Teacher Roundtable learning year: Revisiting teacher leadership
3/30/2018
During the 2016-2017 school year, the Teacher Roundtable team built a plan, in conjunction with our former superintendent, Dr. Vitti, and Duval County Public Schools (DCPS) focused on placing a teacher leader in every public school in Duval County. You can read the specifics of this plan here. This year, the Teacher Roundtable Steering Committee made the decision to continue a focus on teacher leadership, to expand their current understanding of teacher leadership from a more global perspective before pursuing implementation of last year’s plan.
The Steering Committee intentionally chose this year to be a learning year due to the current transitions happening at DCPS and invited a small group of previous Teacher Roundtable participants who had shown deep engagement and particular interest in the teacher leadership work, and some of the new school-level Teachers of the Year to join in the learning. To date, there have been two Teacher Roundtable events this school year, and both focused heavily on what teacher leadership can and should look like in Duval County. The participants read a selection of the literature on teacher leadership from around the country and discussed the implications for their future work.
What does an expanded definition of Teacher Leadership look like? The participants discussed these two documents as a part of that learning experience.
They also had the opportunity to connect virtually with Megan Allen, The 2011 Florida Teacher of the Year and Teacher Leadership expert. Megan expanded upon the Teacher Leader Model Standards and helped attendees understand how they could play some of these roles in their existing positions. This work proved to be very eye-opening for teachers when they realized the variety of roles they could play as teacher leaders in Duval County.
The Teacher Roundtable Steering Committee will be meeting again in the next few weeks to determine and plan the next steps for the Teacher Roundtable group and opportunities for others to join the conversation. As always, the Jacksonville Public Education Fund is dedicated to creating spaces for educators to work with and learn from each other as they investigate and pursue action on important and timely topics affecting Duval County Public Schools.
The Jacksonville Public Education Fund’s Teacher Roundtable Initiative is designed for and led by Duval County public school teachers. Over the previous four years, groups of teachers from across the district have met and discussed a variety of topics in public education including accountability, teacher autonomy, professional development, and most recently teacher leadership. For each of these topics, the team developed and published recommendations for the district, and you can find all of those recommendations here.
If you have any questions or comments about the Teacher Roundtable, please don't hesitate to reach out to Zak Champagne, at zak@jaxpef.org.