Today's school principals face unprecedented challenges that can overwhelm even the most dedicated among them. What can they do when their initial enthusiasm for the job begins to deflate, when the demands of the job seem to outnumber the rewards? How can they regain the energy that propelled them early in their career? "The Principal…

From an education expert comes a much-needed resource that gives teacher leaders the strategies and tools they need to improve their practice and assume new leadership roles in their schools. The author outlines the everyday acts of teacher leadership and shows how to lead effectively through collaboration. The book also contains suggestions for…

Teachers are leaders when they function in professional learning communities to affect student learning, contribute to school improvement, inspire excellence in practice, and empower stakeholders to participate in educational improvement. From an equity perspective, teachers also lead when they serve as change agents who collaborate to use…

Viewing teachers as leaders requires a paradigm shift about the concept of leadership in a school system. The Teachers as Leaders program of the Mountain Brook, Alabama Schools represents that shift and is empowering teachers to utilize their leadership skills and contribute to the system as it fulfills its mission to offer education to its…

For decades teacher leadership has been widely promoted by policy makers and education leaders as a prime strategy for improving the educational enterprise. As practitioners of exemplary teaching, as innovators of pedagogy and curriculum, and as promoters of high-quality instruction for all students, teacher leaders are uniquely positioned to…

Teacher leadership is quite simply what teachers do for the good of children inside and beyond their classrooms. It is critical today to successfully reform schools and the profession. Inside the classroom, teacher leaders advocate for best practices and model expert teaching. Teacher leaders contribute to their professional community to improve…

Districts play a key and relatively unexamined role in distributed leadership research. This article explores how leadership was distributed through a district structure designed to improve the quality of teaching by improving the quality of teacher evaluation. It examines peer assistance and review, a policy designed to address the key problems…

While the technological society has rapidly moved into the digital-information age leadership has emerged as even more distinctive and essential for success. Experience teaches everyone that leadership can be exercised through noble uplifting pursuits or driven by corrupting repressive power. Leadership when positive creates a stimulating…

How can teacher educators initiate and sustain a culture of inquiry among participants in a graduate program? This was the core issue in the design of a new Masters degree program that emphasized teacher leadership. Now in their fifth year of this program, the authors decided that it was time to publicly document how they taught and studied the…

Teachers often resist the label of "leader" and the hierarchical structures that the idea of leader conjures, yet they continue to engage in leadership enactment. This article describes an alternative conception of teacher leadership--"practical leadership"--embodied by leadership enactment through local deliberation and action. This notion is…

This article describes how teacher leadership emerged within schools with either a high level or a low level of readiness to establish a professional learning community. Through the perspectives of principals and teacher leaders, there were distinct differences in the emergence of teacher leadership, the operation of shared leadership structures,…