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TEACHER AS LEADER
The conceptual framework
and model that CBU adopted several years ago for its overall programs
is "the teacher as leader." Values, beliefs, and understandings
support the teacher-leadership model. These should operate as
themes running like a current of energy and spirit through our
other required outcomes. These values, beliefs, and understandings
include the following:
- Becoming a teacher today is more daunting
than ever, and teachers must be prepared inwardly for the challenges
of this role as well as outwardly in relation to their instructional
knowledge and skill in the classroom.
- A teacher must adopt a position of persistent
belief in student potential and develop a high level of instructional
skill in order to help all learners become successful; thus, dispositions
(inward attitudes) are a concern of the program along with knowledge
and skill.
- A teacher can no longer afford to think
of the role as mastery of an individual classroom; the teacher
must be able to relate effectively not only with students but
also with parents and the community; thus, interpersonal communication
skills are valued.
- Similarly, teacher responsibility includes
effective interactions with colleagues and the ability to influence
the policy, practice, character, and culture of the entire building
in positive directions; thus, collaborative and team work skills
are prized.
- Teachers must be concerned with excellence,
both for themselves and for their students, and this means breadth
and depth in the content studies as well as higher order thinking,
complex and critical thinking, creativity, technology infusion,
and values-based education.
- Teacher preparation programs must be
practical, placing sufficient emphasis on the real world of contemporary
best practice (and the reality of poor practice, as well), encountered
through in-course practice, clinical and field experiences, the
use of texts, materials, and technologies that reflect and represent
contemporary best practice, and a program environment that values
practitioners as experts and exemplars.
- Teachers must be encouraged to take a
holistic view of learners as members of the human community. The
holistic view includes consideration of physical, emotional, social,
intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of the human experience.
The value of participation in the human community is emphasized
through the collaborative approach and through exchanges between
students that enhance learning and the aims of democracy. Spirituality
is encouraged as the foundation of an attitude of service and
commitment to the full development of others.
- All of these elements are summarized
in teacher leadership. The teacher is a leader whose influence
appears in many forms, sometimes quiet and unobtrusive, but always
persistent. The teacher-leader has visions of possibilities--that
all students can learn, that schools can get better, and that
all teachers can achieve high levels of success professionally,
witnessed by their students' accomplishments in learning. The
teacher-leader encourages, recognizes resources and talents, offers
comfort to those in stress, challenges students to achieve deeper
understanding, interprets the world and events meaningfully, and
walks the moral road. He or she is an advocate for the helpless
student and empowers the ineffective student, inspiring colleagues
to adopt the same disposition. The teacher-leader is also an effective
colleague in the process of school renewal. He or she views a
school as a learning organization and seeks skillful means to
encourage thoughtful change processes. Whether faced with a colleague
in despair, a school in chaos, or a child in need, the call to
educate is a living vocation in the teacher-leader.
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