By Mark

"So, when do you plan to start your admin program?"

I get that question nearly every time I cross paths with my district superintendent. He means well by it, and I take it as a compliment: It is a gesture that he sees leadership potential in me.

More often now when I get the question it is from colleagues, and usually the tone is much different. My colleagues with whom I am close friends say it because they know it needles me a little bit (frankly, it's on old joke I'm past ready to retire) but from others further outside my social circle, there are definite barbs to that question. It's intended not to pose a question, but to send a message: don't you betray us.

Already, as half-classroom teacher, half-"other" in my district, what I do is often confusing to others. My fellow teachers know what the classroom half is all about; that's what we live, breathe, know and share. The other part…the leadership-y part? That's more ambiguous, so like all human beings we attempt to sort the ambiguous into the previously constructed schema we've developed over time. It becomes simply: Not being a teacher? There's only one other option: Must be an administrator.

Or, as Travis pointed out in a post from long ago, adminisTRAITOR.

I've said it myself about some of my administrators: "I wonder what they'd be like in the classroom…" and I admit that too often the underlying assumption is that it wouldn't be pretty. Yet the fact is–in my district at least–every principal, assistant principal, dean of students, and even the athletic director was once a classroom teacher. Even if we don't outright forget that, teachers often qualify that recognition with "but they left the classroom" or something else to minimize that experience and imply something else.

I was participating in a meeting recently about teacher leadership and how to cultivate that through the USDE's "TeachtoLead" initiative, when the topic of career tracks for teachers came up. For most of the existence of public schools, we had the do-ers (the teachers) and the managers (the principals). Black and white, oil and water, Ginger and Mary Ann. One participant in this meeting mentioned the "demonization of teachers who leave the classroom." Where does that come from? It comes from fellow teachers.

From one perspective, the skills-sets of a principal and the skills-sets of a teacher couldn't be more different. From another perspective, not only are the goals the same, but the skills of an effective classroom teacher lend themselves perfectly to being an effective principal: the ability to build relationships, communicate effectively, treat every moment as an opportunity to learn, plan systems and structures that facilitate group growth…the list goes on.

A friend of mine who has completed her administrative coursework but remained in the classroom afterward suggested that the only difference between a good principal and a good teacher is that a good principal "can go to the bathroom whenever she wants."

I have personal reasons for not wanting to pursue an administrator role, and a huge chunk of it has to do with the work that I see administrators having to do outside the school day (you can't pay me enough to make me chaperone prom, for example). Sure, I have papers to grade and planning to do at home, but I can do that sitting at the dining room table while my own children do their homework next to me: "family time" in a teacher-dad household. Besides that, I enjoy the complexity and challenge of being a classroom teacher. That's my personal kind of challenge, so why change?

But what if I did? Why is such a move so often seen as a betrayal of fellow teachers?

I am lucky that several of the administrators I work with are still teachers. In fact, that is often how they are described, with reverence, by my peers. They'll say things like "I love talking to so-and-so in my evaluation meetings because he still thinks like a teacher–he gets it." In one case, an administrator in my district has (thanks I believe to TPEP and a greater focus on meaningful conversations about teaching and learning) utterly transformed their staff's perception of them–all it took was some good conversations wherein they could reveal their inner teacher-brain.

I for one want good teachers to become administrators. I hear about NBCTs becoming teachers–and many of them borrowing classrooms to teach in order to renew their certification when the time comes. I want administrators who understand relationships, communication, and how a good staff meeting isn't about covering an agenda, it is about teachers learning something they can use. I want administrators who were reflective practitioners and who remember, vividly, those lessons that went off the rails and couldn't be recovered and how this "failure" in the moment is what polishes effective teaching in the long run. 

So two things: First, we as teachers need to stop throwing sticks at our colleagues who decide that their passions take them to other places in our education system. I'd love to be part of a system where teachers recognize the greatest amongst their own ranks and encourage them to become administrators rather than treat such individuals as a deserter or turncoat.

Second, we need to shift our perspective on what administrators do so that we look for and expect from them exemplars of good teaching. They were once classroom teachers, after all.