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Teacher Leader - A Story of One, Representing Many!

Abstract

This paper addresses the following claim(s):

"The SWPA MSP, which is currently operating in its seventh year, project recognizes through data collected from a large number of Teacher Leaders the following lessons learned:

• Teacher Leaders gain credibility based on their teaching experience and expertise as well as content knowledge.


• Good professional development has a co-focus of pedagogy and content knowledge.


• Teachers have learned and used a variety of inquiry and reform-based strategies to increase potential for student engagement and deeper conceptual understanding.


• Teacher Leaders have grown in their ability to make use of professional learning communities in their schools through various strategies such as lesson study, monthly professional development activities, engaging administration support, curriculum alignment and use of performance assessments.


• Teacher Leaders exhibited very strong evidence of effective practice in lesson implementation, including identification of prior student knowledge and common misunderstandings, the teacher as a facilitator, student engagement, teacher's use of questions and the communication of "big ideas" for math and science.


• Teacher Leaders come to accept that all students can learn math and science, regardless of prior expectation (by student or the teacher).

Teacher Leaders are at different places in their learning, just as their students are in their classrooms. The highly effective Teacher Leaders, as exampled by the previously cited "story of one," actively exhibit all the above characteristics."