Teachers as Leaders

It can be very difficult to define what it means to be a leader. There are several definitions of leadership I have been considering in the last week or so but the one that has the most meaning to me is the following:

"By leadership, I mean influencing others’ actions in achieving desirable ends. Leaders are people who shape the goals, motivations, and actions of others. Frequently they initiate change to reach existing and new goals." - (Cuban 1988)

The question then is how can teachers influence other teachers in achieving desirable ends. I think that an important way teachers can do this is by taking time to teach other educators how to use different tools, strategies and methods in the classroom. 

For example, I am currently working on a presentation for my Methods class in how to use LiveBinders for our own culminating task. We have all been working since September to build a Teacher Candidate Handbook which was divided into two categories, curricular and extracurricular which we subdivided into topics such as: community building, assemblies, tech tools, DPA and many more.  We all worked on them individually. Some of us used paper and pen, some used Google Docs and some used Word programs on their computer but what we want now is to put them together so that we can share the information with our entire class. We each only worked on two sections but we want to see all of it since we have all collaborated. A fellow classmate and I volunteered to help the class set it up on LiveBinders even though neither of us have used the tool in THIS way.  Setting it up included making the accounts and preparing a half hour presentation which would help show our class how to use it themselves. In this way we created a Professional Development presentation as well a solution to our culminating unit issue. Even though we were both familiar with the program, figuring out how we could use it for this project and deciding how to teach our colleagues was a whole other manner. 

We have been working on our PD presentation for a few days now and it is coming together. By teaching our class how to use this tool, we are not only helping them complete a project but also teaching them a tool they can use as teachers. LiveBinder is GREAT for organizing resources and you can even use it with a class, similar to how we are. Preparing this does take extra time but I think it is important because it helps our class move towards our common goal.

Preparing this presentation really made me think about what it means to be a leader when it comes to using technology in education. Even though I am nervous to present because I definitely do not know everything about this tool nor have I used it in this way, I am taking the risk because I think this information is important to share. It will help us reach our common goal and can provide a tool to support a class of future educators in the future. Many of you are likely already teacher leaders and you don't even know it!


 If you haven't checked out LiveBinders before, I suggest you do. You can use it just like you would real binders but it is all online. It is a way to organize links, word documents and images all in one place-public or private. There are also lots of resources available because people have made binders and chosen to share them. For example, here is a LiveBinder that has many different links to SmartBoard resource sharing sites.