A Study Guide for Other Duties as Assigned: Tips, Tools & Techniques for Expert Teacher Leadership

Most of the questions contained in this study guide are ones you can think about on your own, but you might consider pairing with a colleague or forming a study group with others who have read (or are reading) Other Duties as Assigned.

Introduction

1. Do agree that teams of teachers, working together, can improve student achievement? Why or why not? What kind of work would these teams need to undertake? What skills would a teacher leader need to direct this work?
2. Does your school and its teams of teachers share a common purpose and focus? How would you describe it?

Chapter 1: Shared Leadership

1. From your perspective, what is "shared leadership"? In efforts to share leadership within a school, what obstacles might staff encounter? How might these obstacles be overcome?
2. What does the leadership structure in your school look like? What changes, if any, need to be made to your present leadership structure for shared leadership to work effectively in your school?
3. How does a shared leadership model change the traditional role of a principal and a teacher leader? How does it affect teaching and learning?
4. Read Ruben's dilemma, on pages 15–16. What advice would you give him to support his efforts to create a new team that will work harmoniously together?
5. If you could design a shared leadership model for your school, what would it look like? What qualities would teacher leaders need to have? What kind of resources would you need? What kind of administrative support would be necessary?
6. Compare the three organizational structures outlined in Figure 1.1. How are they alike? How are they different? How does each influence student achievement?

Chapter 2: The Teacher as Leader

1. What are the formal responsibilities of teacher leaders in your school? How do they use their time? How do they engage team members in the work of the team? What is currently working well and what isn't?
2. What do you see as the keys to the most effective collaboration between principals and teacher leaders?
3. Think about the central mission of your school. Is your leadership structure configured to advance this mission and benefit all students and staff? What about your leadership structure is furthering or inhibiting the school's mission?
4. The authors group the responsibilities of a teacher leader into four broad roles: interpersonal coach, academic facilitator, team manager, and administration liaison. Think of the strongest and most effective teacher leaders you know. How much time, effort, or focus would you say each of these leaders gives to these various roles? What conclusions might you draw about the leadership focus in your school?
5. Create a teacher leadership profile for yourself using the tools provided in this chapter. What are your strengths? What areas do you find challenging?

Chapter 3: Building the Team

1. This chapter offers a metaphor of teaching and learning as the bricks that form a school and relationships as the mortar that holds these bricks in place. Does this metaphor hold true in your school? On the team you lead or belong to? How are relationships nurtured and sustained in these environments?
2. Identify the goals your team has for working together. What is your primary focus? How would you describe the current balance between work focused on relationships and work focused on improving teaching and learning? What should it be?
3. When conflict arises on your team, how is it handled and resolved? Does the team divide over issues, or are team members able to embrace differing ideas and move forward?
4. After reviewing how your team functions, what common agreements would be most valuable for you and why?
5. Team building is intended to increase members' personal and professional connection to one another and to the students they work with. A natural follow-up to team building is the creation of a set of goals the team will undertake. Does your team have goals? If yes, do those goals extend to building relationships with students and strengthening the group's teaching practices? What would you need to move in these directions?

Chapter 4: Team Relationships

1. What would you say are the attributes of a successful school? To what degree are these attributes dependent on a school's staff?
2. Take a look at the team relationship continuum on page 64. Give each of the teams you belong to a numerical ranking, assuming that 1= ineffective, 3 = casual/collegial, and 5 = effective and functioning. How can this information help you further define the work of these teams and enhance the team's ability to improve student learning?
3. How connected do you feel your school's staff members are to one another? How connected are team members to one another? What types of relationship building need to happen in your school and on your team? What resources would support these efforts?
4. Reflect on the kinds of conversations you have had in past team meetings. How collegial were they? How focused were they on the business at hand? Were the meetings productive, purposeful, and satisfying? How would you characterize team interactions overall?
5. What do you see as the greatest challenge for you—as a teacher leader or as a potential team leader—when it comes to building relationships? Why?
6. What skills do you possess that will help you build team relationships? What additional resources do you need?
7. How are conflicts handled in your school? On your team? Are set conflict resolution strategies or steps in place? If not, how might such an instrument be constructed, adopted, and put into use?

Chapter 5: Strengthening Professional Practice

1. What kind of collaboration needs to happen among teachers, working as a team, and the students they teach? What measures help to support this kind of collaboration?
2. Expanding a team to include teachers from departments outside the required academic core (such as art, music, physical education, and computer education) can be challenging. How have you, or might you, address this challenge? What are the essential steps?
3. Mapping the curriculum, as the science teachers did at the Oregon Episcopal School, is the ultimate teaching/learning alignment project. As a teacher leader, how can you monitor the teaching and learning that takes place in individual classrooms without assuming an administrator's evaluative role?
4. This chapter presents many examples of teams and team members working together for the benefit of students. Which ones might work for you and your team, given the particular academic teaching and learning goals your team has set? In other words, what are your "dance steps"? What is your action plan?

Chapter 6: Gauging Progress

1. How is feedback used in your school—in classrooms and on teams—to provide direction for student learning? Is the feedback formal or informal? How valuable is it? Is the data that's collected used to change teaching practices? If so, in what ways?
2. Does your school or team use peer observation (formal or informal) as part of your efforts to improve instruction? If so, what impact has it had? If not, is this an approach that would be feasible? What resources would it require?
3. What mechanisms are available to you to garner feedback about the effectiveness of your team and your leadership? Have you used them? Was the feedback they provided clear and helpful? If not, how might you adjust these mechanisms so that they will generate better data?
4. Internal conflicts can destroy the workings of a team. What are some ways that you, as a teacher leader, might check the pulse of your team as a whole while also identifying and nurturing individual members who feel disenfranchised or isolated?
5. What aspects of your team's operations need shoring up? How can you go about providing this support? What resources will you need? What will you change?

Conclusion

1. What overarching themes or goals will guide your future work with your team? What metaphors or symbols might you choose to illustrate those themes or goals?
2. Write your own "Dear Donna" section: a few short letters focusing on concerns, issues, or worries that may not have been fully addressed in this book along with responses that address these concerns to the best of your ability. Set your "Dear Donna" aside and come back to it in a few months. Have the issues you raised been resolved? Did you follow your own advice or find another path? Use this "self-reflection with distancing" periodically to guide your work with the team.

Other Duties as Assigned: Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Expert Teacher Leadership was written by Jan Burgess with Donna Bates. This 164-page, 8" x 10" book (stock #109075; ISBN-13: 978-1-4166-0886-8) is available from ASCD for $20.95 (ASCD member) or $26.95 (list). Copyright © 2009 by ASCD. To order a copy, call ASCD at 1-800-933-2723 (in Virginia 1-703-578-9600) and press 2 for the Service Center. Or buy the book from ASCD's Online Store.