Teacher Leadership Resource Library
At the Boston Teacher Leadership Resource Center, we define leadership as any action taken to improve the quality of teaching and learning. We believe that leadership should be a shared responsibility, that students will be better served when all adults in a school are able to contribute to improved teaching and learning throughout their school. Teachers can lead informally, such as by asking critical questions of colleagues, looking together at student work, or sharing their instructional decision-making processes; and they can lead through formal roles, such as team leader, coach, or mentor.
The tools, templates, and white papers below can help school and district leaders create contexts in which teachers share ownership of improving teaching and learning.
From the Boston Teacher Leadership Resource Center:
- A list of school conditions and sample strategies that enable teachers to lead the way to improved student learning throughout the school.
- A role description template that can be use to clarify and communicate the expectations of school-based team leader positions.
- An organizing tool for principals to help them make more strategic matches between the roles they are responsible for appointing or recommending and the expertise available among the school faculty.
- A chart of key principal moves aligned with the core leadership skills addressed by the Boston Teacher Leadership Certificate program.
- *NEW* A series of Leadership Discussion Guides designed to facilitate productive, focused conversations among school leaders that can lead to more efficient and more effective alignment of their leadership efforts. Currently there are four guides:
Other useful resources:
- The Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession has several downloadable tools including a skills framework, self assessment tools for teacher leaders, and a tool for school and district leaders to determine their preparedness to tap teacher leadership as a resource for reform.
- The Center for Teacher Quality has a collection white papers (“Teacher Solutions”) from the Teacher Leaders Network on topics that matter to teacher leaders, a list of questions districts can use to consider the extent to which they are providing conditions for effective teaching and a teacher-generated resource library.
- The MSP Knowledge Management and Dissemination Project has knowledge reviews, instruments, papers and cases that were created for STEM teacher leaders and STEM PLCs but are broadly applicable.
For more information, contact Jill Harrison Berg, Teacher Leadership Resource Center Director.