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TEACHER leadership is essential to restructure schools for the twenty-first century. Reaching every student rather than covering the curriculum, connecting to all learners rather than merely offering education, is our task. We must invent approaches that allow us to connect with students and colleagues in ways that allow us to focus on what individuals as well as groups need. And then we must work in an environment flexible enough to allow us to serve those needs. That is one of three major themes of school reform.
The first theme is creating learner-centered schools that focus on learners' needs rather than standardized procedures, are more flexible about learning styles, and are less bureaucratized and fragmented. This means allowing teachers and others to organize to work with students in ways that address the whole child and look at learning holistically. This must be the focus of schools rather than fitting students and teaching into fragmented structures that generally do not allow teachers to work with students for more than a year at a time or more than 40 minutes daily.
Schools where teachers stay with the same students for more than a year show substantial increase in achievement. All the down time at the beginning of each semester or school year from having to learn new students is not lost. Teachers can focus instruction in much more closely attuned ways working with students for a longer time. A variety of restructured schools are smaller or have smaller units within them for more highly developed connections between students and staff. Teachers may stay more than one year with the same students or stay longer within the school day with students.
Many schools are inventing advisory systems in which the same advisor works with 10 or so students over several years of secondary school. Most schools can do this because the staff/pupil ratio in American schools is about one to 12. Class size is 25 or 30 because only half the professional staff in schools are in classrooms. If every professional staff person in school is responsible for kids and has a role to play, you can create a system in which teachers and other staff take responsibility for knowing kids well and working with them throughout their schooling....