Teacher+Leaders

= = **Teachers = leaders in their classrooms ** How is a teacher like a leader?
 * 1) If you had to choose a leader in history or contemporary times that best embodies the kind of leadership good teachers have in their classrooms, who would you choose?s
 * 2) How are you a leader to your students?
 * 3) Tell a story about a teacher who was a leader in his or her classroom
 * 4) What kind of leadership styles or traits have you found most useful?
 * 5) To what extent are teachers in general recognized and supported as leaders of children?

Write one sentence .... or a paragraph .... or an essay. Share a link to other pages.

A teacher is a leader because:**
 * ADD TO THIS LIST
 * 1) a teacher must build and share a vision of success with her students
 * 2) a teacher must inspire trust and commitment in his students
 * 3) a teacher needs a clear and focused strategy for teaching in order to succeed
 * 4) a teacher must manage communication and effective interaction that facilitates learning

Teacher leadership is more than leading your students and being a darn good teacher. Teacher leadership is about reaching out past the four walls of your classroom and leading other teachers. [|(read more ...)]
 * CONTRIBUTE YOUR DEFINITION OF WHAT TEACHER LEADERSHIP IS **

I love Jean Lipman-Blumen's idea of connective leadership - all the traits of a connective leadership add up to TEACHER. A connective leader is someone who understands how individuality and diversity on the one hand, and inter-connectedness and commonality on the other hand are not contradictions but equal forces that can work powerfully together. Skillful teachers recognize and respect individual students and their needs but build a learning community that can work well together so that all are successful. They draw on their sound content knowledge and their flexibility of mind to maintain the required standards while weaving them into lessons relevant and meaningful to their students. Here is a passage from her book //Connective Leadership:// 'Leaders who can work effectively with others - that is, multiple networks of leaders - know the algorithm for developing community. Achieving community goals requires leaders who can avoid tripping over their egos, who can resist the urge to become the leader of all leaders. An interdependent environment calls for leaders who can relate as peers to other leaders .... In the Connective Era, leaders cannot just issue orders; instead, they have to join forces, persuade, and negotiate to resolve conflicts.' - p.20
 * Teachers are connective leaders**


 * ADD TO THIS TABLE **
 * ~ Leader ||~ How is this leader like or unlike a great teacher? ||
 * Elizabeth 1 || like a great teacher-leader in her ability to inspire people to seek new horizons, and her ability to communicate and connect with people of very diverse opinions. ||
 * Buddha ||  ||
 * Christ ||  ||
 * Pablo Picasso || like a great teacher in his instinctive understanding of and respect for the mind of the child - not as a lesser version of an adult mind, but a mental capacity unique to the child, complete in itself in its perceptions of the world. Shades of Piaget's notion of the developmental stages where each one is a distinct stage and not a lesser version of the next.

Also like a great teacher in his ability to engage in playful exploration || 
 * Helen Keller ||  ||
 * Margaret Thatcher ||  ||
 * Nelson Mandela ||  ||
 * Eleanor Roosevelt ||  ||
 * Gandhi ||  ||
 * Anne Frank ||  ||
 * Rosa Parks ||  ||
 * Sir Edmund Hillary ||  ||
 * Florence Nightingale ||  ||
 * Martin Luther King ||  ||
 * Abraham Lincoln ||  ||