Living the Vision: The Need for Shared Leadership

Katrina Schwartz says, “When done well, distributing leadership creates a community of people on the same page, working hard toward defined goals.” The Teacher Leader and Compensation grant has allowed us to distribute or share leadership throughout the District. As we add more T.O.S.A’s, Instructional Coaches, Mentor and Model teachers, as well as have teachers as part of the hiring process on the Site-Based Council, the voices of teachers can only increase as we make our way toward the very clearly defined Vision of Teaching and Learning.  

As our Leadership Team for the District grows and more teacher voices are added, Dr. Taylor reminds us that we are all in one canoe, with many rowers, going in one direction as the Ames Community School District. We now have even more rowers in our canoe, but it's imperative that we all row in the same direction...if we don't, we're rowing in circles. Our objective is to move forward!

The purpose of sharing leadership is to build capacity. As a Leadership Team with one voice, we understand that through the Teacher Leader's use of Cognitive Coaching, we are able to build capacity in our given leadership roles in order to make the Vision of Teaching and Learning a reality. Administrators alone cannot make the Vision a reality. Mentor and Model teachers alone cannot make the Vision a reality. But, when all of us come together to help build capacity, the Vision becomes a reality.