Celine Coggins - How to Be Heard: Ten Lessons Teachers Need to Advocate for their Students and Profession

1. Chapter 4
2. Chapter 9

1. Chapter 3
2. Chapter 4
3. Chapter 9
4. Chapter 10

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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Names: Coggins, Celine, author.

Title: How to be heard : ten lessons teachers need to advocate for their students and profession / Celine Coggins.

Description: San Francisco, CA : JosseyBass, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017026365 (print) | LCCN 2017012891 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119374008 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119374046 (epub) | ISBN 9781119373995 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Teacher participation in administration. | Communication in education. | Educational leadership.

Classification: LCC LB2806.45 (print) | LCC LB2806.45 .C64 2017 (ebook) | DDC 371.2/011dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017026365

Cover design by Wiley

FIRST EDITION

For my mom and my daughters

Dr. Celine Coggins founded Teach Plus in 2007 to empower excellent, experienced teachers to take leadership over key policy and practice issues that affect their students' success. Under Celine's leadership, Teach Plus has introduced groundbreaking programs and built a nationwide network of over twentysix thousand teachers.

Celine started her career as a middle school teacher in Worcester, Massachusetts. She went on to become a special assistant to the Massachusetts commissioner of education, working on a set of initiatives to improve teacher quality. Celine completed her PhD at Stanford University and also holds degrees from Boston College and the College of the Holy Cross. A recognized expert on teacher leadership, Celine is a frequent invited speaker on the topic both nationally and internationally, and appears regularly in media outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Atlantic. She holds an appointment as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard University. She is the author of more than two dozen reports and journal articles and the editor of three prior books.

Few professions are more important to our nation's future than teaching. Teachers support students' growth as they develop into wellrounded, engaged members of our society who are prepared to lead thriving lives and give back to their communities. Teachers spark students' curiosity about learning. And teachers play a vital role in ensuring that our nation lives up to its promise as a land of opportunity where, with a good education, hard work, and determination, all of our peopleregardless of race, background, or circumstancecan choose their path to fulfillment and success.

Especially in recent years, a movement in education has been growing around the notion of teacher leadership. This is the simple, yet powerful idea that teachers should be valued both as the foremost authorities in instruction and as leaders who inform the development of policies that can drive improvements in the education system and student outcomes. It is also the idea that teachers should not have to leave the profession they love in order to exercise leadership in strengthening it.

For years, I have been impressed by Teach Plus, an organization that understands educators are the real experts at how policy gets translated in classrooms. Teach Plus has done incredible work to identify and develop teacher leaders who can advocate for schoollevel change, advance solutions to policy problems, and advise peers through professional development that they create and lead.

While I served as Secretary of Education under President Barack Obama, the Department of Education, along with ASCD, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and other nongovernmental organizations, furthered a teacher leadership initiative called Teach to Lead, which continues today. I am proud of the projects that thousands of educators have led individually and in cohorts as part of this workwhich includes hundreds of action plans for education improvements in schools, districts, states, and across the nation.

Organized efforts such as Teach Plus and Teach to Lead are critical in continuing to build a movement of educator empowerment throughout America. Also important is that individual teachers understand how to take up the mantle of teacher leadership and how to leverage their expertise and voices in ways that can have the greatest impact.

This book is a howto guide to do just that, but not only for teachers. It also is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to advocate for the excellent education that all our children deserve.

As Celine Coggins points out in the following pages, all advocacy is personal. Before you can even hope to make the changes you seek, you have to understand your whythe thing that drives you.