Are We Doing This to Ourselves?

This week I am attending the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) annual conference in Washington, DC . The preconference session I attended Wednesday focused on Advancing School Reform through NBCT (National Board Certified Teacher) Leadership. One of the presentations in this session focused on the “Faces of NBCT Leadership” and some of the different ways leadership can be demonstrated. As I listened to one of the presenters, I began to wonder if there were unintended veiled messages we ourselves as teacher leaders were sending.

Our presenter spoke about teacher leaders. She indicated that for teachers to really make a difference in our field, we must become leaders who have an impact outside of our classrooms. This makes sense to me. I understand this. She indicated how important it is for teachers who want to make an impact to still be connected to the classroom – particularly by continuing to teach, but with a reduced schedule or reduced classroom responsibilities if possible.

I began to wonder. How do you do this in real life? How do you make this time? Then it hit me. In order for this to work, the presenter pointed out a reduced classroom schedule. Aha! I get it. Unfortunately, I began to wonder if this sends a different message to outsiders and even people within the profession. The very premise that shortening the class day would provide enough time for this is (I think) flawed. By assuming that shortening the class day translates to less work time in the non-school hours is a mistake. Just cutting three hours from the class day to do leadership tasks does not translate to half as much time spent working outside of the classroom. This can lead to a very narrow view of classroom related work teachers do outside of the classroom. Yes, teachers may have fewer papers to grade and parents to contact, however, the amount of planning, research, and reflection teachers do is not changed in the least. By promoting this approach, are we unintentionally demeaning the profession by feeding into the belief that the outside-of-the-classroom work teachers do is neither time-consuming nor important? Are we doing this to ourselves?

Conversely, is this a cost we must pay to have greater impact on our profession?