I am nearing the halfway point in my third year as a hybrid. Sounds like I ought to be part one of the X-Men superheroes (or wait, were they mutants or hybrids?).

This idea of the “hybrid role” is gaining traction with the concept of “Teacherpreneurs,” which the Center for Teaching Quality defines as “expert teachers whose workweeks are divided between teaching students and designing systems-level solutions for public education.”

In my context, that means this year I am teaching two periods of Senior English to just shy of 60 proto-adults, while working with a team of other teacher-leaders to support the professional learning and growth of about 400 bonafide-adults. Theoretically, the main purpose of my job is to serve as mentor and coach for twelve first-year teachers in our district. How to do that, and everything else, is the crux of the issue.

The hybrid role has tremendous power and potential. When I lead professional development about new practices or standards, my colleagues know I’m held accountable to that same learning in my own classroom. When systems-level decisions are being made, I can advocate for practicing teachers in ways that even the most well-meaning administrator might not be able to voice.

One of the great things about my boss is that he believes in the importance of teacher leadership, and each year he has basically said to me “what do you want your job to be?” These roles are new in my district, and that blank slate is exciting but brings a challenge. As I look ahead to next year (already), I’m realizing that there are a few things that a “hybrid teacher” like myself needs in order to be successful:

First: Flexible expectations. Chances are, the teachers who are drawn toward taking on a hybrid role are drawn toward trying to do too much already. Teaching half a day and engaging in other work the other half of the day easily, in the hands of a driven, motivated, teacher-trying-to-change-the-system-for-the-better, becomes two full time jobs.

For me, this is exactly what I’ve inadvertently let happen. Little by little, I’ve lost sight of just how much really can (or should) be accomplished in the 3.5 hours-per-day of my job that is supposed to be the out-side-of-the-classroom part of my hybrid role. As a teacher, I’ve always brought work home on evenings and weekends, and ten or twelve hour days were not uncommon, but too often this year I’ve felt that I’m doing too many things and doing none of them well.

Thankfully, I have very supportive building and district leadership. My principal, seeing me fried for time, asked what he could take off my plate. My response: nothing, I just need help with portion control. My district leaders, seeing me trying to do too much, helped me try to reframe my work. What it felt like, though: lowering my expectations for myself.

Hard to swallow, but necessary for survival.

For both the teacher-leader as well as the others in the system, what is expected of a teacher in a hybrid role must be adjusted for scale. If I am .5 FTE “Teacher Leadership” then I need to periodically do a “time study” of sorts to ensure that (1) I am dividing my time appropriately and (2) not multiplying my time in order to try to take on everything. Whatever I engage in, I need to engage in a way that is realistic. That might mean not saving the world, but trying to address a small piece of it. That leads to…

Second: Boundaries. At the recent NBCT Leadership Conference in Skamania, I was visiting with Monica Hulubei Piergallini, a teacher-leader from Yakima who was likewise in a hybrid role at the time. She asked me a simple question that rocked my thinking in this, my third year in the hybrid role: “You teach two periods per day: when is your prep period?” I had no answer. I realized then that I had not intentionally carved out time during my day to prepare for what was, essentially, half of my job. Like many of us so accustomed to bringing work home in the evenings and on the weekends, I had simply let my planning, assessment and grading overflow into the evenings, early mornings, and weekends. No, one period of prep has never been enough for a high school teacher, but I wasn’t even making space for any classroom prep in my work day.

I decided then and there that I needed to set for myself clear boundaries to protect the students I was directly serving. First, I made sure to start scheduling “prep time” into the less-structured half of my day. If I didn’t have time on one day to give myself at least 45 minutes toward prep and assessment during my actual work day, I’d double it the next day. Going several days without prep time within my work day (rather than stolen from my family) are no longer acceptable. It used to be the standard procedure, though.

Related to boundaries is the last need: The job is not “Other Duties As Assigned.” Everyone in our system, from the office secretary to the paraeducator to the teacher to the principal, is doing more than what the official job description requires. While expectations should be flexible and realistic, I think that part of the downfall of this job is that for a few periods per day, my work is far less bound to the bell schedule than a typical teacher’s work… thus it is far to easy for me to get drawn into this meeting or that committee or whatever. There should be a reasonable and meaningful list of core responsibilities for the “free time” of the hybrid teacher. That list should be sacred. Unless everything on that short list fully taken of, it should not be expected that anything get added to that list. The phrase “Other Duties As Assigned” should be stricken from the job description. This also means that the hybrid teacher needs to have the freedom to say “no.”

In sum, I believe strongly that this concept of hybrid roles or “teacherpreneurship” is a necessary element in whatever school reform will occur in the next decade. This won’t happen if we expect… or permit… teachers in hybrid roles to get stretched too thin.