice and look at student data and see how you've bettered it.
And that's really exciting that that becomes that it feeds right in back into your passion. So it's all connected.
Kathy Perez: Yes, [00:19:00] indeed. And you know, I use the analogy of a compass like we do in the book, and a teacher leader is like a compass. They know their direction, and they follow their pathway, and it's something that is hard to define, but we try to guide the reader through that process, because it's so important to come to terms and to reflect on your reason for being a teacher, and like Margaret said, teachers are learners, And they need to learning and that journey never ends and sharing your knowledge with others is so important.
And that's what teacher leaders do best is clearly communicate to others their purpose. [00:20:00] Their reason for being and all the success orientation they have for their students as well.
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Ross Romano: I think this clearly feeds into the next. Chapter about growing as a teacher and a leader because because there's a similar piece there of the Teacher who is clearly committing to their own continuous growth, developing their skills, looking to get better, right, is, is going to have more of an influence on peers than the one who even maybe more experienced, I may, I may believe that this person is highly qualified and more skilled than I am right now, but if I'm not clearly seeing how they're continuing to improve, I It's not really giving me much of a an understanding of how I can get better.
And also understanding that there's always new things that we can be learning in [00:21:00] different areas of practice. And, and if I want somebody to lead me toward outcomes that I want, I want to see how they are working toward them as well. You know, but, but certainly as far as I think presenting an achievable pathway toward okay, I also want to improve my practice.
I also might want to establish myself as a leader, seeing the example of what other leaders in my building are doing and how they are approaching that gives me an understanding of how I can, and then that impact is, expanded, right? Because it's leading to the next one. So it really, it's that importance again of that example of if I, if I tell you, well, the way you need to become a leader is you need to develop your skills, but I'm not developing my skills, then you're not probably going to [00:22:00] do much with that advice versus me showing you how I'm doing it.
Kathy Perez: Yeah Ross, you gotta walk your walk and talk your talk and be congruent with your message. And people perceive that very quickly and your colleagues are going to be number one in your collaboration that you've really got to tune in to their needs as well as your own needs.
Ross Romano: Yeah, if I can say here's what worked for me or here's what's working for me, you might want to try that or give it at least you might say there's something you're going to do a little bit differently, but at least it gives you a starting point and it gives it's there's some credibility to it versus just telling I would think Margaret.
Margaret Coughlan: I also think leader teacher leadership isn't a [00:23:00] solo endeavor.
Ross Romano: Mm
Margaret Coughlan: So, teacher leadership can't be contained in a classroom. So, leadership, teacher leadership, and any leadership begets leadership, right? So, we, for teacher leadership, like a robust teacher leadership vision at a school would be, we're all teacher leaders.
Because we step up and we have different things we can share knowledge that we can share skill sets we can share and we by being collaborative and having real good collegial conversations about what the learning happens with that and how we helped kids learn and what we did to make our teaching more proficient.
We then invite that to other teachers to also share their learning. Right. And to be part of our collective conversation about how to help our school continue to grow and even get better.
Ross Romano: Yeah.
Kathy Perez: One way to help that is through action research, [00:24:00] and we talk in our book about the importance of action research, where you make a difference in your classroom, and you do something, like if something is bothering you, or a change you want to see, it's you as the catalyst you to make that change happen.
And in the master's program on teacher leadership, for instance, they identified their action research, not just some peripheral master's theoretical question out there, research that's not related to classroom practice. They identified a need they had, a question they have for their practice, and that was the impetus that moved [00:25:00] them forward to explore that for their master's project.
And I call it a project because it was living organic, and they presented it live to a group of beginning teachers. At a symposium that we had at the university. So it was really eclectic. They were walking their walk and talking their talk and sharing their knowledge with others, which teacher leaders need to do.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it stands out to me that I think you know, these practices for becoming a teacher leader are Speaking directly to the challenges of, sustaining engagement in the teaching profession, period, and being an effective teacher. So it's like the things that would push you in one [00:26:00] direction toward not being involved in the profession at all.
The solutions are the things that would not only keep you there, but push you upward. It's things like teachers may feel like they're, they're losing their place if they are disconnected from their purpose or they're no, no longer feeling like they can make a difference according to that purpose.
If they feel overwhelmed or that their skills are not matching up or stagnated, or that the professional learning they're engaging in is not meaningful, or that they're just too busy to, to do professional learning, right? If they're feeling isolated, Alone, not part of a community not, not collaborating, not having relationships or if they're, or if they're not engaging in self care and feeling burnt out and not, not really having a solution for that, that all of these things are kind of addressed here and saying, okay.
And, and the leadership aspect of it being that you know, so many of them are the things that either, but once you sort of get [00:27:00] disconnected or disengaged from it, it's like it's hard to To reengage without example some of the things you know, one of the strategies is around taking care of oneself, self care and the urgency, I think, and strategies around that things that feel.
There's some guilt around prioritizing it, or it's a challenge to know, okay, if, how do I do this? Or even if I feel like this is foundational to being able to be effective in my role what, how do I really commit to it and, and understand it and, and understand that it's not it, it in fact is fundamental to my purpose.
Versus you know, selfish or, or kind of taking away from the purpose, right. In a service oriented role. And again, you know what it means to have a collaborative [00:28:00] community around these things, to have clear leadership around this is how to do it. And, and if we're, and, and again, with the, the leading by example piece, one of the things I.
Talk about and I would love to hear your thoughts on regarding the administration is. Even in a case where maybe there's not a really formalized structure around teacher leadership, still there needs to be a culture and an infrastructure that empowers and empowers students. enables these things to actually happen, right?
And to say that there is support for, okay, these are, this is how teachers want to grow their practice and this is how they want to support one another, right? And help each other enhance their impact. And I need to make sure if I'm in a Administrative position that I am creating ways for that to [00:29:00] happen.
And that if it's around the professional learning and collab collaboration, am I empowering teachers to take ownership of that and to create the types of professional learning communities that they feel like are really impactful for them or. Am I flooding all that time with other things and saying, well, you can do whatever you want outside of that time.
But it, and, and that that's, I mean, it makes a big difference regarding making this all actionable, I would think, Kathy,
Kathy Perez: Yes, indeed. Professional learning communities is just one way in which a teacher leader can exercise their collaboration skills. And I know that Solution Tree embraces professional learning communities very much and, I think it's important for teachers to step up and facilitate [00:30:00] small groups like that, because that is not threatening to the administrator and it helps keep the curriculum cohesive and moving forward at the school site.
They look at the standards, they unpack them as a group, they swap ideas of what's working, what's not working, and they share lessons. It's all a matter of example and the teacher leader sharing collaboratively and cooperatively and creatively with their colleagues what's working and how to overcome some obstacles in the curriculum.
Margaret Coughlan: So, and that. That comes down to it inquiry and knowing what's essential. So as a group I'm working with teachers [00:31:00] and administrators and what is essentially essential learning here, and our students getting it and based on Kathy mentioned an action research project but there are other ways to do inquiry as well.
Like lesson study or even collegial inquiry, any other ways you can get together, but having a burning question. That's your learning community and in your learning community, you're all at the table together. So, you can create opportunities by creating these little hubs of learning, where you can look at what's happening with student data, figure out.
What you might want to learn and explore it because teachers are practitioners, right? So, tapping into that whole idea that we are the ones who drive the teaching and the learning in the classroom, but together we're better, right? And going toward that whole thing of like, there is things that have to be discussed.
There are important topics in school that need to, that are part of education and [00:32:00] staff meetings and everything, and they do take time. Right? But the leadership path of the teacher leader is being kind of aware of, I have all these things and I'm going to look at time management. I'm going to look at how to take care of myself and have balance and eating well, exercising, keeping my boundaries so that I can nurture my mental health so that I can be present and present in my everyday work with children and other peers.
Ross Romano: you know, I mean, certainly I would think to the point of the collaboration and the collective efficacy that every teacher who has. Been in the position where they have peers who are clearly ineffective understands the challenges that presents right on the third grade teacher and the kids that are coming to me from this certain second grade teacher are always unprepared.
And those kind of examples or [00:33:00] every year I'm getting all of the students with particular caseloads assigned to my class because my principal doesn't have confidence in the person across the hall. And well, I'm glad they have confidence in me. At the same time, I. This is a lot to try to meet every single one of these students needs, and we probably would be able to do it better as a school if every teacher had high levels of efficacy, and we could each have a manageable you know, a manageable workload.
So, but at the same time. I may be experiencing that and understand that, but not necessarily know what can I do about it? And how, how do I as just one of these teachers create or take strides toward that? And what's the timeline? And how long does it take until we get to a point where we know that? You know, mission and purpose perspective.
No matter what classroom any student in [00:34:00] this school is in, they are equally well served and they are getting the type of education that they deserve. I know that I can rely on my colleagues to be able to support me and vice versa. I know that these gaps that sometimes exist are Not here anymore, because we have this collective efficacy and these ways of collaborating together to make each other better.
But again there may be some fear, I imagine from some teachers about. Saying, okay, I've, I clearly can identify what this, what the need is, but can I really be the 1st 1 to start? Or how do I bring it up? Or maybe lack of clarity around what would that look like in a, in a school where there is no.
A pre existing road [00:35:00] map for it, or nobody is coming to me and asking me to do it. I just need to be the one to come up with it. So maybe do you have some thoughts around overcoming what that fear might be? And at least beginning to chart that course around. Okay, we can all clearly see what it would mean if we were all operating as more of a collaborative unit here, right?
And, and finding ways to make one another better but somebody needs to be the first one to start it. And since nobody else is, maybe I should,
Margaret Coughlan: Right. And I would say just there's a couple of things on that. One is the term leader in teacher leadership, we have a lot of different ways to have teacher leadership and they started out kind of maybe a little bit hierarchical, but if we look at a collective learning and a collective advocacy, we're building each other's leadership capacity and the word leader is synonymous with leadership.
Teacher leadership then and because together we are collective leaders and the way to help each other is like, it comes down to [00:36:00] efficacy, teaching ethic, we develop our ability to teach by feeling really successful at it so if I have a co worker who's maybe not. Feeling so good about their teaching.
We want to be able to build that efficacy. We can invite them in our room, have learning walks where they come in during a great lesson do shared teaching together, take a video and talk about what you did so that you can share what, what's going on in a lesson. That's kind of what lesson study is, but in a very simple scale.
And then as we're understanding that this growth mindset that we talk about a lot in education has a lot to do with teaching and a lot to do with leadership. And so a growth mindset about teaching is like, I'm, I know that I can where I want. I want to, I can get connected to my purpose.
What I envision myself to be I've envisioned it. I know I'm getting there and by practicing my skill set and teaching I could be better and we develop efficacy with a lot of we get confidence with things that people say [00:37:00] to us and by watching other people do things that we think we could do that helps develop efficacy lead teacher leadership advocacy is the same way as a teacher leader, you know.
Working on your self awareness and how maybe we can approach people in a way that's inviting and constructive and supportive and encouraging of all of our growth and understanding that teacher leadership and involves a lot of emotional intelligence and, being able to understand how to approach something so that you can convey what a lesson might look like to someone who maybe hasn't considered it could be that way before.
Maybe the paradigm of education. We we've grown a lot since the last century. We teach differently now, right? We're, there, there's a lot of knowledge about how kids learn and being active learners and different ways of assessment and different ways of teaching and small group, all this.
So, Fascinating conversations and a way to get those conversations going in little bits and then building them up.
Kathy Perez: And I'd just [00:38:00] like to add to that when we think of fear that maybe some of our colleagues might have if we take that apart, fear stands for false expectations appearing real. And just kind of blow it to the core and just be able to share with them resources that do work, like maybe inviting them into your classroom is not your comfort zone, but sharing an article.
about some of their challenges or what they're fearful about might also help. And that's what I've been doing in my role as an instructional coach, for instance, and teachers are very appreciative of that. Also resilience you can model resilience [00:39:00] and how you can become more resilient. In your role as a teacher leader, and that helps.
Other people see you walk your walk and talk your talk and the collaboration piece can start very small with just maybe a teacher buddy and then gradually expand it out to a whole grade level team or a primary team and an intermediate team, whatever your configuration is.
Ross Romano: you know,
Kathy Perez: At your school side,
Ross Romano: yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I think the through line of a lot of this is taking ownership and taking initiative and, and understanding that we have to create what we want. It to be right and and another way of kind of looking at the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset and getting there is looking at the default [00:40:00] versus the the customized version according to what we want and saying, okay, a lot of times when we get stuck in this belief that things aren't going to work or this student is not going to progress or by I'm unable to Do these things that I want to be able to do.
It's okay. If, if this continues on according to the default settings, if we keep if the student is struggling and we keep teaching them the exact same way or doing the exact same thing we've been doing, then yes, they will continue to struggle. If I am unable to. Accomplish this thing that I'm trying to do right now, and I just keep trying to do it the same way or the same way everybody else does it, then yes, I might continue to struggle, but I need to think about what way is going to work.
What's a new thing to try? What might work better for me? And understand that that's available to you. You need to first identify it and see it as [00:41:00] an opportunity and then go for it. And that goes all the way up to The system of the entire school and the entire district of, okay, if there's things that aren't working the way we'd like them to work, then next year, it'll be the same thing we, but we just have to do it differently.
And that takes identifying those opportunities and somebody. being the first one or the first group to get together and say, well, let's, let's try this, let's try that. And then you see how that's working. But you know, yeah,
Kathy Perez: was because you've got to instill that can do spirit in your colleagues as well as your students for them to achieve success. And I know that comes out of my term as a special ed teacher, instilling that can do spirit. We label jars, we don't [00:42:00] label people. Because once you put a label on a child, it puts limitations on them.
And that's so important, is to say what's more possible. in your life as an educator, you can become a teacher leader. And our book is showing you the way the journey, how you can take it one step at a time.
Ross Romano: Yeah. I think that's, that's a great piece and there's a lot here. Let's to kind of tie this all together. Maybe a good way to do that would be sort of illustrating What we might see if we walked into a school where a lot of the teacher leadership that's described in the book and that we've talked about in this interview is happening.
What might look different than a school where there's not so much of it? If [00:43:00] I were an educator who was, I'm coming for an interview and thinking about if I want to work here and I'm looking around and seeing, does this seem like a kind of place where I want to be? Maybe each of you could identify one or two things that I might observe that would be a clear indication.
Okay, there's some good teacher leadership happening here. Margaret, maybe you can mention a couple and then Kathy can, can wrap it up.
Margaret Coughlan: Well, I would start off with it would just be this joyful learning environment and people would be buzzing buzzing with something they can barely wait. They can barely wait to share to talk about something that a child did that was just so amazing because of something they had been doing in their classroom, and that their fellow educator maybe has also done it in theirs.
And together they found out this cool thing that happened because they learned about something they looked at student data and they said, Wow, look, we shifted this. Because of what we did for the kids in our class. [00:44:00] So I would say an environment that's just really positive. And also one is that has teachers able to ask hard questions of each other.
And it's okay because it's collegial dialogue. It's dialogue all based on inquiry. Where can we learn more about this? Or where can we go find this? Who can we visit in our school to see this? Where classrooms are open, the walls are low. There's messiness that can happen. Being a messy, being messy in our learning is A OK.
Perfectionism is kind of boring. You know, where the administrators and the teachers. And all staff members pair of everyone is sharing a book together and talking about how they what they see in a book about learning or practice that is a shared learning among everybody. So there's no, we're all stakeholders in the same state of making everyday matter for every student, because we are all interested in the success of every child that's a school that [00:45:00] I would say has teacher leadership.
Kathy Perez: I want to underscore the joy that Margaret talked about because As soon as you walk in, there's gotta be this feeling of happiness and joy and as well as hands-on minds on learning. Kids have gotta be involved in their learning and teachers have gotta be involved in their teaching and the give and take.
Of that. And so I think you would see a lot of student work, for instance, on the walls of the school. And I don't mean cookie cutter student work. I mean, coming from the hearts and minds of the students, and I think you would see ongoing professional development that the teachers are open minded and that they [00:46:00] embrace something new and that it is a journey.
Education is a journey. It's an adventure. And that's why it, I embraced it for so many years because every day was a new adventure
Ross Romano: Yeah.
Kathy Perez: for teacher leaders. Every day is a new
Ross Romano: Excellent. Well, listeners, you can find the book, the emerging teacher leader from solution tree or wherever you find your books. I will put the link below to make that easy for you. And there's. A lot more in there, of course, than what we've discussed here, but hopefully we've given you a good idea.
Please also do subscribe to The Authority if you have not already for more episodes coming up. Like this one, we'll talk with a variety of authors about all the topics that are important for you in your role as an education leader. And if you are already subscribed and you're enjoying the show, we always appreciate five star reviews on Apple and Spotify to let more.
[00:47:00] listeners know about the show. You can also visit bpodcast. network to learn about all 40 plus shows in the network and find something new for yourself. Margaret and Kathy, thanks again for being here.
Margaret Coughlan: Thank you so much.
Kathy Perez: Yeah!
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