Teacher Of The Year: Make Teachers Leaders

The formula for keeping and attracting good teachers is simple: Let them be leaders.

That’s the message of Jonathan Crossley, Arkansas’ Teacher of the Year.

Crossley, 26, teaches 11th and 12th grade English, public speaking and drama and coached girls basketball at Palestine-Wheatley, an eastern Arkansas school district. He learned of his selection during a surprise announcement by Gov. Mike Beebe during what was billed as an anti-bullying assembly last November.

Actually, it was meant to be a surprise. Crossley, then a finalist for the award, knew it was time for the winner to be announced, and his school rarely has assemblies.

“In theory I wasn’t supposed to know, but it’s a small community, and it kind of leaked out a little bit,” he said. He did have one surprise: His parents flew in from South Carolina for the announcement.

Crossley, whose term began in July, is spending a year out of the classroom engaged in professional development, speaking duties, and serving as a non-voting member of the State Board of Education.

His favorite topic is “distributed leadership,” which is a shorthand way of saying teachers should have more influence in schools. During a presentation to members of the House and Senate Education Committees Aug. 11, Crossley said teachers become discouraged when they lack influence in their schools and are encouraged when their voices are heard. In an informal survey he had taken of 456 teachers, 92 percent said they were “very likely” to remain in education if they had more leadership opportunities.

Doing that would require looking past the typical school hierarchical structure: teachers below principals below central office administrators. That structure devalues the classroom teacher, he said. Instead, teachers should be able to grow in their careers without leaving the classroom. In practice, that would mean administrators might assign a teacher who is passionate about school culture to a lead a school culture committee, and maybe even pay the teacher a stipend because of the extra work.

“It’s having multiple voices heard, multiple people at the table, not just the principal and superintendent,” he said.

Even though he’s not currently in the classroom, Crossley is still a teacher.

His presentation before legislators was passionate and energetic as he argued for giving teachers more influence. Asked by Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, herself a former teacher, about how to find time in the school day for leadership activities, he said schools need to assign scheduling to an expert scheduler. Just as a financial expert can often find money for programs where none might seem to exist, a skilled scheduler can find hidden pockets of time.

Asked by Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, also a former teacher, about how to prevent young teachers from being discouraged by those resistant to needed change, he replied, “The most telling personality trait in my view of success is going to be grit and perseverance and determination, and sometimes that means not listening to those folks.”

Crossley is finishing his master’s degree to become a principal. He said schools must find ways to keep good teachers in the profession. He cited statistics from a study by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, “Seven Trends: The Transformation of the Teaching Force,” that found that the most common teacher tenure in 1987-88 was 15 years. In contrast, by 2007-08, the largest bloc of teachers was composed of beginners in their first year of teaching. Those numbers improved somewhat by 2011-12, when the most common level of experience was a teacher in his or her fifth year.

In addition to keeping good teachers, schools and policymakers must attract high-quality applicants to the teaching profession. Crossley touted his home state of South Carolina’s Teaching Fellows program, which provides $24,000 in scholarships to outstanding students who agree to teach in South Carolina schools or pay back one year of scholarship money for each year they don’t teach.

Students undergo a rigorous selection and interview process. According to the Teaching Fellows’ website, the average Fellow’s SAT score in 2010 was 1122, compared to a state average of 979 and a national average of 1017.

The program has accomplished its purpose. According to the website, 921 Fellows, or 72.2% of all graduates from 2000-09, are currently teaching in 74 South Carolina districts – 55.9% of them in geographic critical needs schools. Almost 81% of Fellows who have satisfied the conditions of their loans are still teaching in South Carolina.

The idea of attracting talented young people to the profession is a personal one for Crossley, the first in his family to graduate from college. Crossley was on his way to the University of North Carolina School of Law, where he had a full scholarship, when he became involved in Teach for America, the national program that recruits recent college graduates from diverse backgrounds to teach in high-poverty schools. When he was told he was being sent to the Mississippi Delta, he thought that meant Mississippi.

He quickly felt at home in Palestine-Wheatley, which is not so different from his hometown of Gaffney, South Carolina. However, he wants to see Arkansas grow its own talent.

“I’m of the opinion that Arkansas does not need me,” he told legislators. “You are a state that has vital resources, you have universities, you have great high schools and great elementary schools. Why do you need somebody from outside of your state to come in and teach and be the Teacher of the Year?”