How to Thrive as a Teacher Leader - a review

I recently read the book "How to Thrive as a Teacher Leader" by John G. Gabriel for one of my EDS classes. I found this book to be a wonderful source of information for ALL teachers as well as present and future teacher leaders. For me, as I start on my road to an EDS in science leadership, this book described the many ways in which one can be a teacher leader. From being a technology mentor to department chair and beyond. After 16 years of teaching I can now say that I have already fulfilled many of the different teacher leader roles that Mr. Gabriel describes in his book.

All teachers will find this book helpful in that it identifies many of the pitfalls that new teachers, and veterans, can make simply because they are not aware of the implications their actions may have on the next administrative level. As I read this book I became acutely aware of the many mistakes that I have made in my professional career which could have been avoided if I had had a resource such as this book. This book is divided into six chapters plus an extensive (54 pages) resource section. The text is easy to read, relatively light-hearted and free of a lot of jargon. The first chapter describes what teacher leadership is and how to encourage it (all teachers should read this chapter!) followed by a chapter aimed more at department chairs in that it describes how to assemble an effective team. I highly recommend both chapter three and four as they deal with communication and how to adjust goals and objectives in light of difficult situations. 

Chapter five describes many different ways to increase teacher motivation and morale through staff development, incentives and team-building exercises. Again, this chapter is aimed more at the department chair versus the other types of leaders described in chapter one. What I discovered as I read through this chapter is the degree to which I have been a part of a successful team for the majority of my career and how, in a more recent position, I was part of an extremely dysfunctional team. I could not put my finger on why this team was dysfunctional at the time but after reading this book I could now point out the multiple areas where administration, department chairs, teachers and myself all contributed to a negative attitude. For this insight alone, this book was an eyeopener for me and another reason why I want to put this one on my reference shelf.

The last chapter is a great one for the classroom teacher as it deals with teacher-student interactions. The author describes practices used in an effective classroom and various remediation strategies for those classes that are not meeting objectives. I also like the way the author discusses high-stakes testing and how departments should analyze the results of these tests by comparing student classroom grades with standardized test grades. This comparison can help to elucidate both strengths and weaknesses within a department and hopefully lead to strategies to either spread good pedagogy or strengthen weak pedagogy before too much damage is inflicted on students. Once again I highly recommend Mr. Gabriel's book for all teachers and especially those who are currently in the role of a teacher leader or who want to start climbing this ladder. Good luck! 

For an extended (6 page) review of this text go here: Kurt Kristensen's Review of "How to Thrive as a Teacher Leader"