The ARSI Teacher Partners and Their Reflections on Their Work as Leaders

INTRODUCTION: One of the most effective ways ARSI improved mathematics and science education in Appalachia was through building leadership capacity within local schools and districts. The primary focus of ARSI´s capacity building efforts was on Teacher Partners (TPs), classroom teachers who took on a wide range of leadership roles and responsibilities through their work with ARSI.

As part of our study of ARSI we asked all the ARSI Teacher Partners to respond in writing to a set of preliminary findings about teacher leadership we compiled based on several years of interviewing TPs in their home schools and districts. What follows is a selection of some of the most illuminative Teacher Partner reflections we received, voices which evoke the feel and flavor of what it is like to work to try to improve math and science education in small, rural communities.

THE ARSI TEACHER PARTNERS AND THEIR REFLECTIONS ON THEIR WORK AS LEADERS

Through our visits and conversations with students, teachers, and administrators involved in the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) over the past decade, we at Inverness Research Associates came to believe that ARSI served as an important leadership capacity-building effort for improving mathematics and science education in Appalachia.

In particular, the Teacher Partners (TPs) were classroom teachers who took on a wide range of leadership roles and responsibilities through ARSI. As they went about the business of supporting math/science improvement in their schools and districts, they learned much along the way, developing ever greater knowledge and skills as their experience increased. Through our research over the years we began to better understand the nature of Teacher Partner work, as well as the contextual features and challenges of the environments that affected it. As a result, late in the winter of 2005 we were able to formulate some preliminary “findings” about ARSI TPs’ leadership, but we also realized that our perspective as outsiders might be limited.

For that reason we wrote to the Teacher Partners to invite them to participate in formal reflection about their leadership work. We felt that their thinking would augment, and most importantly, bring to life the lessons we had learned about the nature of ARSI leadership. We sent the TPs a document that described our preliminary “findings.” Each of our findings was described by a statement, as well as by a direct quote (with one exception) from someone with first hand knowledge of ARSI. We invited the TPs to take an hour to select and reflect on one or two of these findings, and to write their personal responses. We asked the TPs to consider, in particular, the following questions as they thought about their ARSI experiences:

How does the finding reflect or not reflect your own experience as an ARSI Teacher Partner?

Do you have a particular story or incident to tell that illustrates how the finding does or does not match up with your own experience of working as a Teacher Partner?

What else do you have to add to the finding? What else would it be important to understand?

Are there additional ideas or thoughts that you have that are sparked by reflecting on the finding you’ve selected?

What follows is a selection of some of the most illuminative and insightful Teacher Partner reflections we received. They are the ones that struck as most poignant or most evocative of what we heard more generally from others as we visited schools and classrooms across the ARSI districts.

We have deliberately left the Teacher Partners’ writing almost verbatim, editing with the lightest of hands, correcting only spelling or punctuation. For the most part we have left the reflections as they were written by the teachers who shared them with us.

We have also let them stand on their own, without including our own editorializing. Our preference is that the Teacher Partner voices speak for themselves. Then the reader is free to listen. We trust that learning about leadership at the grass roots level, from the voices of those who experienced it first hand, will be of interest to many others who wish to improve math, science and technology education in their home locales.

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