Teachers are often drawn to education in hopes of exercising their creative freedom to make a difference in children’s lives. Yet it can be a crushing blow to realize when they enter the teaching profession that it involves far more than passion, intellect, and creative freedom. Teachers must constantly navigate an array of hierarchical structures, from top-down initiatives to rigid personnel policies to observation protocols that measure and ensure teacher compliance. There is likely nothing quite as frustrating for creative and passionate intellectuals as to realize that they’ve been ensnared in a complicated web of rules and mandates—that the autonomy they expected is much more limited than they could have imagined, and that their voices don’t carry much weight.
And sadly, the longer teachers remain in the profession and hone their skills and expertise, the more depleting it feels to be trapped in a system that often requires you to silence your voice, ignore your intuition, and stifle your good ideas.
Fortunately, there are actionable steps that leaders at all levels can take to tap into teachers’ agency, restore their faith in the educational system, and encourage them to remain in the profession. These changes are to the benefit of all stakeholders—school systems, teachers, and students.
This article is the first of two that will help leaders explore what they can do to prioritize teacher agency; it will dive into three leadership mindset pivots that leaders can adopt to begin to restore teacher agency, and in the process help them reconnect to their love of the profession.
Leadership Pivot 1: Embrace a Servant Leadership Mindset
In order to begin restoring a sense of agency to educators, educational leaders who have been out of the classroom since before the pandemic need to be mindful that they simply do not have firsthand experience with the new challenges faced by today’s teachers, from scaffolding in new ways to meet the unique challenges of post-pandemic learners to managing the intense and growing distractions of students’ cell phones, personal devices, and even school-issued devices. With these realities in mind, there is no better time for leaders to consider a more humble approach to leadership, one that restores teacher agency by positioning teachers as the experts with leaders serving as supportive guides, or “servant leaders.”
The philosophy of servant leadership was developed in the 1970s by Robert Greenleaf, who believed that “organizations that thrived had able leadership, with leaders who acted more as supportive coaches and served both the needs of both [sic] employees and organizations.”1
Educational leaders have the power to be transformative if they embrace a servant leadership mindset, tap into the expertise of the teachers they lead, position them at the center of pivotal decisions, and give them the freedom to leverage their experience and intuition in response to the needs of their students. Howard Behar, former president of Starbucks, offers a phrase that is a helpful metaphor to illustrate what it truly means to be a servant leader: “The one that sweeps the floor should choose the broom.” Leaders can extend this metaphor by empowering teachers to reflect, adjust, and provide feedback to leadership if “the broom” seems insufficient to achieve the desired learning outcomes. Leaders at all levels can use the guiding principle of servant leadership to make immediate changes to the way they captain their teams. Here are some pathways toward this goal:
Put teacher knowledge at the center of decision-making processes whenever possible. Embrace a servant leadership approach by not only gathering teacher input before making decisions but actively empowering teachers to come to consensus themselves about the decisions that impact the work they do, and the students they serve, each day.
Make regular use of surveys, formal and informal, to gather teacher feedback about the type of professional learning experiences that would be most relevant to them. Aim to both gather open-ended feedback and provide choices from which teachers can select.
Share widely when leadership decisions reflect teacher feedback to strengthen trust, reinforce teacher agency, and build collective efficacy.
When servant leaders center practitioner knowledge and expertise and dare to allow teachers to drive the decision-making process, they put the power to improve teaching and learning into the hands of the people who know their students best. Certainly, there are some decisions that leaders ultimately plan to make themselves, even if they seek and appreciate teacher input. In these instances, before inviting teachers to join task forces or committees, leaders should pause and consider carefully whether they can honor a collaborative model of decision making on a given issue. Teachers appreciate collaborative decision making, but what they appreciate even more is clarity and honesty about the decision-making process and respect for their time and insights as professionals.
Leadership Pivot 2: Embrace a Multiplier Mindset
Teachers have long had to suffer the indignity of having everyone but those presently in the classroom tell them what is best for their instruction and their students; this concern has become especially poignant in our highly politicized and divisive social climate, with members of the public assuming they know better than those with degrees in education, and special interest groups attempting to control what can be taught in schools. Leaders can mitigate the impact of this reality, improve teacher retention, and create a stronger sense of collective teacher efficacy by embracing what is called a multiplier mindset, a concept developed by researcher and executive adviser
Liz Wiseman. Multipliers seek to tap into the collective talents of their teams; they believe in the inherent worth, intelligence, and capabilities of the people they serve, and harness these to create conditions for collective flourishing. Multipliers not only care deeply about demonstrating how much they value the members of their teams, they also are passionate about leading in a way that makes this mindset abundantly clear. Wiseman (2017)3 describes the multiplier mindset in this way:
By being small, others get a chance to be big.
By being big less often, your own ideas will be more impactful. (p. 322)
Educational leaders can be multipliers by not only regularly, genuinely demonstrating how much they value practitioner knowledge, but also by broadcasting the genius of their teams to the larger community.
Often, the main way leaders show that they value the unique insights and knowledge of teachers is by sending follow-up emails or notes to praise something that they observed during a classroom visit. Certainly, this is a worthwhile practice, but in addition, leaders should strive to recognize and amplify the value of practitioner knowledge in other ways. Here are a few pathways to do so:
- Highlight teachers’ approaches, ideas, expertise, action research, or other work during times when teams or departments are gathered. Better yet, invite and support teachers to do so (with both encouragement and the time necessary for them to plan and prepare to share).
- Be aware of local, state, and national conferences and encourage teachers to lead professional learning in these settings; support their endeavors with the funding and coverage necessary for them to attend.
- Encourage teachers to write about their practitioner knowledge. If this feels daunting, offer to partner with teachers to cowrite articles or blog posts and work together to submit them to major educational publications.
- Create a culture that values practitioner knowledge by harnessing your position of power to make teachers’ work visible to other members of the school district community such as board members, school and district administrators, district families, and community members.
When teachers and administrators partner to uphold the value of practitioner knowledge, not only is teacher agency restored at the individual teacher and school culture levels—the public narratives around teacher practice begin to shift in positive ways. (For more on this concept, see Cathy Fleischer and Antero Garcia’s powerful book, Everyday Advocacy: Teachers Who Change the Literacy Narrative.)
Leadership Pivot 3: Listen More, Speak Less
Although it may seem counterintuitive when you are running meetings and guiding teams, you can actually have a greater impact and amplify teacher agency by being intentional about how many times you speak and for how long. If you approach meetings with the belief that your staff has valuable information to inform your leadership decisions, your primary goal should be to ask questions, listen, and then listen more. As leaders often have limited time with staff as a whole group, this time can be well spent when looked at as an opportunity to tap into the collective wisdom of your team and give them a voice in decision making. As instructional coaches, we have learned firsthand that none of us have all of the answers, and we are always better and stronger when we work together. Bestselling author Daniel Pink, in his 2016 Georgetown commencement address, elucidated this point well when he told graduates, “My hard-won experience coupled with two decades of watching organizations in action has taught me this… if you think you’re the smartest person in the room, you’ve just proved that you’re not. Believing that you’re the smartest person in the room, trust me on this, never ends well. It’s how companies crumble… it’s how governments make tragic mistakes… and it’s how otherwise capable people undermine their achievements and limit their contributions.” Here are a few ways to implement this leadership pivot and demonstrate your belief in the collective wisdom of your staff:
Ask follow-up questions to gain context and further insight about teachers’ remarks, such as, “Can you say more about that?” and “What else?” Often, people can discover the underlying truths of what they’re trying to convey if you act as a sounding board and give them time to figure things out.
Consider where teachers’ comments overlap and intersect and then offer synthesizing and clarifying statements and questions, such as, “What I’m hearing from many of you is… Is that accurate? Would someone else like to add their thoughts?” We’ve learned through experience that regardless of how well we’re prepared for a professional development session, a presentation, or a coaching conversation, leveraging the collective intelligence of the room is always the answer.
Ahead of a meeting, assign yourself a limit for how many times you will advance your own opinions. This is another strategy from author and entrepreneur Liz Wiseman; in support of her multiplier mindset, she urges leaders to “play fewer chips.” She describes it this way: “Before a meeting, give yourself a budget of ‘poker chips,’ with each chip representing a comment or contribution to the meeting. Use your chips wisely, and leave the rest of the space for others to contribute.”
Decide in advance if a meeting is indeed the optimal format based on your agenda. If you primarily need to inform teachers about mandated state, district, or school policies or about testing protocols, you can still demonstrate a multiplier mindset and respect for teacher agency by being aware and respectful of teachers’ time: curate carefully what needs to be presented in person and what an email is sufficient for, and offer follow-up sessions to avoid keeping a whole group waiting for the questions and concerns of only a few.
When leaders and teachers work collaboratively to make critical decisions about issues impacting departments, schools, and districts, teachers feel valued, heard, and respected, and they come to see and appreciate the wisdom, talents, and experience of their colleagues. All of this contributes to higher job satisfaction and a more powerful sense of teacher collective efficacy. According to educator and researcher John Hattie, teacher collective efficacy is the most significant influence on student achievement.2 For progressive leaders who want to retain their teachers and improve student learning outcomes, the way forward is to adopt a humbler approach and to position teachers as the experts they are.
References
www.greenleaf.org/robert-k-greenleaf-biography
Multipliers, Revised and Updated: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman (2017, HarperCollins)
Beth Pandolpho is an instructional coach for grades 6–12, and she has taught English at the high school and college levels for over 20 years. She is passionate about engaging in work that promotes equity and access for both teachers and students.
Katie Cubano is an educator focused on supporting teachers and schools as they design and implement curriculum and instruction that effectively and equitably meet students’ needs. Katie has over 15 years of experience in education, including teaching at the secondary and postsecondary levels and instructional coaching.
