District Support in Creating a System of Leading Teachers for Whole-Child Education

• In Event: Scaling and Sustaining Community Schools Through Systems-Level Support

Abstract

In the aftermath of the pandemic, efforts to reinvent education in ways that attend to the whole child and the whole community have been accelerating. In California, the state is investing $4.1 billion in community schools that serve as “‘neighborhood hubs’ for engaged parents and families with ‘whole child’ services.” During the 2022 convening of the International Summit on the Teaching Profession, ministers of education and union leaders including from the United States, pointed to the need to reinvent the role of teachers in securing a sustainable future for their communities (NCEE, 2022).

Well-designed and effective community schools integrate student-led learning with wraparound services, and are anchored by the core work of teachers, guided by key values including a deep commitment to community stakeholders and assets outside of K-12 schools in enabling equitable schooling (Daniel, Quartz, and Oakes, 2019). However, researchers have paid scant attention to the role teachers play in leading the work of creating and sustaining whole child approaches including community schools (Author et al., 2021).

This paper shares preliminary findings from case studies conducted by a research team from the University of South Carolina and UCLA. The district-level case studies, one district in California and the other in Canada, explore the role of teacher leaders for whole child education and deeper, more equitable learning. The effort seeks to document how districts with demonstrated success in whole child innovation are recruiting, preparing, inducting, and supporting teachers — in order to better understand how a system of leading teachers can be developed and sustained. While the paper draws on important findings from two districts, we will focus on findings from California as well as insights from an international advisory group informing this investigation.

Drawing on extensive document reviews as well as purposeful sampling of teacher and administrator interviews, we surfaced a number of preliminary themes, including (but not limited to):

- Recognizing formally the indelible link between student-led learning and teachers as leaders;
- Establishing non-positional leadership where teacher leaders are seen as “instigators” and not necessarily formal leaders;
- Creating intentional processes for teachers to become system-thinkers and space to incubate their own ideas as individuals and in teams; and
- Rethinking the role of (resources for) school-university-community partnerships and the role of teaching evaluations in developing leading teachers;.

Our preliminary findings demonstrate how districts have begun to develop and support teachers in order for them to fuel innovations as well as serve as effective collaborators with allied professionals in the community. Whole child education does not take root without attention to specific values, structures, and processes necessary in developing the whole teacher. These cases point to how such a system of leading teachers could be developed as more states and districts focus on community schooling.

References
Author et al., (2021).

Daniel, A., Quartz, K.H., Oakes, J. (2019). Teaching in Community Schools: Creating Conditions for DeeperLearning. Review of Research in Education. 43 (1). 453–480

National Center for Education and Economy (2022). Moving Forward After the Pandemic: Governments and Teachers’ Unions Working Together to Leave No One Behind. NCEE: Washington DC.

Authors

• Barnett Berry, University of South Carolina
  Presenting Author

• Peter Moyi, University of South Carolina
  Non-Presenting Author

• Natalie L. Fensterstock, University of California - Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marisa Saunders, University of California - Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author