{"id":1199,"date":"2017-11-28T13:22:50","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T20:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=1199"},"modified":"2017-11-29T13:25:57","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T20:25:57","slug":"teacher-run-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=1199","title":{"rendered":"Teacher-Run Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teacher run schools fascinate me as a special case of producer\u2019s cooperatives.\u00a0 They are experiments in self-organization, alternatives to traditional hierarchies, expansion of traditional teacher roles, and over time the re-creation of role specialization.<\/p>\n

The first piece in this series is a case study of Avalon School in St. Paul, MN and schools in Milwaukee. It was written in 2010 and is available in pdf\u00a0form here<\/a>,<\/b> and appendix here<\/a><\/b>.\u00a0 The research leading to the piece supported by a grant from the John and Dora Haynes Foundation, which I acknowledge with gratitude.\u00a0 The study report is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Subsequently, I have written several pieces about teacher-run schools as a part of the \u2018On California\u2019 blog at EdWeek.org. \u00a0(Go to the blog archives<\/a><\/b> and select the category \u2018Teacher-Powered Schools\u2019.)<\/p>\n

Among these is a commentary piece<\/a><\/strong> on a \u2018Teacher-Powered\u2019 schools conference held at UCLA in February 2017.\u00a0 It links to prior pieces, and offers three lessons from the movement:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. It\u2019s growing.\u00a0 Importantly, its advocates are creating a textbook on how to start and operate teacher run schools, a necessary precondition to spread ot these ideas.<\/li>\n
  2. Teacher-powered doesn\u2019t mean leaderless.\u00a0 All the successful schools have strong leadership.\u00a0 Many have had the same leader for a decade, which is longer than most district-run schools keep their principals.\u00a0\u00a0 So, it’s not a question of not having leaders.\u00a0 But leadership is expressed differently.\u00a0 Leaders give fewer orders, delegate better, and build consensus better than ordinary school leaders.\u00a0 They are part of the faculty and usually teach a class; they are accountable to the group’s shared purpose. They are not just being ‘nice’ or ‘democratic.’\u00a0 They are engaging in the slow and patient work of building an organizational culture.\u00a0 The group is not being held accountable to the principal or other leader; they are holding themselves accountable.<\/li>\n
  3. Teacher-run schools provide a golden opportunity for unions.\u00a0 Teacher unions are as varied as the school districts where their teachers work, and thus the hand-crafted, contextually sensitive nature of teacher-powered schools are good option for unions to move from an industrial era workplace and embrace members’ desires for more control over their work as well their working conditions.\u00a0 Efforts at creating constructive relationships between labor and management usually start at the district level.\u00a0 Teacher powered schools start by solving problems at the building and classroom level.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    One of the most striking characteristics about these teachers is their lack of whining.\u00a0 Teacher conclaves are famous for a continuing theme in which teachers complain about the oppressiveness of administrators and society in general.\u00a0 I didn’t hear a word of this when I visited teacher-run schools or gatherings of these teachers.\u00a0 At #teacherpowered, for example, I found teachers who were excited about their work and confident that their schools were making a difference.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Teacher run schools fascinate me as a special case of producer\u2019s cooperatives.\u00a0 They are experiments in self-organization, alternatives to traditional hierarchies, expansion of traditional teacher roles, and over time the re-creation of role specialization. The first piece in this series is a case study of Avalon School in St. Paul, MN and schools in Milwaukee. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[185],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1202,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions\/1202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}