focused on the heart of PLC work: using data about student achievement to inform our work; using data about teacher practice to improve instruction; and using teacher practice data to inform the work of a PLC. One lesson from the academy was that


leadership is contagious: some creative teachers were quick to incorporate new tools and ideas from the Academy into their work with student leaders on their sites.


Follow-up support for implementation In designing professional development


for teacher leaders’ work, Pivot Learning builds in follow-up coaching for the teacher leaders whenever possible. As Regional Di- rector for Southern California Mike Miller says, “Our experience tells us that the hard- est part of any change is not learning a new idea, it is actually putting it into practice not just once, but in a way that makes it part of the way things are done in that school or that district. At Pivot Learning, we are proud that we stay the course with our partner districts to help them with the hard parts of change.” The design of the follow-up coaching is


flexible and is worked out with each district to find the highest leverage use for the coach- ing hours. Palmdale offers various examples of this kind of follow-up support, which fo- cused variously on coaching departments at the middle school or grade-level teams of teachers at the elementary school level.


Getting to the “Tipping Point” In his bestselling book, “The Tipping


Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference,” Malcolm Gladwell defines a tipping point as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.” It


is tempting to think that the combination of the Teacher Leadership Academy with follow-up coaching support might turn out to be a tipping point for many of the PLCs in Palmdale. Some of the changes being reported are


practical ones: PLCs today in Palmdale are more likely than before to meet at regular times, have agendas and meeting norms, and focus their work on reviewing data from common assessments and sharing ideas about how to improve instructional practice to meet the needs the data reveals. Other changes are more subtle, and are


about both what teachers do and also how they view their work. One teacher com- mented that “the Teacher Leadership Acad- emy focused on training which allows teach- ers to make decisions on student learning. It has NOT been a top-down process.” Another said, “Now we are looking at the


bigger picture!” A third noted that “the heart of this work


is the genuine reflection, using data and get- ting help to improve our practices…and then seeing the results.”


Implications for the future As often happens, work to build capacity


in people opens up new challenges as well as new opportunities. Many districts across California have responded to budget cuts by dramatically reducing the number of ad- ministrators at both the school and district level. This has opened up new instructional leadership opportunities for teachers, many of whom seem eager to step up, especially with the right training and support. For some districts, leveraging the new skills of an emerging cadre of teacher leaders


may mean formalizing teacher leader roles by developing formal job descriptions for teacher leaders, standardizing selection cri- teria, or even exploring with their teachers unions ways they might provide additional compensation for the additional work that some teacher leaders may take on.


Multiple leadership pipelines Could the development of teacher leaders


address the need for some form of upward mobility for teachers that does not require them to stop teaching? Alternatively, could developing teacher leaders be part of a dis- trict’s efforts to create multiple leadership pipelines from classroom to site leadership and beyond? Only time will tell, and the answers to these questions are likely to vary from district to district. One thing is clear: As California moves


closer to implementation of the Common Core Standards, roles for teacher leaders – in unpacking standards, but also in supporting colleagues to embrace a new and challeng- ing vision of teaching and learning – are only likely to grow. Pioneers like the graduates of the Teacher Leadership Academy in Palm- dale are helping to lead the way. n


More information about the Teacher Lead-


ership Series can be obtained by visiting www. pivotlearningpartners.org, or by emailing Jackie Hallerberg at jhallerberg@pivotlearn- ingpartners.org.


References


City, Elizabeth; Elmore, Richard; Fiarman, Sarah & Teitel, Lee. (2009). Instructional Rounds in Education. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Education Press.


Gladwell, Malcolm. (2002). Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Differ- ence. New York, NY: Back Bay Books.


Palmdale School District Teacher Leader- ship Academy Four Day Series, (training curriculum binder). (2011). Pivot Learn- ing Partners, San Francisco, CA.


Judy Kingsley, former deputy superintendent for California Department of Education, is the K-12 education policy consultant/researcher for Pivot Learning Partners.


26 Leadership


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