Education Week Teacher has an article on Five tell-tale signs you’re becoming a teacher leader.
- You wish you had an impact beyond your classroom.
- Colleagues ask you for advice.
- You “think big” about problems.
- You want to take new teachers under your wing.
- You always want to know more.
These are good.
Let me suggest some additional symptoms of teacher leadership.
- You ask difficult questions in building meetings or department meetings. Sometimes the principal will roll her eyes. Or say things like, “Well, moving right along on the agenda.” Sometimes she will just stare back and have nothing to say. Being willing to step up and speak, to ask a difficult question, is a definite sign of a teacher leader. And that you have tenure.
- You get elected a union representative for your building. Nothing says leader more than the fact that your colleagues say you are one. You don’t get any more money for doing it. It takes time away from other things. But you get the satisfaction of fighting for what’s right.
- Your state senator’s phone number is on your smart phone speed dial. A day rarely goes by these days when there’s not some anti-teacher or anti-union bill ready to be voted on in the legislature. A teacher leader knows the phone number, email address of every one of their legislators. And has an email group for sending out instant communications to everyone they know.
- Your position gets ‘redefined’ or eliminated. This may come up more often in urban school districts than in downstate districts. It seems to be very popular in Chicago at the moment.
- The superintendent doesn’t return your calls.
Fred Klonsky 
“You ask difficult questions in building meetings or department meetings. Sometimes the principal will roll her eyes. Or say things like, “Well, moving right along on the agenda.” Sometimes she will just stare back and have nothing to say. Being willing to step up and speak, to ask a difficult question, is a definite sign of a teacher leader. And that you have tenure.”
Right on about this one, Fred. The Assistant Superintendent came around in the mid 80’s pushing an evaluation system. Turned out it wasn’t bad, if they’d actually DONE it. But at the time he was selling it, and he came in and wrote “Collegiality” on a big chalk board. At the end of his spiel, I asked why he had written that word, since evaluations are only done if you don’t trust. I give tests to find out if the kids masteredd the material. I won’t take their word for it. The wouldn’t evaluate us if their trusted us.
I suggested that the word was counterproductive and he really oughta be telling us how this works and what protections we have against crappy evaluations (not “bad” evaluations, crappy ones). He got so angry I thought he’d have the big one right there. Afterwards, I discovered I was the new teacher leader.