Today I spoke at the Kent Intermediate School District to a group of educators interested in teacher leadership.  This topic is definitely an area of passion for me as it plays a big role in where I am today.  I started out sharing my story about how I was always doing my own thing in my own classroom, like the majority of teachers.  I love to teach, so didn’t think of administration; here is where my influence would stay.  Then I received a phone call from my principal that would change things for me, though I had no idea how much at the time.  He said he was putting together team to go to a conference the next Saturday in Lansing and he wanted me to be a part of it.  I will have to admit, when I got there and heard about creating change in our school, I wondered why I was there.  As a teacher, I didn’t have the power to influence anything in a school – or did I?    Now, almost 5 years later, this call led to a wonderful journey with tremendous personal and professional growth.  I cannot credit my principal for seeing the leadership potential in me and MSU’s Michigan Fellowship of Instructional Leaders program for giving me tools to see how a group of committed individuals can promote change!

Within every school there is a sleeping giant of teacher leadership, which can be a strong catalyst for making change.”  – Katzenmeyer and Moller, 2001

In addition to talking about the importance of having teacher leaders in a school, I talked about 4 major initiatives our school worked on over the past few years, and how they helped us increase teacher effectiveness and student success.  The group was very enthused about what we have done and had a lot of great comments and questions.  It was truly a great evening, and I hope they all realize the impact they can make!

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