Distributing leadership to all faculty and staff has the potential to create a stronger school system. The more empowered teachers feel, the more engaging they are with students and other staff members. The more engaging staff members are with each other and their students, the more comfortable the school climate becomes.
What Does Empowerment Look Like for Educators?
To start, distributing leadership is one way to empower teachers. However, there’s a major difference between empowerment and delegation. Leaders often confuse distributed leadership as “I empower you to do exactly what I say,” explains Chris Lehmann, principal of Science Leadership Academy.
While it may seem like empowerment, delegating leadership power does not invest in the power nor the ownership of ideas for teachers.
In time, this environment fosters bolder ideas and more invested students and staff.
For instance, the singer, songwriter, and activist, John Legend, asserts that his success is due to his time spent learning from empowered, innovative teachers. It was from these teachers that Legend began to gain confidence in his writing skills. He even attributes their confidence in him as the reason why he eventually graduated second in his class.
Key Factors of Empowering Teachers
Empowered teachers share ﹘ among many other qualities ﹘ greater confidence, innovation, and overall job satisfaction. As a result, school culture is positively impacted.
How can you start empowering teachers at your school? To achieve teacher empowerment, consider the following factors:
- Voice – Make sure each teacher has a voice. Not only should teachers feel confident that they have a say, but they should also have confidence that their voice is heard.
- Development – Although teachers are intricately involved in helping students develop academic abilities, they are often given relatively little say in how this occurs. Be sure to include teacher feedback when making changes to rules, regulations, and curriculum.
- Celebrate – Despite changing many lives, teachers typically don’t receive enough recognition for their work. To empower teachers, be sure to celebrate those who are successful and be candid about what is working and what isn’t.
- Workload – A teacher’s workload can sorely limit their ability to be innovative. Be sure to evaluate your teachers’ workloads on a regular basis and find a way to lessen them as necessary.
- Vulnerability, Risk Taking, and Failure – Lastly, being vulnerable is the key to creating open and honest dialogue, which is imperative for innovation. Take risks and encourage that among your teaching staff, and embrace failure as a part of success rather than the antithesis of innovation.
5 Ways to Empower Teachers
If you are looking for ideas on how to empower your teaching staff, use the following methods:
- Professional Development – Just as no two kids learn alike, the same is true for teachers. Rather than forcing all teachers to attend the same training courses, try switching it up and basing it on their learning style and topics of interest.
- Purchasing Power – On the flip side, it is a well-known fact that many school districts are underfunded, and that many teachers spend their own money to purchase classroom supplies. Including teacher input into the decision-making for new resources and supplies would serve to further empower them overall.
- Sharing is Caring – Allow teachers the chance to share what they are working on with the community. It is a chance to gain both accolades and feedback for moving forward.
- Lighten the Load – As mentioned, too much work is a killer of innovation. Be sure to find ways to lighten the workloads of your teachers as much as possible.
- Culture – Lastly, be sure to create a culture in which collaboration and team-building are central components.
Consider How Many Teachers Need Coaching
While coaching offers several benefits, you should ensure that it’s the right approach for your teachers. A Review of Educational Research study conducted by Brown University and University of Maryland professors found that improvement in instruction quality doesn’t necessarily coincide with student academic improvement.
This finding demonstrates a need to evaluate whether every teacher should be coached. The study also found that larger programs coincide with reduced coaching quality. Thus, limiting the size of your coaching program may bring better outcomes.
The study also found that the number of coaching sessions doesn’t improve a teacher’s instructional quality. Instead of coaching everything that a teacher does, you should try to focus on the top challenges teachers tend to face. Whichever coaching strategy you put in place, coach with intention.
Build a Successful Coaching Plan
Coaching teachers requires having a game plan. This will improve the chances of having a successful program. Here’s how you can get started:
1. Align coaching priorities with curricular and instructional priorities.
Consider your instructional vision, the motivation of staff in obtaining this vision, activities, and daily instructional tasks that can support and align with your vision for your coaching plan. Also, consider whether or not current school initiatives may compete with or complement your coaching plan.
2. Establish your coaching staff.
It’s important to know who will be doing the coaching and how many people you can have available for coaching teachers. Limit the number of coaches per teacher so you can support consistent messaging and a focus on priorities. Determine the number of necessary coaches before you begin coaching teachers.
3. Calibrate everyone in the process.
From principles to administrators, everyone in the coaching plan needs to be on the same page. It helps to facilitate growth and send a consistent message to teachers as you are coaching them. You can get this done by ensuring your systems, processes, and initiatives work together.
4. Coach for mastery.
Because teaching for career- or college-readiness requires teaching students skills, such as reflection or problem-solving, it’s important that you emphasize mastering content when coaching teachers. This can mean developing video-based content or delivering coaching sessions online via live chat sessions.
5. Set up support.
Coaching plans also need to have a support system. Have coaches reflect on what’s working in the program and what’s not. Set up collaboration sessions with coaches, mentors, principals, or other important stakeholders in the coaching process who have experience with coaching plans so that you can share information and feedback and learn from each others’ challenges.
Measure Coaching Effectiveness
Coaching teachers should go beyond establishing a plan. You have to measure the effectiveness of your coaching strategies and their impacts, too.
Measure success by evaluating whether or not the coaching plan is aligning with the priorities you have in place for your curriculum and instruction. You also want to ensure that you’re gathering feedback from mentors and coaches so you can know what tactics are effective. With proper evaluation, you can create and replicate strategies that support a successful teacher coaching program.
A Final Note for School Administrators
By looking at recent studies, administrators can learn that one of the best ways to improve student success rates is by empowering teachers. Studies have shown there is a correlation between empowered teachers and student success. Therefore, rather than focusing all energy on the students, administrators need to learn to give their teaching staff a little TLC.
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