Teaching and learning really come down to connections and
re-connections, and metaphors are wonderfully apt in creating those
bridges in kindergarten, special education, gifted education, ELL
classes, elementary/middle/high school, and at the university level.
It’s such a commonly occurring yet powerful force in learning, we really
shouldn’t leave it to chance or occasional attention.

NBCT and Disney Teaching Award winner Rick Wormeli began his writing and professional development career more than a decade ago, drawing on his many years of practice as a middle grades teacher in Northern Virginia to produce two “classics” for novice middle school educators, Meet Me in the Middle and Day One and Beyond. Wormeli, a long time member of the Teacher Leaders Network, has gone on to write other books about key aspects of effective teaching, including Differentiation, Fair Isn’t Always Equal (assessment), Summarization in Any Subject, and most recently, Metaphors & Analogies: Power Tools for Teaching Any Subject.

In a recent interview with fellow TLN member Elizabeth Stein, herself an NBCT in special education, Rick explains his own fascination with the power of metaphor and analogy to increase student learning — and extends the discussion with insightful opinions about the need for teachers to take full ownership of their own professional growth and to resist the anti-intellectualism that Wormeli sees as a significant barrier to advancing the teaching profession.

We have to convince teachers that intellectual and professional
explorations are positive things, directly benefiting them. Teachers who
question policies, offer new research to consider, share compelling
professional reading with others — who post regularly on professional
listervs and networks and think critically about teaching and assessment
practices — should be affirmed and supported, not made to feel like the
goody-goody at the front of the room keeping everyone from recess
because they are excited about amphibians and have one more question to
ask about tree frogs in the Amazon.

At the end of the interview, Rick Wormeli invites anyone with an interest in pursuing these ideas to get in touch. We tell you how.

___________________

Elizabeth Stein: Rick, your idea for a book about teaching with metaphors was extraordinary, and I wonder why no one had written such a book before. Did you get any strange looks from your fans, colleagues or publisher when you proposed it? And how has it been received?

Almost everyone wondered how I could make this into a full-length book. Just like a lot of ideas in education, however, once you start going down the path, you see these other branches in the path. Then, suddenly, one path connects to a parallel path, but the two of them lead to an even greater route, and you have an “A-ha!” moment.

My publisher was supportive, but definitely wanted a fleshed out chapter outline just to make sure there was plenty of “meat,” and to make sure the content wasn’t just a re-statement of old ideas in new skin. I agreed with this — I hate to waste educators’ time with things they already know. There are some things in the book that many teachers understand, but I believe there is plenty of new thinking or alternative perspectives that can ignite novel applications.

Today, when most people hear of the book, they nod politely and think they know basically what it is – another tool for teaching metaphors in English or Language Arts class. While there’s plenty in the book that will help English and Language Arts teachers do that teaching, the majority of the book is for teachers of all subjects and grade levels. In fact, one of the nicest and most accurate commentaries I’ve seen about the book came from a technology blogger who applied the ideas to technology education. And Marsha Ratzel, a well-respected math and science teacher, wrote about how she was excited about all the science applications. Yes!

When I explain the book’s premise to teachers and administrators, they get very interested, noticing the same opportunities and connections that I saw when writing. They are curious about the practical applications, especially when so much of the book’s material helps teachers differentiate instruction and integrate many of the 21st century skills so often cited as necessary for students’ success.

When you researched other writing about teaching with metaphors, what did you find?

Before I began, I wondered whether anyone had written a book about this topic, too. When I dove into the research, I found a paragraph, a page, or a chapter in many different books where authors alluded to the possibilities, but nowhere did anyone flesh out metaphor applications across the disciplines to make them doable in daily planning, or to extend the possibilities into differentiated instruction.

There are several terrific books on cognitive linguistics, the larger domain in which metaphorical thinking and writing resides, but these were mostly research and analysis about the nature of the human mind. Not much was practical or inspiring for the educator. When I went back through my old lesson plans and saw all these metaphors in the lessons that were successful, I realized there was a missing bridge between the esoteric thinking about metaphors and real classroom application, and I became excited about the potential for the book.

When Kelly Gallagher, someone I respect very much, came out with his wonderful book, Deeper Reading, he had a great chapter in there about the power of metaphors in teaching. Though he wrote mostly about literature and character analysis, my mind was making connections to science, law, physical education, technology, religion, foreign language, politics, math, drama, art, music, and much more. I almost couldn’t finish reading his book; I was so excited about the possibilities for metaphors. That week, I wrote the first outline for the book.

You clearly express that it's time to "bust metaphors out of solitary confinement in English classes. Shackles off, metaphors are ready to serve any teacher of any subject in any grade level." In your experiences are there any limitations? Is there a type of teacher, subject, or grade level where the application of metaphors is more successful than another?

Great question. When someone like me speaks in seeming hyperbole, it’s reasonable to start looking for a limitation or catch. But I have yet to find a general exception. From the earliest learning experiences to the most advanced, whenever someone struggles to convey an idea or skill to someone else, they think of something familiar for the intended learner and try to map similarities between the new idea and the familiar frame of reference.

It’s amazing how quickly teachers and non-teachers alike pick up on this technique. I’ve seen sports coaches, CEO’s, dental hygienists, pharmacists, auto mechanics, heater repair personnel, landscapers, lifeguards, and many more professions use analogies and metaphors readily to explain something or to make an emphatic point, and I’ve seen it even more so since doing the intense research for the book

This quick resort to metaphors on our part is probably in our nature to some degree, as humans are consummate learners: The brain is wired for ceaseless learning. We quickly develop tools for making sense of the world, and one of the primary techniques is comparing new concepts to something we know and noting the differences and similarities. We constantly seek meaningful patterns: think of how many people look at the physical geography and shadows on one spot on Mars and see a human face, but it’s really just that geography and shadows, nothing more.
   
Teaching and learning really come down to connections and re-connections, and metaphors are wonderfully apt in creating those bridges in kindergarten, special education, gifted education, ELL classes, elementary/middle/high school, and at the university level. It’s such a commonly occurring yet powerful force in learning, we really shouldn’t leave it to chance or occasional attention. Hence, the book.  

Your book reminds readers that teachers really need to think about the language we use to guide students to learn. It's apparent that our language can propel or suppress the thinking of our students.

You mention that teachers should strategically think about metaphors, not leaving it to chance when it comes to teaching kids to approach learning analytically. Yet there's also a balance that must be struck — a need to align our chosen metaphors with a student's background knowledge. In a class of 30 students it is expected that some students may need guidance to "fill in the blanks" for other students. You mention English Language Learners, for example.

What's your secret to planning effectively for the various levels of readiness and needs?

This alignment of instruction with students’ backgrounds is important. We want the metaphors to be helpful to students. I actually wrote a book on planning for differentiated instruction (Differentiation: From Planning to Practice, Stenhouse Publishers), but here are a couple thoughts (okay, more than a couple) in response:
   
In your question, you touched on several points. The first was that we should expect some students to need guidance to “fill in the blanks” for students with limited background knowledge. If I’ve interpreted this correctly, you’re saying that we will have to assist some students as they help other students. Yes, this is true, but this should be done respectfully.

Too often we rely on successful students to spend a lot of their extra time working with struggling classmates, but this doesn’t meet the needs of those strugglers; it’s disrespectful to their development. We can do this some of the time, but that’s just it: It should be a minority of the time, not the chronic default for a teacher deciding what to do with the students who finish early or how to meet the needs of struggling students when the teacher isn’t available. In addition, there are clear techniques for one student assisting another that need to be taught overtly, not left to the assumption that all kids know how to teach other kids. I know you’re not advocating for students to become substitute teachers, but it’s something I see in schools quite a bit. 
   
Second, you asked for my secret to planning effectively for varied readiness levels and needs in the classroom. The secret is that there isn’t one. If anyone tells you they have the one solution for planning for diverse classrooms, they’re not thinking about it thoroughly enough, or they are being dishonest.
   
While there isn’t one clear way to plan for readiness levels, there are a collection of principles we can employ as necessary to help us approximate the goal of success for all students. We will never achieve it perfectly for all students, despite what the federal government declares for 2014, but we can come close. Humans are too varying, learning is too uneven, and our classroom and school structures are too limited to make this real or desirable. We recognize, too, that human variance is actually a good thing for humanity, not an impediment.  
   
As they are currently set up, most schools are not meant to meet the needs of anyone who deviates from the exact center, or who “gets it” first. Anyone who needs more, less, or different approaches in the classroom better hope they have a teacher with a big repertoire of strategies and a responsive nature that makes her inclined to use that repertoire.
   
Every time teachers read a book on differentiated instruction and seriously contemplate its content or they participate in an in-service training on differentiated instruction, they are taking part in an act subversive to the status quo. Most schools, classrooms, and policies rally around the factory method of schooling: “This week we learn this, next week we learn that,” and, “You’re 10 so you learn this. You’re now 11, so you learn that.”

We are overwhelmed with the abundant evidence that this is not the way most humans learn, yet we continue to set up our schools in this manner. Anyone working in most schools today who also knows how young minds best learn, negotiates with himself every day for what level of hypocrisy he will tolerate that day, and sometimes he’s more tolerant than he should be.
   
Rick: So in that context, let me ask myself a question — In the midst of this messy enterprise, what are those actions/elements necessary for good instructional planning for diverse student populations? Here’s a partial list of mindsets that work well:
   
Build teacher creativity. As I travel across the U.S. and abroad, this seems to be one of the biggest hurdles to classroom instruction. Teachers don’t have a lot of experience in cultivating their own imaginations, and as a consequence, they are hesitant about their problem-solving (or the perceived autonomy to pursue it). Simply put, we often don’t have the tools for the innovation required when working in a system that conspires against it.

To counter this, we should take up a new musical instrument, hobby, or learn a foreign language or three. We should experience Ropes Initiative Courses similar to Project Adventure and Outward Bound. We should be asked to maintain a professional portfolio that best represents all that we are in the classroom, not just a basic paper trail.

We should be taught logic and reasoning skills – deduction, induction, divergence, convergence, analysis, synthesis, rhetoric, and formal debate skills, so we can apply these concepts and skills in our planning. We should ceaselessly build our instructional versatility, such as learning five new learning models or five more uses of an I-Pad or I-Touch each year. We improve creativity when we have a variety of skills and content on which to draw; we can’t be creative with what we don’t have. 
   
Open classrooms to professional critique. Hopefully, someone cares enough about us and our students to correct us when we make mistakes. You should worry if no one corrects you. If we expect to become really good teachers, we better come across as accessible and teachable to our colleagues and inviting to those in position to know good pedagogy from bad.

In a teaching culture where everyone invites critique from colleagues, parents, and students instead of closing the classroom door and rationalizing that they must be okay because no one complained about a lesson, we can develop our teaching senses more quickly, and as a result, plan better for students whose needs deviate from the norm. In critique there is a constant interaction between the teacher and the “critiquer,” and that’s where the transformation occurs — not in the information offered by the one critiquing, but in the back-and-forth between the two people involved as the teacher being observed considers the message.

I know this hard. In order to accept a new idea we have to first admit what we are doing is ineffective or wrong, but wow, revising our thinking in light of new evidence is one of the strongest indicators of a true professional. What goes unlearned by students because we weren’t open to critique? 
   
Spend more time than we think is necessary coming to know our students. Teachers who’ve taught the same subject for more than a few years tend to assume they know all they need to know about students in the very first week. I did for a while, too. Students change, however, and early impressions often fail as sole guideposts. Heck, many kids don’t even know who they are month to month, so it’s hard for them to tell us who they are, if they even have the tools to do that successfully.

We might have some generalizations from experience that we can make regarding the current group of students, but in 25 years in the classroom, I never had a year when I didn’t have multiple Homer Simpson, “Doh!” moments (fist hitting my forehead) when I realized there was something about a student that was affecting his learning, but I didn’t take the time to find out about it until half way through the year or more, and by then, I had wasted all that learning time.
   
We can’t possibly know everything about each student, of course, but gosh, we need to make information-gathering a clear pursuit, not just an occasional accident, and we need to make it easy for teachers to do that gathering. If we accept differentiated approaches as responsive teaching, it becomes even more important that we know our students so we know how to respond. Most teachers are conscientious people and want to do right by the students they serve. When they find out more information about students, they make better decisions.
    
In chapters 6 and 7, you explain the value of using the senses as we implement metaphors and analogies within lessons. This seems like the perfect way to differentiate instruction. Is it safe to say that teachers should plan multi-modal ways to represent concepts to reach a larger percentage of students’ attention and deeper levels of understanding?

The more access points a mind has to a concept, the better the mind understands and retains the concept. Comprehension and retention of information are two big goals of teachers and students. If as a student I have both the sound and the visual of my teacher describing the Treaty of Versailles, I can recall the information more vividly than receiving the information through only one of these modalities.

We can’t stop at access, however. Students have to process the information for meaning as well. As a student, if I get the chance to re-enact the debate that went on between Germany and the Allies as they drew up their declarations of peace at the end of World War I, I’m even more engaged, and the knowledge even more retained in memory – and most probably, remembered more accurately.

The brain looks for patterns and connections at every turn. If something is meaningful, it is better remembered. Meaningful learning most often happens when students “re-code” learning for themselves (metaphor construction is a form of personal re-coding, by the way). A great technique for helping students do this is simulation, which, of course, is multi-sensory: As I try to convince Germany to accept responsibility for the war, to disarm, and to make reparations in a public debate, or I try to protect Germany from these concessions in that debate, my mind is on fire as I argue and learn. I won’t forget the content for a long time.
   
As I mentioned above, metaphors and analogies are one of the easiest tools to help students not only access the information (“I understand this”), but to also process the information for meaning (“I can use this and I see how it affects my life”). Simulations can often be forms of metaphors, such as when we construct a model of a structure or process using our bodies, or when we express a complex concept from science, math, technology, or government class in fine or performing arts.
   
Having said this, I agree with those who declare that we don’t need to respond to student differences all the time. Students can learn very well doing what everyone else is doing. Teachers don’t need to burn themselves out trying to be multi-modal in every lesson. It’s physically impossible to do this, in fact.

Instead, we can try to be multi-modal over the course of a week or unit, and we can focus on multiple modalities, in particular, if a student is failing to understand or achieve something. For example, I can explain a math algorithm on the front wipeboard, Smartboard, or chalkboard, but only some of the students need to work with manipulatives at their desks to fully comprehend what I’m talking about. They may need it in this one lesson, but then not again for five more lessons. Do I do enough assessment to know when it’s appropriate and when it’s not? I hope so.

The wise teacher gets really good at formative assessment and lets it inform his teaching rather than automatically assuming it’s multi-modal teaching for everyone every day.
 
You mention the possibilities that emerge when using visual metaphors. You connect with the fact that "we've become a primarily visual and graphic-oriented society." From your experiences, what are the benefits in including visual metaphors while preparing your students for the future?

Almost every new book about future professions and businesses that comes out these days talks about students being able to manipulate and perceive data, not just store it. If we look at data one way, we see one solution, but manipulate it another way, we can open our minds to a completely different perspective.

In their seminars and keynote speeches, Bob Marzano, Daniel Pink, Stephen Pinker, Tony Wagner, Doug Reeves, John Hattie, and many others all use graphic portrayals of information to communicate major principles — and we respond positively. It’s the way we are. We’ve discovered so many abstract and intangible yet very real elements in our daily lives, we’ve had to resort to virtual reality (visuals and our interaction with them) to communicate and understand those elements.  
   
This really exploded in the 1950’s and the decades that followed because so many ideas and technologies were advancing so quickly. We needed a new frame of reference for describing them because there was little in the everyday world that was effective as a frame of reference. We elevated depicting relationships and ideas visually, just to get our points across, and we were doing it much more commonly.

This is not to say this was the genesis for using graphics to explain something – look at Egypt, Phoenicia, Assyria, Aztecs, at Aboriginal peoples in all early cultures who did it brilliantly. But the rapid advancement of technology and the public’s demand to understand it (“What’s a bit and a byte?” “Show me the flow chart” “How is that computer machine like a human mind?” “Fractals are like branching rivers?” “DNA is a twisted ladder?” “There are strings in the universe?”) created the biggest impetus for the modern era of visual metaphors. 
   
To prepare students for their futures, we need to make sure they are visually literate. This means they can interpret data, symbols, and metaphors presented in many ways, and they can recognize bias within them. What’s included and not included in the depiction, and why? Is there an underlying message or conceptual metaphor that shapes this ideology, and if so, what do we make of it?

It is to our peril to have a generation of citizens inarticulate in how they are being manipulated to accept a message on its own terms. From politics to medicine to religion and education, 21st century visual literacy is a non-negotiable skillset for participatory democracy. 

In chapter 8 you provide great strategies with potential to "move metaphorical thinking to the forefront of teaching and learning." You describe the value of getting in a "metaphorical mood" with students. This sounds like the perfect scenario for stretching the thinking for all learners. How would you advise teachers who are new to setting this mood?

One of the biggest liberators for my own thinking was to recognize that some of the greatest teaching tools of all time are all around us. I didn’t need to put all my hopes for effective teaching into getting the latest techno-toy simulator from Carolina Biological Supply. I needed to think creatively about everyday objects as my teaching tools. Can I get the idea of homeostasis across to students using only elements found in our cafeteria or library? How about communicating the definition of “gestalt” when comparing different linoleum patterns on the floor and ceiling tiles of our building? And how cool is it that an item seen every day will be there to remind students of the analogous concept every time they see it? It’s like a constant study guide and reinforcer.

Someone who lives near the Mississippi River delta whose teacher compared that delta to the branching bronchial tubes leading to the alveoli in the lungs will see the Mississippi as one big trachea leading to the shipping ports (alveoli) where one good (product) is exchanged for another (carbon dioxide-oxygen exchange).
   
Building this into our lessons, then revealing this experience to students, and asking them to do it themselves sets a great mood for metaphor incorporation. Students are very, very good at this as long as we give them time, and get out of their way, not limiting them to our generation’s imagination.
   
My best advice is to practice. I love that old phrase, “The best geologist in the world is the one who has seen the most rocks.” We get better at incorporating effective metaphors in our instruction and assessment the more we do it, so do it a lot. Get students to do it a lot, so much so, that they come to you with unsolicited metaphors and analogies as they think through a problem or while reading text. While the genesis of metaphors is fun and even inspiring, it’s defending how they fit and don’t fit the target comparison and how we can extend them in different directions that leads to the most learning.
   
To get in the mood, compare this interview, professional discourse, or metaphors themselves to something else in your life. What would it be, and why that?
   
Another effective way to get in the mood is to list the interesting, clever, articulate, refreshing metaphors we hear and see every day. I did this for one week as I was writing the book, and was shocked by how many there were – I mean, really good ones in newspapers, on-line articles/blogs, airport conversations, family e-mails, teacher conversations, children’s descriptions of their sports games, advertisements, political speeches, in comic books and comic strips, in movies and t.v., and on radio.

On and on it went. When we tune our mind to metaphors, we start seeing them everywhere. It was a little creepy at one point to realize that they were there all along, and we were happily accepting them -- unidentified and unquestioned. Honestly, I didn’t have the eyes and ears to fully perceive them until I began investing in their study. It was this beautiful new world hidden in full view.
   
Writing this makes me think: I’m definitely not the big revolutionary thinker so many others are, but this strategic use of metaphor construction and deconstruction was a mini-epiphany for me. What will be the next thing someone perceives as integral to student success that is figuratively and literally all around us — ready to use if only asked for it, yet today we are completely oblivious to it? Wow, I can’t wait to hear it or read about it, and wow, again, think of the students of the teacher that uses the new perception!       

As a powerful learning tool, metaphors and analogies require higher order thinking skills that may not come as easy for some teachers. We all know those teachers who get stuck at the literal level on the thinking treadmill. What advice would you give to these teachers?

Most of my response to this question can be found in the responses above, and since I’ve already taken up too much real estate in my responses thus far, I won’t repeat that information here. 
   
The only thing I would add is a concern about a general sense of anti-intellectualism on the part of some teachers and principals around the country and abroad. In some places, it comes across as “uncool” to be known as someone who contemplates cognitive neuroscience, pedagogy, assessment, instructional practice, critical analysis, learning theories, or to promote serious contemplation of ideas. It isn’t everywhere, but it’s a bit scary how prevalent it is in schools.
   
Some of this is survival: We don’t like to do what we are not good at doing. This isn’t a sign that teachers are intellectually bereft, it’s a sign that they haven’t been given the tools/resources and autonomy to develop their intellectual side. They shoot down new ideas and research analysis because they aren’t sure how to do it, and it takes less energy to dismiss it than it does to think carefully. They are tired and just trying to survive. 

It’s a real problem though. Think about this: Someone at a department, team, or faculty meeting says, “Did anyone read Kovecses’ research on cognitive linguistics in last month’s Kappan magazine? There were three points he made that really changed my thinking about how students learn vocabulary.” Already there are some faculty members who are rolling their eyes and hoping the curious reader will quiet down so they can move on to other business, like whether or not school is closing early on the last day before the holiday.

Think of all the great concepts, tips, skills, and new research that no one passes on to others because they are afraid as coming across as too Joe or Jane Professional Know-it-all in the faculty lounge. With this attitude and an occasional sense of semi-bullying and faculty cliques, it makes me think: What are we, eight years old?
   
The problem is that these unwilling teachers are actually thoughtful people, and if they heard the ideas, they would enjoy the conversation. They would think seriously about trying the ideas in their own classes. Without administrative and collegial encouragement, a risk-taking, contemplative school culture, PLC’s, Critical Friends Networks, Teacher Action Research Teams, and similar tools, we don’t have the skills or motivation to think intellectually about what we do — but that kind of thinking is vital to student success and evolving our profession.
   
We have to convince teachers that intellectual and professional explorations are positive things, directly benefiting them. Teachers who question policies, offer new research to consider, share compelling professional reading with others — who post regularly on professional listervs and networks and think critically about teaching and assessment practices — should be affirmed and supported, not made to feel like the goody-goody at the front of the room keeping everyone from recess because they are excited about amphibians and have one more question to ask about tree frogs in the Amazon.

In some places, however, colleagues are suspicious of these individuals, wondering at their motives, irritated by the inquiry, and privately declaring them unrealistic and blaming them for making the rest of the faculty look bad for not reading and discussing those ideas.
   
There’s no one solution to this, but it starts with affirmation of those who explore professional ideas and report their findings. Teachers who participate in listservs and professional communities on the Web, who maintain blogs, subscribe to at least one professional journal, mentor others, and/or attend professional conferences can be a big part of establishing such a constructive culture. We do well to follow their lead.  

Thank you, Rick, for talking some about your book and even more for offering some of your insight about how teachers can improve our practice and advance our profession. You’ve given us a lot to think about.

Thanks, Elizabeth, for letting me talk about all this. I’m up for conversation any time with anyone, if he or she wants to explore these ideas further.

It’s wonderful to stop skimming the surface once in a while, dive deep into a topic, and explore its riches. I hope readers accept the invitation to join the dive, especially since no has to worry about running out of Oxygen; we breathe this stuff every day.

If you’d like to get in touch with Rick Wormeli, send a note to TLN Teacher Voices editor John Norton and mention this interview.

Bill Ferriter’s participation in the Teacher Leaders Network began in March 2003, on the very first day of TLN’s existence. We kicked off TLN with an email conversation among 200 accomplished teachers, mostly from states in the southeast. The idea was to stage a series of 3-day chats exploring some key professional issues and then see who wanted to stick around and become the nucleus of a national virtual community of classroom educators.

By the end of the six-week startup, Bill’s provocative questioning and his willingness to reflect on his own professional practice — tarnish and all — made him a leader in our fledgling community. He’s gone on to serve as a TLN Senior Fellow, co-author of a major TLN TeacherSolutions report, and the internationally respected TLN blogger known as The Tempered Radical, whose lively mix of classroom practice, policy and politics, and digital learning topics attracts a broad audience and recently led to a monthly column, Digitally Speaking, in Educational Leadership magazine.

As it turns out, Bill’s willingness—compulsion, even—to bare his teaching soul makes him one heck of a book author, too. Building a Professional Learning Community at Work: A Guide to the First Year, co-written with principal Parry Graham, grows out of a several-year struggle by Bill and a group of teacher colleagues at his North Carolina middle school to learn to collaborate in powerful ways. In this interview, Bill recounts some of the pain and gain of that trial by fire, and how he and Graham went about translating their own experiences into a practical primer for other educators who might be willing to set forth on a similar journey.

As a bonus, I've asked Bill to speak to fellow teachers who harbor their own desire to write a book from their teaching lives. Bill generously shares his secret to publishing success, but I’ll warn you in advance. It involves a lot of writing. – John Norton, co-founder and moderator, Teacher Leaders Network.

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What created the burn to write a book for teachers just beginning to explore PLCs? Give us some history.

Bill Ferriter: I think the burn to write a book for teachers just beginning their work with professional learning communities is a product of my own early struggles and successes with collaboration. About five years ago, I had the opportunity to open a new middle school being built as a PLC from the ground up—and I was paired on a learning team with five of the most intelligent and capable language arts and social studies teachers that I’d ever met.

The problem was that we had no real idea what it was that we were supposed to be doing with each other, and that led to early frustrations. Our initial meetings were rambling, unfocused affairs and we often felt like failures. We fought through personal conflicts and professional disagreements, though, and eventually found a working rhythm and synergy that made all of us better teachers. I wanted to try to make those early struggles transparent to other teachers, hoping that the lessons my team learned might sustain others when the inevitable challenges of collaboration arise.

Collaborative work can make any teacher more productive and professionally satisfied, but only when early efforts at collaboration are structured and meaningful. Parry and I believe that Building a Professional Learning Community at Work can provide some of that structure for learning teams at any stage of their professional work together.

Your book is filled with action-oriented subheads, reproducibles, practical recommendations — there's even an annotated chapter guide divided into seasons of the year. It has the feel of authors who have been there and done that. How much easier might things be for teacher teams who take your advice?

Bill Ferriter: I think the real strength of Building a Professional Learning Community at Work is that Parry and I are both full-time practitioners. I still meet with a learning team every week, trying to identify instructional practices that work and ensure the success of every child. Parry still works as a building principal, trying to create the systems that enable teachers and students to thrive.

That first-hand experience with the real work of learning teams is evident in every chapter, handout and subtitle in our text. Our suggestions, strategies, and materials are suggestions, strategies and materials that we’ve used successfully in our work—and the text is really nothing more than a public reflection of the learning that we’ve done as we’ve tried to make professional learning communities happen in our own schools.

 If you had to come up with 4-5 key insights represented in the book, what would they be? Tempt us.

Bill Ferriter: Picking out 4-5 key insights is close to impossible because our readers will all be working on learning teams that have their own unique personalities and challenges. What may look like a key insight or solution for one team may be a strategy, practice or behavior that another team is unprepared for.

Teams new to collaboration are likely to find the strategies for structuring productive meetings to be the most valuable, while highly productive teams might embrace our suggestions for useful data conversations. Administrators—regardless of how long their teachers have been working in learning teams—will love the surveys that we’ve developed to gather information about the overall health of their professional learning teams.

In some ways, that’s the beauty of our book—it is designed to provide customized support for any learning team, regardless of their current circumstances, and is written with all the players in mind.

The "Winter" section of your book is titled "Weathering the Challenges." Is this the stage — 4 or 5 months in — where even the best-intentioned PLCs are most vulnerable to inertia or break-down?

Bill Ferriter: To be honest, I’m not sure that learning teams are ever fully invulnerable. I know that our team has cycled in and out of moments of inertia and breakdown over the past five years.

Sometimes it’s because we try to tackle too many well-intentioned initiatives all at once—simultaneously designing remediation and enrichment programs, collecting and analyzing data, creating a warehouse of best instructional practices. Sometimes it’s because our team composition changes, and sometimes it’s because other priorities take precedence in our personal or professional lives. We’ve found ourselves wandering off the PLC path more than once and for a range of reasons that is almost mind boggling!

I think the key to our success has been our faith in one another and the professional satisfaction that we’ve gained from working together. The levels of trust on our team are high because we’ve got an extensive base of shared experiences with one another. When conflict comes, it’s productive, built on the belief that everyone on our team is working towards a shared mission even when we see alternative routes to the same end point. We’ve learned to listen to one another, to approach collaborative work as an experiment, and to embrace struggles as learning experiences.

You've been at this for some years now. Is there another crisis point several years into the work, when it begins to feel "ordinary" and less stimulating? If so, how did you and your team confront that?

Bill Ferriter: The work of my professional learning teams never feels ordinary to me! After all, I’ve been given the opportunity to reflect on my craft with other like-minded peers. Every year, we find new practices that we’d like to explore, new trends in student learning data that leave us confused, and new structures or processes that might just make our own work more efficient. Our student population changes, bringing new challenges that we’ve got to find solutions for, and new teachers are hired, bringing different perspectives to our conversations.

It’s the process that I’m motivated by—we investigate, we implement, we reflect, we explore, and we learn no matter how long we’ve been together as a group, and investigation, implementation, reflection, exploration and learning are always motivating.

Professional learning teams only become ordinary when we stifle teachers—when school and/or district leaders place an inordinate emphasis on products instead of processes. Districts that create system-wide pacing guides, lesson planning templates, meeting requirements and common assessments in an attempt to make things easier for—or to monitor the work of—teachers ruin the most rewarding aspects of the professional learning community process. We’ve got to give learning teams room to create and to innovate in order to keep the work exciting.

You developed a relationship with PLC experts Rick and Becky DuFour several years ago. How did that come about and what did you learn from that association that helped you and your colleagues back in your own school?

Bill Ferriter: My relationship with Rick and Becky DuFour actually started long before we’d ever met in person. Preparing for my new position at a PLC school, I chewed through Professional Learning Communities at Work—the seminal book on PLCs that Rick coauthored with Bob Eaker—in about 12 hours one weekend, and it was a vision for teaching that resonated deeply. I loved thinking that “someone official” believed in the potential of classroom teachers—and was willing to argue that schools couldn’t succeed until groups of teachers worked together to generate a body of knowledge about what worked in their classrooms and with their students. It was one of the first times that I felt empowered as a professional.

Our first personal contact came a little over a year later, after the National Staff Development Council published a reflection that I had written about the impact that my own professional learning team had on my instruction. Rick read my article and dropped me an email praising the piece. It was pretty amazing to me that a guy whose thinking I respected greatly saw value in something that I had written. We crossed paths in person for the first time at a dinner with the State Board of Education here in North Carolina. “Are you the same Bill Ferriter who wrote a piece about PLCs for NSDC?” Becky asked during our introductions. “Rick and I loved that article!”

Since then, Rick and Becky have been cheering for me—impressed enough by my work to recommend that Solution Tree hire me a PLC Associate. They also provided constant feedback as Parry and I worked through the initial drafts of our manuscript and served as a sounding board in a thousand situations. They are two of the most approachable experts that I’ve ever met, willing to give their time and attention to help others to succeed.

In the end, it’s humbling to know that they believe in me. In the eyes of a lot of people, I’m still “just a classroom teacher.” To Rick and Becky, I’m a classroom teacher with practical experiences to share and a level of expertise that should be respected and admired. I’ll be forever grateful for their confidence in who I am—as a teacher, writer and professional development provider.

In their foreword, the DuFours single out the accessible "conversational tone" of the book. How hard was that to achieve? In fact, how did you and Perry Graham meet the challenge of co-authoring a book — and your first book at that?

Bill Ferriter: To tell you the truth, writing Building a Professional Learning Community at Work was an amazing experience. Parry is someone who I’ve always had a synergy with—he’s brilliant, and we both like to read anything that we can get our hands on that’s connected to organizational theory and human nature. We’ve spent thousands of hours mentally wrestling with the challenges of making professional learning communities work. It was only natural for us to try to turn those conversations into a text that others could learn from.

And we both brought a different set of writing skills to the project. Parry is a meticulous writer who is skilled at organizing thoughts. He was almost singlehandedly responsible for the general structure and outline of our book, and he did a great job churning out chapter after chapter. I’m more of a wordsmith, so after we’d brainstormed together and Parry organized our thinking into a first draft, I’d add the spit and polish. What’s beautiful to me is that by the time we were done writing, neither of us could tell who had written what. The book had become truly “ours.”

Many teachers have a secret desire to write a professional book. What guidance would you offer? What did you discover along the way that you might not have anticipated?

Bill Ferriter: I think the most important advice that I can give to any teacher interested in writing professionally is start your own blog and start it now! Blogging regularly about your professional passions can help you to polish your voice and to practice articulating key concepts in writing—a process that can be difficult for accomplished teachers who often act on intuition. What’s more, blogging makes your thoughts transparent—your audience can push back at your core beliefs, pointing you in new directions or forcing you to find the flaws in your logic. While public challenge may not feel comfortable at first, your thinking will become more nuanced and sophisticated over time.

Better yet, publishers are constantly scouting collections of teacher blogs for potential writers. Almost every professional writing opportunity that I’ve had in the past six years—writing for NSDC and ASCD, having articles published in Educational Leadership and the Journal for Staff Development, landing a contract with Solution Tree—started after someone spotted something that I’d posted online. Blogging is the great equalizer, giving everyone the chance to be recognized and to cultivate an audience.

What havoc did writing a book wreak on your teaching and personal life? How much writing time, how much research time, how much time with editors? How long did it all take?

Bill Ferriter: Building a Professional Learning Community at Work was an 18 month project, John. That’s something I don’t think most teachers interested in writing realize. Parry and I signed a contract with Solution Tree after submitting a proposal and having finished one chapter from start to finish. That was enough to convince Solution Tree that our project was worth pursuing.

From that point, the grind began—and at times, it really felt like a grind! We read everything that we could read, searching for research that supported our key points. While we were confident in our core beliefs—we work in learning communities full time, after all—we knew that readers would respect our opinions more if we could back them up with the conclusions drawn by other recognized experts.

Simultaneously, we were drafting and revising chapters, meeting with one another to bounce ideas around, and changing directions. Typically, Parry would produce a first draft of a chapter and then send it to me. My job was to reorganize and/or reinforce his initial attempts to put our thinking into writing. I’d add language, polish bits that I thought needed polishing, add new recommendations based on my experiences as a classroom teacher, push against points that I wasn’t completely sure of, and create handouts and tools that would support the content of our chapter. Then Parry would review what I’d written before we’d begin a new chapter.

Only when we’d finished our entire manuscript did BPLC make it to Solution Tree’s editors. They sent our text out to three independent reviewers—as well as to Rick and Becky DuFour—for initial comment. All of those people sent extensive feedback that Parry and I were asked to try to incorporate into the final product. After about two months of systematic revising, Parry and I handed off our final copy to the editors at Solution Tree, who worked through the piece to make sure that our language was consistent and articulate.

I probably spent somewhere between 10 and 20 hours a week writing BPLC. It was essentially a part time job! That’s why teachers need to find the right time in their professional and personal lives to tackle book projects. If you haven’t got the time to invest in a book, you’re going to end up frustrated and overwhelmed. And frustrated, overwhelmed writers rarely turn out quality work.

If you’ve had a new baby, started in a new position, or have family responsibilities that you just can’t be away from, it might not be the time to write. Wait for the cycles of your life where professional and personal responsibilities leave an open window for extra work.

Is there another book in the works? You're well known in the edu-blogsphere and beyond for your work integrating Web 2.0 tools and ideas into your everyday teaching. Is that the next project?

Bill Ferriter: I’m actually in the middle of my second book as we speak—co-authored with Adam Garry, another professional colleague and friend. It’s tentatively titled Plug Us In: Five Digital Projects that can be Tackled Today — it's an attempt to create a series of practical activities that teachers can use to introduce 21st Century skills into their classrooms.

What makes Plug Us In unique is that the focus of our writing is on the kinds of skills that today’s students need to master in order to succeed—persuasion, collaboration, communication, information management. While we introduce extensive sets of tips and tricks for using digital tools—things like blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, Voicethread, social bookmarking and shared annotation applications—in our text, they all serve to strengthen good instructional practices.

I’ve got to tip my hat to long-time TLN member Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach for that orientation! Years ago, she convinced me that technology conversations needed to be focused on good teaching instead of new tools. Tools are simply a vehicle for making good teaching—and efficient learning—possible. Those ideas have driven my own thinking about teaching with technology ever since, and they play a prominent role in Plug Us In.

The manuscript is due in the spring—and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the text will be published in the fall of next year.

 When Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Helping Teachers Develop as Leaders first appeared in the mid-1990s, teacher leadership was not on the lips (or minds) of most superintendents and principals. Or, for that matter, most teachers.

In the ensuing years, through three editions, Sleeping Giant has become a much-read classic, inspiring countless teachers to come out of their isolation and accept roles as leaders, colleagues and collaborators. Although the book has also become a staple in higher education leadership programs, in the new edition co-authors Marilyn Katzenmeyer and Gayle Moller continue to speak directly to teachers in classrooms and schools, urging them to wake up and take greater ownership of their profession.

To celebrate the appearance of this new edition — updated to reflect the many advances in teacher leadership during the past eight years — we spoke to co-author Gayle Moller, who in 2003 served as an expert advisor during the creation of the Teacher Leaders Network. We also invite you to read TLN member Nancy Flanagan’s review of Sleeping Giant, as well as her Teacher Magazine essay about the book's impact on her own life. — John Norton

* * * * * * * * * *

Thanks for talking with us, Gayle. You have many fans in the TLN community. Awakening the Sleeping Giant was first published in 1996. A second edition appeared in 2001. Why did you and co-author Marilyn Katzenmeyer decide that the time had come for a third edition?

In 1996, when we first wrote about teacher leadership, there were few people who acknowledged that teachers could be leaders. At the same time, when teacher leaders read our book they said: “You wrote about me!”

The opportunities for teacher leadership have increased substantially since those days. Our editors at Corwin Press approached us, noted the continuing interest in the 2001 edition, and suggested that the time might be right for an update. Marilyn and I knew the population of teacher leaders was continuing to grow, so we agreed.

What’s changed since 2001?

In the last eight years, school system leaders have begun to acknowledge that they’re not getting the results they would like. And many realize that mandates and limited professional development are not effective ways to improve results. The perceptive district leader is now turning to teachers who are competent and can work with their colleagues at the school building level.

New teacher leadership roles — literacy coaches, mentors, and staff developers — are becoming commonplace. In addition, the National Board certification process has helped many potential teacher leaders realize how they can improve their own practice and help other teachers. External support systems, like the Teachers Leader Network, are encouraging teachers to move outside their “comfort zone” to interact with other teacher leaders. When Education Week relaunched Teacher Magazine in 2006 with a specific focus on teacher leadership, many of us took it as a sign!

What's new or revised in the 3rd Edition?

We’ve done quite a lot of revising in this latest edition. Throughout the book, we show how teacher leadership has evolved over the last 20 years by linking current research and practice to new developments. There’s a new chapter written specifically for teachers who take on new instructional leadership roles. In that chapter we address things like deciding to be a teacher leader, negotiating the principal-teacher leader relationship, working with peers, and facilitating professional learning.

To encourage more conversations about teacher leadership, we’ve added two new instruments. The “Teacher Leader School Survey” measures how supportive a school culture is of teacher leadership. We’ve also included the “Teacher Leader Self-Assessment,” which can help potential teacher leaders determine how they currently match up with leadership standards.

The book is based on a leadership development model that includes planning for action. In this new edition, we introduce an action research process called the “Influencing Action Plan.” It’s a practical tool that helps teacher leaders work through strategies to address school site problems and issues.

Finally, we wrote a new chapter on the future of teacher leadership. In that chapter we predict, based on current developments, what teacher leaders might be doing in the years ahead.

I've been told your book is a long-time "best seller" for the publisher and is often required reading in college courses. As a subject of study, how has teacher leadership evolved in academia -- both at the undergraduate and graduate levels?

This question reminds me of a conversation we had in 1995 with a well-known editor of educational publications. He was giving us feedback on our first draft. Although he had invited us to write this book, after reading the draft he said that he didn’t agree with us that there could be degree programs in teacher leadership. I’m sure that he regrets that statement now, because today a search of the Internet produces links to numerous teacher-leader degree programs both at the master’s and doctoral levels. 

Corwin Press recently sent us a list of 65 universities who used the 2001 edition of our book in classes during the 2008-2009 school year. Also, Marilyn and I receive many requests from doctoral students to use instruments included in our book for their research studies.

The changing licensure and certification areas in several states, including Kentucky, Delaware, Alabama and others, include teacher leadership as an area teachers may add. North Carolina has adopted a teacher leadership standard for beginning teachers. Just last week, it was announced that the Kansas State Department of Education and ETS will work together to create the first national assessment to identify teacher leaders for certification. These changes will impact curriculum and coursework at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Before I retired, I taught a course in teacher leadership at Western Carolina University for seven years. This is a required course for any student receiving a master’s degree in education. Western Carolina believes that when teachers gain new knowledge and skills through a graduate degree program, they have a responsibility to influence their colleagues toward improved practice.

Higher education is also supporting centers designed to provide leadership development for undergraduate and graduate teachers. One example is the Center for Teacher Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University, led by Terry Dozier, a former National Teacher of the Year who served as the Clinton Administration’s top policy advisor on teaching issues.

We are also seeing more research. In 2004, Jennifer York-Barr and Karen Duke synthesized the last 20 years of research on teacher leadership, and much more has appeared since. Although most of the research is descriptive of teacher leader impact, there is an impetus to find measurable results that link it to student learning.

So it seems that teacher leadership development and research is gaining recognition in higher education.

Your original subtitle back in 1996 was "Leadership Development for Teachers." In 2001 you chose "Helping Teachers Develop as Leaders," which also appears on the 3rd edition. Did you give any thought to a new subtitle, reflecting the growing feeling among some teachers that they have a personal role in developing themselves as leaders? What's your own view?

Yes, we thought about another subtitle. But we felt that “Helping Teachers Develop as Leaders” was still a good description of the purpose of the book. The personal role of teachers in their own development is reflected in the Leadership Development for Teachers model that serves as the foundation for the book. In this model we invite teachers to answer these personal questions:  Who am I? (personal assessment) Where am I? (school culture), How do I lead? (influencing strategies), and What can I do? (planning for action). 

For all the editions of this book, we wrote “Application Challenges” at the end of each chapter. These suggested activities focus on how PK-12 teachers, administrators, and higher education faculty can provide experiences to help teacher leaders navigate the complexity of leading other adults. Notice the first group we addressed is “teachers.”

We not only feel teachers have a responsibility for their own learning, as leaders they also must help with the professional development of their colleagues. In my work with teachers, I’ve found that the idea of being accountable for others’ learning is new to them. So in one chapter we address how teacher leaders are responsible for facilitating the learning of themselves and others.

We also believe that everyone has a role in providing teachers with leadership development opportunities. You do this through your moderation of the Teacher Leaders Network. Marilyn and I contribute through our book and Leadership Development for Teachers, a professional development program we created. School district leaders and school administrators now offer many more opportunities for teachers to grow and develop as leaders. And certainly higher education has taken a more active role in this area.

I believe we all have ownership in teacher leadership development. Even so, no group will be more influential than teacher leaders themselves. If other supports aren’t forthcoming, then teacher leaders need to advocate and work with the system to get what they need.

In the new edition, how do you and Marilyn sort out the different definitions of teacher leadership — from informal school-based roles, to "official" job descriptions, to quasi-political roles at the local, state and national level where policy is made and influenced?

Our definition of teacher leadership has evolved through the three editions. We’ve added a new component to our definition in this edition. We now say that teacher leaders accept responsibility for achieving the outcomes of their leadership.

In our discussions with school leaders, especially teacher leaders, we found disillusionment with people who take on leadership responsibilities and don’t follow through with their commitments. So we felt we needed to acknowledge that leaders are competent when they are accountable.

Sorting out the variety of roles for teacher leaders is complex. The roles span from leading in individual classrooms to national policymaking. We explore informal teacher leader roles in our book — these are situational and the most difficult to put into categories. Informal roles usually come about when a teacher sees a problem and steps in to exert leadership. These informal roles may be short-lived or continue as long as the teacher has commitment to the issue.

What are relatively new are the formal, instructional leadership roles — especially those that place teachers in coaching or peer assistance roles. We’ve always had some formal teacher leaders, such as department chairs or grade-level team leaders, but asking teachers to move into their colleagues’ classrooms to address instruction is daunting. We’ve written a new chapter focused on these kinds of formal roles.

Finally, we believe the emerging teacher leadership we now see in the policy making area must be encouraged. In the last chapter of our book we offer ideas on how teachers can be advocates beyond their school buildings. Building advocacy skills is part of leadership development. The Center for Teaching Quality is a model for helping teachers learn and practice these skills as they work to influence the development of policies that impact their students and their teaching lives.

In 2006, you co-authored a book about teacher leadership with another colleague, Anita Pankake, aimed specifically at school principals. Why the urge to write Lead with Me: A Principal's Guide to Teacher Leadership and how did the ideas in that book influence the new edition of Sleeping Giant?

Ask a teacher leader about the person who most influences his or her daily work and the answer is “the principal.” Within the current structure of schools, this is the individual who has the formal power to promote or discourage teacher leadership. Although assistant principals and other formal leaders are important, the principal is the key to the success of teacher leadership. Principals not only have power over fiscal and human resources, they have information that teachers need in order to be effective as leaders.

Looking at the bigger picture, Anita and I were concerned about the sustainability of improvement in a school. A new principal comes into a school and often changes are made that become obstacles to continuing effective practices. We feel that principals have a responsibility to build a critical mass of teacher leaders to help sustain the work that helps students learn. 

Anita and I also work with principals who want to build teacher leadership in their schools, so we could see the need for a “how-to” book on this topic. The book provides specific strategies for promoting, developing, and sustaining teacher leadership.

Throughout Awakening the Sleeping Giant, 3rd edition, we stress the importance of principals and their responsibilities for building teacher leadership. An entire chapter is focused on how to develop a supportive school culture for teacher leaders. In this edition, we include the new tool called “Teacher Leader School Survey.” We’ve used this instrument with literally thousands of teachers and they find it powerful — especially when other teachers from their schools complete the same survey and they discuss the school’s results. 

We don’t put all the responsibility on the principals, because teachers have an obligation to build a positive relationship. In one chapter in our new edition we help teachers learn how to negotiate their leadership roles with their principals. Relationships are complex and none more so that the one between the principal and the teacher leader. Once we recognize this, we can work to make it a productive one.

As one of the co-founders of the Teacher Leaders Network, I was great to see the recognition you and Marilyn gave to the TLN community in the new edition. As an early adviser to TLN, you've had the opportunity to observe its development and listen to the many virtual conversations that have taken place among its members over the past six years. What roles do you think organizations of teacher leaders that cut across school, district and state boundaries can play in strengthening the profession and improving schools?

During my career, external organizations like you’re describing were the lifeline I needed in order to be successful “back home.” My primary work was in leadership development and if it had not been for the National Staff Development Council and the International Network of Principals Centers, I don’t know how I could have survived. Although I lived in a large urban area during most of my career, I was isolated from like-minded folks. At that time, there were no virtual professional communities like TLN, so I attended conferences, took on leadership roles, and read the organizations’ publications. Over time I developed a network of colleagues, and some are my friends to this day.

So you can see my bias for this type of organization for teacher leaders. These are the organizations that give teachers the courage to live out their convictions, sometimes in hostile environments. To “talk” with people who care about the same issues helps teacher leaders to know that they are not alone. Imagine finding someone in a state far from yours who is facing the same challenges! When teacher leaders can be part of a social network that helps them in their professional lives, it is powerful. TLN is an example of this power. I know because I’ve read TLN members’ stories that both inspire me and cause me anguish about their dilemmas.

For years, Marilyn and I have dreamed about a national organization for teacher leaders. Principals and other educational administrators have several national organizations, such as the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Why isn’t there an organization for teacher leaders?  Many teacher leaders are active in ASCD, NMSA, and other subject-specific professional organizations, but there is no general organization designed specifically for teacher leaders. In our new edition, we explore this possibility. Maybe the TLN members will initiate this for all teachers who are or want to be leaders.

In the preface to your new edition, you quote one of my colleagues — Melissa Rasberry at the Center for Teaching Quality — who said, "The stars are aligning for teacher leadership." What are the possible futures for teacher leadership? What has to happen to achieve the most positive future, from your point of view, and how likely is that?

Isn’t that a wonderful quote? It has inspired me for several years. Thank you, Melissa! In this edition we wrote a new chapter on the future of teacher leadership. With so many initiatives in the early stages of development, we felt it was important to push for change in the future.

I’d like to share a few examples of what we hope will emerge:

•    First, the flat teaching profession must give way to meaningful career ladders for teachers. Depending on the personal circumstances of teachers, they can select the challenges they want to take on or remain competent in their individual classrooms. Regardless of teachers’ decisions, we need predictable and fully funded avenues for teachers to take on leadership responsibilities. There should be an organizational expectation of leadership — unlike the current school culture where teachers are often ridiculed if they take on leadership roles.

•    Next, if teachers agree to assume additional responsibilities they should receive commensurate pay. Like many people, I remember the attempts at merit pay over the years, so we need to learn from these mistakes and build a comprehensive system based on multiple criteria assessed by several people. Performance-based compensation programs are developing across the country. Several members of TLN worked on an in-depth report that describes what should exist in these types of programs.

•    A final example of our futuristic vision is the measurement of and attention to working conditions in schools. This is a foundational issue for promoting teacher leadership. The Center for Teaching Quality has created a measurement tool for this purpose. In many states, the results are publicly communicated.  The most important step, though, is that school systems take the results seriously and work with schools to make changes when the working conditions are not supportive of teaching and don’t create an environment that can sustain leadership.

Your last question is “how likely is it” that these trends will become the norm in our profession. Personally, I believe that we do not have a choice. We have to make sure they become a reality. Otherwise we will continue to lose outstanding teachers, who are ready to be leaders, to other professions -- or to administrative roles that take them further from the classroom than they really want to be.

Will there be a 4th edition?

Whew, you always ask the most difficult questions!  Marilyn and I both recently retired. We felt an obligation to complete this recent edition as our parting gift to teacher leaders. Of course, who knows what the future holds for anyone, including Marilyn and me. Thank you for asking.