Abstract:

George
Dewey, a Virginia teacher, comments that this book’s authors do not emphasize
the importance of creating a trusting environment, but strongly praises it as a
necessary read, focusing on bulding positive relationships, distributing power
and authority, and aligning teacher leadership with professional development.

Citation:
Moller, G. & Pankake, A. (2006). Lead
with me: A principal’s guide to teacher leadership. Larchmont, NY: Eye on
Education.

Full Text:

by Gayle Moller and Anita Pankake
2006; 218 pp/paper
Eye on Education
ISBN: 1-59667-025-8
$34.95

Reviewed
by George Dewey
High School Physics
Fairfax County, VA

Lead with Me by Gayle Moller and Anita Pankake is an engagingly
presented exploration of school leadership carrying the
subtitle, A Principal's Guide to Teacher Leadership.
That could just as well read, "A Teacher's Guide to Principal
Leadership." Throughout the book the authors make it clear
that the central mission of a school is the nourishment
and enhancement of student learning in which principal and
teacher are engaged in a mutually supportive enterprise
to fulfill that mission. The old subordinate relationship
between principal and teacher is replaced by a partnership
to create and sustain a vision and culture of continuous
learning and improvement. Indeed, it is vital to a school's
overall mission and health that teachers and principal are
just as active learners as the students themselves.

Anyone familiar with Thomas Friedman's book, The World Is Flat,
would recognize the new approach to a horizontal arrangement
of power sharing which replaces the old hierarchical modes
of the past. Friedman points out that just as corporations
have replaced nations as centers of influence and control,
so, in the past fifteen to twenty years have the flattening
powers of technology enabled individuals to challenge, if
not replace, corporate centers of influence, as access to
and dissemination of information have given immense power
and control to individual persons. Similarly, Moller and Pankake
make it clear the empowerment of the teacher leader can produce
a transformation of our schools as learning centers.

The authors see the principal as more than head of state or
manager, rather an active learner and participant with teachers,
rarely in his or her office, someone who gathers information
actively instead of receiving it passively. "Ask," "listen,"
and "analyze" become the watchwords of the principal who is
a part of a collaborative community of learners. As the origin
of the title prescribes, a principal is, in fact, the principal
teacher in such a community, someone who should be an instructional
leader in function as well as in title. In the school which
the authors have chosen as an example of principal-teacher
interaction the principal taught classes on a regular basis.

Lead with Me has three major sections, the first of
which explores and explicates the vision of continuous learning
and improvement in a school and the culture upon which it
is based. Part Two, the longest section of the book, is an
elaboration of the three principles which form the basis of
a successful school community in which this collaboration
between principal and teacher takes place: building positive
relationships, distributing power and authority, and aligning
teacher leadership with professional development. The foundation
upon which the principles of distribution of power and constructivist
professional learning rest is the strength of the relationships
between staff members and students in a school. Moller and
Pankake stress the centrality of these relationships to the
success of teacher leadership in a school, and the intentional
leadership of the principal in this process is the essential
ingredient in the recipe. Helpful rubrics are present at the
end of chapters 1, 4, 5 and 6 which mark progress along a
continuum as principals become more skillful at the leading
of teacher leaders.

In the third and final section of the book, careful attention
is given to sustaining the culture of teacher leadership through
the various hazards which might otherwise scuttle the ship
due to tricky currents, hidden obstacles, or shallow waters.
Examples of these hazards include threats from powerful teacher
coalitions or the principal himself/herself; tenuous or counterproductive
peer relationships, lack of consensus, disruptors such as
administrative turnover or retirements; the ambiguity of vaguely
defined roles, lack of focus on instructional leadership or
student learning, and teacher distractions or overload.

The centrality of the principal is important not only as a catalyst
for learning in a social enterprise, but as a participant.
Herein lies the most dramatic departure from a principal's
traditional role as manager and director. Early on the authors,
referring to a 2002 study by M. Scherer, make an analogy between
the principal as coach rather than conductor. In some cases
a teacher or principal may act as the conductor of a band
or orchestra where students or teachers, as the case may be,
perform according to a set procedure in order to reproduce
as accurately as possible the creative ideas of the composer.
A coach, on the other hand, recognizes that the role of the
players is rather to alter or adjust their actions in response
to ever-changing conditions on the field. Perhaps a better
analogy might be the principal as team captain and player
underscoring his/her leadership as a collaborative and participatory
experience. Moller and Pankake mention several times the importance
of the joint participation of both principal and teacher at
a conference.

Though grounded in solid theory, Lead with Me gives no illusory
vision detached from the realities of existing conditions
or regulation from outside governmental agencies or policies.
For example, the reality of shared decision making together
with risks and problems is a part of the chapter on distributive
power and authority. In addition there are no fewer than 16
charts and exercises ("tools") at the ends of most chapters
for use by both principals and teachers in their collaborative
efforts to learn and lead. Although some people may find several
of these tools redundant or unnecessary, Moller and Pankake
are quick to point out their tools are to be viewed as non-prescriptive
guidelines. There are copious keyed references as well to
resources which extend and elaborate the points the authors
make in every chapter.

Like an earlier work, Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Helping Teachers
Develop as Leaders,authored by Marilyn Katzenmeyer and Gayle Moller, this book
is organized into many smaller segments which enable the book
to be read in several directions or, if read in sequence,
their spiraling technique is a great aid to increasing the
book's versatility and the reader's depth of understanding.
In fact, it would be helpful for Awakening the Sleeping
Giant to be used as a companion work to Lead with Me
since each volume addresses so thoroughly and unambiguously
the essential virtues of principal and teacher leadership
with their main focus upon student learning.

There are other parallels between the books. The Camelot school
in Giant may have become Markham Middle School in Lead
with Me. Both emphasize the importance of relationships
toward building a culture of teacher leadership where the
heroic or "lone ranger" style of principal leadership is replaced
by the more open and accessible aspects of collaboration.
These relationships create and are sustained by structural
arrangements in the organization which encourage teacher leadership,
conducive both to professional learning and to student learning.
In both books the role of principal changes from directive
to distributive leadership.

It comes as no surprise that the mechanism for building solid
and sustained relationships, as elsewhere in the lives of
friends and partners, lies in the quality of communication-its
type, frequency, depth and appropriateness. Modeling this
becomes one of the primary jobs of both principal and teacher.
However, the types and degree of communication must exist
within an atmosphere of trust and the presence of quality
time within which to build trusting relationships. There is
an entire chapter devoted to the time issue in Giant,
yet only a couple of references to the issue in Lead with
Me (in the context of supporting teacher leaders).

For me, the only major deficiency in Lead with Me was insufficient
emphasis upon the significance and foundational quality to
creating a trusting atmosphere within a school upon which
all productive and sustained relationships exist. There are
only three references to "trust" in the index, although
an informal tally of my own revealed nine additional pages
where this is mentioned, though not emphatically. However,
even this omission pales in comparison to the strengths of
Lead with Me highlighted above. Make sure this book
and its companion volume, Awakening the Sleeping Giant,
find a central place in your leadership library.

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