Guide: Steps to Creating a Teacher-Powered School

Table of Contents

Jump in using the links below, or read more about this guide and how to use it and an overview of each of the five stages below.

Stage One: Forming

• Learning about teacher-powered schools
• Finding inspiration and motivation for work
• Building a team
• Developing a 30,000-foot vision

Stage Two: Storming

• Developing a design team
• Determining a collaborative leadership model
• Designing how students will learn
  • Designing a learning program and instructional approach
  • Designing the physical learning environment
  • Designing assessment of student learning
  • Designing student engagement strategies
  • Designing parent engagement strategies
  • Designing an approach to discipline and social needs
• Deciding how teachers will collegially manage the school
  • Creating a high-performance culture
  • Developing a shared purpose
  • Deciding whether to formally organize the teacher team
  • Determining an approach to teacher evaluation and tenure
  • Ensuring the teacher-powered team is a community of learners
  • Defining budgeting processes and priorities
  • Creating a strategy for attracting families
• Seeking external support
• Pursuing autonomy and approval for your teacher-powered school
  • Review sample school proposals and write your own
  • Learn about securing collective teacher autonomy
  • Connect with teachers in existing teacher-powered schools and get feedback on your proposal

Stage Three: Norming

• Developing personnel processes
• Improving how your team’s shared purpose is used in decision making
• Cultivating skills and dispositions for evaluating colleagues
• Refining skills for working in a collaborative leadership model
• Creating and refining a process for assessing school performance
• Learning skills for working unconventionally

Stage Four: Performing

• Bringing new team members into the existing culture
• Planning for changes in leadership
• Assessing whole school performance for continuous improvement

Stage Five: Transforming

• Seeing your team as part of a larger community of teacher-powered schools
• Growing the teacher-powered school community
• Mobilizing the teacher-powered school community to transform teachers and teaching