Collaboration: From Me to We

The Iowa Teaching Leadership and Compensation symposium took place on 8/4/2014 at DMACC in Ankeny.  It really was an amazing experience, with more than 500 people in attendance, talking about collaboration, teacher preparation, and re-imagining schools. The Honorable @TerryBranstad and the Lieutenant Governor, @KimReynolds, as well as Department of Education leadership showed their commitment to the process by spending the entire day, listening to noted speakers talk about a shift in schools. The state has taken its first steps to re-imagining education, with 39 districts already funded, and a large funding pot to come over the next three years.  In the morning, speakers like Vivien Stewart and EE Ling spoke about transformation in other countries; the afternoon showcased some #stuvoice, teacher, and principal panel discussions.  A final session with Barnett Barry from the Center for Teaching Quality reimagined what Iowa would look like if one-of-four teachers becoming a teacher leader. Tweets throughout the day provided a variety of perspectives and Scott McLeod curated an excellent synthesis of the resources shared.

Over and over, we heard words like leadership, but by far the biggest word out there was simply:

Collaboration

The word echoed through my brain during the day, and later as well.   
More collaboration time.

But that's a truly hyped word.  WHO needs more collaboration? WHAT will they do with it?  That's where it gets sticky.  Because it has to go beyond department meetings.  It has to result in teams that know that they depend on one another. That's a two way street, and it requires a special type of transformational leadership.  It is also fraught with some strong challenges.

Challenge #1:  Teams are not built on superstars.  Win as a team, play as a team, lose as a team.  That means that the coach generally has some authority, but that comes from the respect of the players, not the operational definition of a title. I often wonder if teachers realize that they are a sleeping giant; with ten times the number of  teachers as there are administrators in the country, what happens when teachers collectively demand change and opportunity to lead without leaving their classrooms? Administrators sharing leadership create win-win solutions that allow teachers that desire nontraditional leadership while still staying in the classroom to do so.

Challenge #2: Changing our beliefs about time. As a partially online teacher for the last four years, my paradigm has shifted.  I no longer believe that teaching is a job or an 8-4 passion or even that I am the only one who can teach students; neither do I believe you can make analogous statements about administrators.  It really is a vocation, a profession, a mindset.  As a result, the answer is not to say,  "Teachers cannot lead.  They are a teacher 100% of the time" any more than saying,  "Administrators must lead.  They are an administrator 100% of the time."  We all juggle some of these multiple roles constantly, with no break:  serving as parents, community stakeholders, caretaker, board member.  Teachers and principals and superintendents often work sixty hours or more when school is in session, melding work and life together.

Challenge #3:  Shifting boundaries. What if administrators surveyed their to-do lists, collaboratively matching and asking for help with those tasks meshing with the passions of staff members (as well as their certifications and licensure)?  What if that time that Adam Hartung calls 'white space' was really carved out as a way for improvement and innovation to occur?  What if, as he says, there were opportunities for blurred or flattened leadership, where multiple individuals attended conferences and the administrators could get back into the places where they used to teach?  The alternative often involves ego or what Dan Heath cautions against in his WRAP decision-making process,  where talented people are boxed in, labeled problematic, and isolated from leadership based on emotional factors, including a challenge to the status quo.  

Challenge #4:  Transparency and Shifting Roles.  Teacher leadership, or perhaps starfish leadership,  will have to go two ways:  from the bottom up, as well as from the top down, to become nimble and flexible enough to radically change the ideas.  That's doesn't seem transparent, but it is, in the same way clear water lets us see the entire depth of a still pool.  What happens in interactions among staff members, stakeholders, administrators, and students spreads out in ripples, undercurrents, and ideas.  And so the districts that succeed in this opportunity will know that muddying water obscures the starfish, and trust comes from listening and remembering that we might not have all the answers..

Collaboration: From Intent to Practice

It appears that many things need to be present to shift a system from one that has followed us through the industrial model to something new.  One thing all of them will have is ever-increasing collaboration.

Current PLCs are the starting point of leadership to something else, but it will vary.  District DNA and culture, of course, give us multiple pathways, including the pilots for TAP in VanMeter and Central Decatur, teacherpowered schools, efforts by ISEA to inspire and develop new leaders, or applications of flex time and online courses.

One thing seems clear, though: we know what doesn't work:  the current system.

Capacity building opportunities across the state will need the creativity of all to carve out these types of positions, and to go beyond the current method of  100% teaching responsibilities.

There must be teacherpreneur stories across Iowa waiting to be curated; I'm excited by the possibilities of looking for them and showcase how they are invented in Iowa.  After all, I was inspired by the vision set forth on Monday's conference:

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