Opportunity Culture® Voices: Getting the Recipe Right for Teacher Leadership

by | October 18, 2016

What’s the recipe for an effective system of teacher leadership that can lead to higher student growth?cyndal-brenneman

My school, Rocky River Elementary, in Cabarrus County, N.C., ranked at the bottom of student proficiency and student growth in recent years. We clearly needed to cook up something new. So we stirred up equal parts trust-building and capacity-building with student-centered coaching and administrative support, and created a powerful stew that led to meeting student growth goals for the first time in years.

Rocky River added multi-classroom leaders and subject specialization to begin lifting student achievement. To make specialization meet its potential, teachers need to be highly effective in teaching one subject. To craft such individuals, the school needs multi-classroom leaders to help advance teachers in their subjects—and that’s where the recipe kicks in.

–Cabarrus County, N.C., 1st, 3rd, and 4th-grade Multi-Classroom Leader Cyndal Brenneman in Getting the Recipe Right for Teacher Leadership

For Cyndal Brenneman, coming in as a new face to lead a K-1 teaching team in a school with a well-established staff, cooking up the right mix of trust, coaching, and support, along with preparing more teachers to lead, proved crucial to moving her school toward the growth it needed.

How did she do it, and what are some of the results she’s seen so far? Read her thoughts in the latest column in the Opportunity Culture® series on Real clear Education.

 

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