Project Management and Learning

Teacher leadership is a concept that refers to the simultaneous administrative roles and classroom educator roles that teachers play in the modern school environment. The emergence of this concept in the modern educational environment is attributable to the fact that teachers are increasingly assuming roles that are beyond the classroom environment. In essence, teachers play various roles in the school setting that are geared towards creating a safe learning environment for all students. The professional community of teachers at my school focuses on enhancing teacher leadership through promoting collaboration between teachers regarding their professional work, assessment of student learning, and evaluation of student data. The school’s professional community promotes individual commitment and collective mobilization, which helps in enhancing the roles of teachers as leaders in the learning environment.

An example of a situation where I provided leadership in my school involves a situation where many girls in my class were not motivated to engage in group activities as I had expected. I decided to engage one of my colleagues to help me understand the situation and find a way of addressing it. My colleague visited the class and made several observations relating to the type of group activities students were required to engage in and their interactions with each other. The colleague found that I was not challenging and motivating the girls as much as the boys, which made the girls less motivated to participate in group activities. As a result, I developed an action plan to motivate and challenge all students in a similar manner in order to enhance their engagement in group activities.
The above situation is a demonstration of how the community and leadership in my school are intertwined. As previously mentioned, this professional community focuses on promoting collaboration between teachers. Kurtz (2009), states that teachers in collaborative school settings are effective instructional leaders since they have a sense of history. As shown in the example, the professional community provides a mechanism for teachers to collaborate in order to identify and deal with problems within the school setting. Collaboration then becomes the premise with which teachers demonstrate leadership as they deal with the various challenges they encounter in the learning environment on a daily basis (Wilson, 2016).
As part of promoting teacher leadership, the professional learning community in my school setting focuses on helping educators to become instructional leaders. The above example is a situation involving instructional leadership in the classroom setting, which is an example of a teacher leadership scenario. For teachers to become effective instructional leaders, they need to have a shared vision and collaborate with one another (Kurtz, 2009). My colleague acted as an instructional leader through being an agent of change to promote the enthusiastic participation of girls in group activities in the class.
Reflection Response Post
One of the meaningful things I read in another student’s post related to what is the most influential factor in a teacher’s professional practice. In her post, the student examined whether a teacher’s professional practice is a by-product of his/her educational background and/or other factors in the school setting/learning environment. I found this post to be very challenging given the increased focus on training and development of teachers. The existing professional learning communities focus on enhancing a teacher’s professional practice through training and development and other programs like motivational talks. While these play a significant role in a teacher’s professional practice, they are not as influential as the impact of fellow educators. This implies that collaboration in professional learning community is the most influential factor in a teacher’s professional practice as alluded to by Douglas Reeves (Kinney, 2008).

References
Kinney, P. (2008). Transforming Teacher Leadership: A Conversation with Douglas Reeves. Principal Leadership, 9(2), 20-24.
Kurtz, S. (2009). Teacher Leadership. Leadership, 39(1), 12-15.
Wilson, A. (2016). From Professional Practice to Practical Leader: Teacher Leadership in Professional Learning Communities. International Journal of Teacher Leadership, 7(2), 45-62.