By Mark

Soon after I earned my NBPTS certification in 2006, I started getting all these emails. Unfamiliar names soon became familiar (Jeanne Harmon, Terese Emry, Jim Meadows) and the common theme emerging was that earning my NBPTS certification was kind of a big deal.

Just recently, I had shared a few conversations with colleagues about how I, a transplant from Oregon, had not even ventured into central or eastern Washington (other than years ago to visit family friends near the Tri-Cities). In my email popped an invite from CSTP to attend the spring NBCT Leadership Conference in one of those aforementioned unexplored regions of the state. Serendipity, and it forever altered my trajectory as a professional.

After a couple of years’ hiatus, the spring NBCT Leadership Conference is returning, this time at Sun Mountain Lodge in Winthrop–another section of the map I’ve yet to explore, so I’m going.

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NBCT Spencer Olmsted is a new NBCT in Early Adolescent Mathematics and has been teaching 5th grade in Olympia, WA since 2006. He recently attended NBPTS Teaching and Learning Conference in Washington, DC.

I’m a fifth grade math and science teacher. I spend most of my work day in the company of 10 and 11 year-olds, helping them develop critical thinking skills so they can learn how to read the world. We work on getting better at collaborating, accessing and analyzing information, and communicating our findings and questions to others. It’s good work, but all too often I work in isolation of other adults.

When I became a new NBCT this past year the thing that surprised me most was my sudden connection to new network of teachers and education advocates. I began to receive regular communication from people looking to engage and empower teacher-leaders. One of the emails that caught my attention was an invitation to attend the Teaching & Learning Conference in Washington D.C. I was instantly excited by the expanding line-up of impressive speakers, but as I live in the other Washington, on the other side of the country, and would need to pay for airfare, hotel, and arrange for a substitute to teach my classes (I had never considered the possibility of doing this during a school day!) I struggled with the decision. Around this time the Seahawks were imagining a Super Bowl win, and Russell Wilson was famously asking “Why not us?” I asked myself the same question, why not me, and decided to go.

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By Tom

I spent last week in Washington DC. For three days I worked with an amazing group of teachers redesigning Jump Start, the WEA’s National Board Certification candidate training program. We were holed up in a conference room at NEA headquarters working with their staff along with staff from the National Board. And we ended up with a product that will definitely help National Board candidates understand the new assessment process and make their way through certification.

I also spent two days at the National Board conference. Between breakout sessions and keynote addresses, I heard a lot about teacher leadership. Two speakers in particular seemed to epitomize the opposite poles of what that concept actually means. Arne Duncan spoke about teacher leadership and the subtext seemed to be that teacher leaders are those who help administrators execute their decisions. They’re the ones who lead the workshops on the Common Core and the new evaluation systems. Tony Wagner also spoke about teacher leadership. But his definition seemed to give teachers authority over actual education policy. Teachers should be involved in continual reexamination of what we teach, how we teach it and how we should be assessed.

Personally I think they’re both right. Teacher leaders should have a voice in policy decision and have a hand in executing those decisions. Unfortunately, however, I think our voices have been stifled and our hands held back. Why?

Three reasons:

One of the ironies of teacher leadership is the fact that teaching itself gets in the way. First of all, most of us are too exhausted at the end of the day to do much more than eat dinner and plan the next day’s lessons. Being a leader takes energy. Energy and time. Teaching uses up both of those things. Besides that, teaching is generally more fun than leadership. Given the choice, I would much rather spend a day working with my fourth graders than working with colleagues. It’s not that I don’t like working with adults; I just like working with kids better. They’re more fun. When I get opportunities to take on leadership roles, I frequently turn them down if they conflict with my teaching schedule simply because I would rather be teaching.

Another barrier to teacher leadership is that many teachers have a lack of confidence in their ability to lead. Of course, sometimes a lack of confidence is justified. I have no confidence, for example, in my ability to pole vault because I’ve never done it before and it looks complicated. Teaching and leading require two fairly distinct skill sets. That’s not to say that a person couldn’t do both; but being a good teacher doesn’t necessarily make you a good leader. But a person who has learned to be a good teacher can certainly learn to be a good leader.

And finally, there’s failure. Sooner or later, a teacher leader will encounter it. It’s certainly happened to me. I’ve fought hard to get my district to adopt a particular policy only to have them turn it down. The natural impulse is always to throw in the towel, go back to my classroom where I know I can find success and forget about trying to change anything. Forget about trying to lead.

That attitude, of course, is exactly what we need to reject. We also need to get over our lack of confidence in our capacity to lead, either by learning the necessary skills or by finding a leadership niche that fits with the skills we already have. The hardest barrier, at least for me, is finding the time and energy to lead. But it can be done. It has to be done. Because if thirty years in the classroom has taught me anything, it’s that teachers need to be both in and out of the classroom in order for anyone to be successful in the classroom.

By Mark

One education reform movement I can get on board with is DEM: The Deacronymization of Education Movement. This is a small, grassroots movement located primarily in my house and in room 116 of my school building.

It is not that I seek to eliminate the programs or initiatives for which acronyms stand. Far from it. The point of deacronymization is about recognizing the inherent merit and value that may (may) be present in those very programs and acronyms. 

For example: this year, I've been deliberately avoiding talk of "TPEP" in favor of either "teacher evaluation" or better yet, "effective teaching." To me, the essence of TPEP is the promotion and development of effective teaching. The acronym "TPEP," while convenient, enables a teacher to slip into an affliction called TIJOMT, pronounced "TIE-jomt," which stands for This-Is-Just-One-More-Thing, and often precipitates the classic TTSP (TIT-spee), or This-Too-Shall-Pass, which is a widely acknowledged excuse for polite disengagement from what is perceived as the next BTIE (BEE-tie), or "Big-Thing-in-Education" to ride the EP (Education Pendulum).

Think of it this way: If I am making a list of tasks to do today, "TPEP" is a convenient little term that could be listed there, as if it were something I could finish and cross off and be done with. That's easy to do when the OMT is added to an already full plate: we naturally want to find a way to cross the OMT (One-More-Thing) off our list. If I were to write "be an effective teacher" on that list, I would not cross that off and say "Phew! Thank goodness I'm finished being an effective teacher!"

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