You’re invited: Talk teacher leadership with teacher leaders on March 5

Originally scheduled for the snowiest day in February, the event we’re hosting with the Center for Teaching Quality will now take place on March 5.

Local educators will discuss “Teacherpreneurs: Innovative Teachers Who Lead But Don’t Leave,” a book that the center published last year. Stephen LazarAriel Sacks, and Jose Vilson, city teachers whose ideas we’ve featured in the past, will make the case for new roles for teachers in a discussion moderated by Chalkbeat New York’s community editor, Emma Sokoloff-Rubin.

Here’s a taste of the topic from Lazar, who last year shared a taste of a personal narrative about teacher leadership that he presented in an academic paper:

Over the past ten years, I have transformed from a third-year teacher who turned down opportunities to present his work because he felt he had nothing to offer other teachers, to a ninth-year teacher who co-founded a new school, writes for publication, delivers professional development, and nurtures in-person and virtual networks for teacher development, while firmly retaining a primary identity of classroom teacher. … My experience suggests that schools and organizations must create structures to identify, develop, and compensate teacher-leaders in ways that recognizes their work while keeping them firmly in the classroom. The attempt to conceptualize such individuals as teacher-leaders or teacherpreneurs is a necessary first step, which must be followed by opportunities beyond existing conference structures for teachers to not only to work with other teachers, but to earn recognition and compensation for doing so. By developing more teacher-leaders, there will be a dual benefit: the best teachers will have incentive to stay teachers, while the system will benefit from their knowledge and expertise.

Space at the event — which will take place at the Ford Foundation’s Midtown Manhattan office at 6 p.m. — is limited but still available. Register here.