advocated the importance of more Communication in facilitating increased teacher leadership engagement. It is important for teachers to know, experience, and be supported by impactful channels of communication between teachers and administration, to solve the “I Don’t Know”
and “I Haven’t Been Asked” dilemmas by better understanding system-wide processes leading to teacher engagement, and to learn protocols for either being invited or initiating participation in teacher leadership.
“If there’s no communication, how will they know I want to step up?” - Interview participant
Strong communication contributes to vibrant information-sharing between teachers and administration and increases teacher awareness of processes and opportunities for leadership engagement. As described by teachers, communication includes two layers: general
communication between teachers and administration and specific communication about pathways for teacher leadership. There is a current lack of knowledge regarding participation processes and whether teachers should initiate engagement or wait to be asked.
General Communication
Teachers expressed a desire for stronger communication with administration and for processes to facilitate that communication. One teacher reported in the survey, “There is little correspondence about opportunities for leadership (engagement).” Teachers advocated for more consistent channels of communication, more awareness of faculty, staff, and administrative conversations, more information about campus activities, more campus-to-campus communication, and more opportunities to engage in dialogue between teachers and administration. Teachers explained,
“Keep teachers in the loop, and provide more opportunities to share with faculty what is going on at the school.” Survey participants shared the difficulty of engaging in transformational teacher leadership “when I don’t have a clue what’s going on around campus and when there is little to no active communication occurring within my school.”
Strengths and limitations exist with current norms of teacher-administration communication. One interview participant stated, “When I go to my administration, I am heard.” Another shared a one-way viewpoint of communication by stating, “You only go to administration when you have a problem.” Yet another perspective included the intimidation factor of communication between teachers and administration by acknowledging, “It’s scary to go to the top with an idea.”
Suggestions addressing the general communication problem included having more face-to-face meetings (with the caveat the meetings are meaningful, informative, and impactful), providing advance communication, supplying observation feedback directly to teachers, and implementing consistent communication policy. Interview participants offered suggestions as simple as,
“Listen…respect our ideas,” and “Sit with us and brainstorm,” to “Have a pow-wow with teachers and talk…share ideas,” and “Keep teachers in the loop and give us a heads-up.” One interviewee mentioned the data collected from school surveys and said, “We don’t know what happens to it. It leaves the impression that nothing is happening to it. Where does the data go?”
These reflections underscore the importance of a consistent communication system that equips teachers with the knowledge, experience, and support they need to engage in teacher leadership.
Specific Communication - The “I Don’t Know” & “I Haven’t Been Asked” Dilemmas
The I Don’t Know Dilemma
The second element of Finding #5 unveils an unanticipated 2-sided theme voiced by teachers when asked about knowledge, experience, and supports needed for teacher leadership
engagement. One side of the coin includes the “I Don’t Know” dilemma in which teachers are unaware of opportunities, engagement processes, or communication about participation. In the interviews, 15 of the 21 (71%) participants reported a lack of knowledge about how to engage.
One interviewee shared, “I have no idea…I don’t know the selection process,” and another
added, “I have a lot of great ideas, and a lot of great things I want to do, but it’s hard to figure out what to do and how.” Ambiguity about participation pathways and outright “I don’t know’s”
surfaced about the actual processes for leadership engagement. When asked about informal leadership, one interview participant replied, “The process for informal leadership…I don’t think there is one…I’m not aware of it, or I would probably be interested.” Teachers connected this lack of awareness to a lack of campus and district-wide communication. As a teacher stated in an interview, “I don’t know that I know it’s out there…I don’t know that it’s happening,” and another reflected, “If you’re not on the leadership team, you don’t know what the leadership team is doing.” Lack of communication about processes contributes to diminished teacher leadership, and the organization can work to strengthen these information channels.
The I Haven’t Been Asked Dilemma
The second side of the coin involves whether teachers initiate engagement or hold back until invited. Notably, 19 of the 21 (90%) interviewees indicated they were either currently engaged in leadership activities because they were asked or invited, or they were not currently engaged in leadership activities because they were not asked or invited. This revealed a number of teachers who perceived the organizational culture to be one of “waiting to be asked” instead of
volunteering or initiating engagement. One interviewee captured the essence of the ambiguity by reflecting, “I wait to be asked…I wait to be invited…do I need to initiate?” Regarding
opportunities for teacher leadership, another interviewee said, “Maybe the invites go to other people…maybe I’m not one of those people on that list.” Another clarified their perception of the process by saying, “I’m not the first one that gets asked…that’s just not how it is.”
In the absence of clear communication about the process, some teachers fill in the blank. A survey respondent wrote, “The administration pre-selects.” An interviewee described, “I know they ask people to serve on committees from time to time, but it’s not real often,” and another stated, “If you’re not invited to the leadership meetings, you don’t really have a lot of avenues (for engagement).” A teacher offered, “I would volunteer, but administration selects…they pick you.” Yet another acknowledged, “Leadership…I would do it…if I was asked.” Currently, a lack of communication is contributing to confusion about participation processes and to an unspoken culture of waiting to be asked. Similar to Fining 4 where TOYs hesitated to offer advice to fellow teachers, this Hesitation Culture indicates teachers across the board do not feel as comfortable volunteering or initiating leadership engagement. This Culture of Hesitation underscores the importance of creating avenues for teachers to volunteer and initiate leadership engagement, instead of a system where teachers must wait to be invited or asked.
TOYs - Communication
Teachers of the Year advocated a stronger system of campus-to-campus communication to advance teacher leadership district-wide. They offered to serve as advocates and mediators between teachers and administration. One teacher shared, “TOYs could lead communication between campuses,” and another explained, “TOYs are not afraid to go to administration…some people are afraid to go to administration and say what they think.” One Teacher of the Year mentioned it would be nice for teachers to have an opportunity to sit down with administration and communicate directly. They acknowledged a hesitation to communicate personally out of fear it might create distance between teachers and administrators. As one TOY explained, “You
don’t want to create a wall or fence between you and administration. The climate doesn’t give itself to ‘Come on in and tell us...’ It’s not like that…but it would be nice if we could just go (to administration) and say what’s happening…but would it be held against me, because I said it?
Who wants to rock the boat like that? We just hope someone will see and say, ‘Oh, that’s a good idea.’ We just hope they’ll come and ask - that’s safer.” One TOY believed more direct
communication would benefit administrators as well as teachers, because administration may not be aware of issues or know what teachers are thinking. The participant shared, “They can’t fix what they don’t know, and they may have no idea what is being said.”
Finding 6 - Teachers reported the need for expanded Collaboration with colleagues in and