Jennifer Abrams 
Jennifer Abrams wrote this column in 2017 after a session on the Teacher Leader Model Standards and argued that every educator shares responsibility for advocating for the profession. A new section after the column explains what those standards say about advocacy and what research on teacher advocacy shows about the barriers and practical steps.
While at the Women in Education Institute sponsored by Corwin Press, I did a keynote about “playing in the deep end” and what it takes: cognitively, socially and psychologically. At this time, in our field, we are seemingly all stressed and we are feeling ‘under siege.’ We’re in the midst of a teacher shortage, and many of us feel confused, overwhelmed and disheartened. We need skills and strategies around finding our voice, our inner voice of resilience and our outer voice of advocacy.
After my keynote, I had the opportunity to attend a session run by Katherine Bassett and Peggy Stewart from National State Teachers of the Year organization. They shared with the participants a set of teacher leaders standards that, along with many others from organizations, universities, and districts, they were privileged to craft and promote. It was especially timely to sit in the session after seeing the research that the New Teacher Center had just put out on how teacher leadership is tied to increased student achievement.
The last of the teacher leader standards is about advocacy. How can we both advocate for our students and the profession? Many of us need training on how to do so effectively, in front of school boards, parents, and government officials. I certainly need to ‘find my voice’ in this specific way. NNSTOY has a free webinar, “Successful Meetings with Policy Makers” on its site that helps us do this advocacy effectively.
The surprising comment from NNSTOY was about the crafting of the standards and how, from the design team, there was significant debate around whether teacher leader standards should include a piece for teachers advocating, not just for their classrooms, but for the profession. Ultimately, it was put in, but it gave me pause.
It triggered me because of a previous experience I had with an administrator who told me I had no business in supporting administrators on having hard conversations because I wasn’t an administrator myself. It put me back on my heels for a minute. I shrunk in light of the comment for a bit. It stung. Who am I to share expertise with someone who currently holds a different position? So, in the same light, who are we as teachers to advocate for the profession? Should it just be district administrators or principals? You know my answer.
We all have a collective responsibility, regardless of our roles, to be advocates for education as a field. I cannot – we cannot – leave policy advocacy just to those at central offices. Teacher leaders have an expertise in their classrooms and need to express their views and advocate for our profession outside our schools and inside state houses.
Who are we to do so? We are the voices of teachers who first-hand see those students daily. We are the ones with direct contact with the parents, the children and the learning. To deny our voices based on position or title seems on the surface laughable and downright inept.
I am going to watch that webinar on advocacy and increase my skillset around finding my voice in a new arena. Join me. We will find our collective voice around advocating for our profession, no matter our roles, and do so together.
Teacher advocacy: what the teacher leader standards say and how teachers can act
Jennifer Abrams’s column above asks teachers to take part in teacher advocacy for their students and for the profession, and it mentions the debate among the standards’ designers about whether advocacy belonged in the document at all. This section sets out what the standards say, what research has found about the obstacles teachers meet when they try to influence policy, and what a principal or district can do to make participation realistic.
What the Teacher Leader Model Standards say
The Teacher Leader Model Standards were developed by the Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium, which began work in August 2008 after a group of educators first met in May 2008. The consortium included members from state education agencies, higher education, national organizations and practitioners such as teachers, principals and superintendents, and it took about two and a half years to reach consensus. Domain VII is titled Advocating for Student Learning and the Profession. It describes a teacher leader who understands how educational policy is made at the local, state and national levels and uses that knowledge to advocate for students and for practices that support effective teaching. Its functions include sharing how policy trends affect classrooms, advocating for resources and representing the profession outside the classroom.
The wording answers the question Abrams raised about who is entitled to speak. The standard does not tie advocacy to a job title. It ties advocacy to knowledge of policy and of classroom practice, which matches Abrams’s view that teacher leaders have expertise that policy discussions need.
What research says about teacher advocacy
A 2018 report summarized by the NYU Metro Center, written by Keith Catone and Marisa Saunders, profiled six organizations in which teachers act as leaders and advocates. The authors argue that teachers should have a greater voice in education policy and that engaging teachers as leaders can ease dissatisfaction and shortages in the profession. They found that teacher leadership and advocacy efforts have produced a range of policy outcomes, though the work is challenging and sometimes tenuous.
They name three barriers: teacher isolation built into school and system structures, limited time and resources for leadership work outside the classroom, and public perceptions of the teaching profession. The organizations they studied responded by providing resources, including time, by building networks, and by sharing new knowledge and counternarratives to shift public perception. This is a small, descriptive study of selected organizations, so it shows what is possible and what gets in the way, and it does not show how often teacher advocacy succeeds.
Practical steps for teachers
- Learn how a decision is made before trying to influence it. Domain VII begins with understanding policy at the local, state and national level, and a teacher who knows which body decides a matter, and when, can speak at a useful moment.
- Describe the classroom effect of a policy. Abrams notes that teachers see students and parents daily, and the standards list sharing how policy trends affect classrooms as a function of advocacy.
- Work with others. The Catone and Saunders report found that networks counter isolation. A teacher can start with the building’s union representative or a local group of teacher leaders.
- Use available training. Abrams points to a free NNSTOY webinar on meetings with policy makers, and readers should check that it is still offered.
What administrators can decide
Time is the barrier that a principal can affect most directly. A leader can release teachers for board meetings, include a teacher voice in district committees, and respond when a teacher reports a classroom effect of a policy. Abrams recalls an administrator saying that supporting administrators in hard conversations was not Abrams’s place because Abrams was not an administrator, and administrators can spare others that experience by asking for teachers’ views before decisions rather than afterward, and by telling teachers afterward what was done with their answers.
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