Promotion from a teaching role into school leadership comes with a very immediate paradox: it takes the teacher out of an environment in which they excelled and puts them into one in which they have no prior knowledge.
Add to this the reality that leaders need distance to lead strategically, but too much distance erodes insight, trust and the connections that enabled the growth of their skills. You can begin to see the difficulty that many teachers face in becoming leaders.
It’s a situation that I have experience with, having stepped up to leadership nine years ago and having also returned to the classroom as a full-time English teacher this academic year.
Returning to the classroom, I realised just how far removed leaders can become from “the front line†and how this impacts their role. Three distinct issues can occur.
1. The expertise/context problem
Teachers become experts in their field because they are embedded in the environment through planning lessons, being tutors, marking and dealing with behaviour matters.
This teaching load offers breadth to our knowledge of what is happening across the school. Through this, our relationships are formed, our sense of belonging is strengthened, and we gain consistent first-hand knowledge of the work.
Promotion to senior leadership stems from this closeness, but then it can swiftly sever these connections. Over time, this means that expertise drifts and the ability to make meaningful changes becomes harder.
2. Tension over professional identity
The promoted leader often gains their identity from their (now former) practitioner self.
Yet their new managerial identity, which has a different community around it, shares different values and has a very different idea of what “good†work looks like.
This can cause many teachers to change who they are to fit their new environment and audience and, to a certain extent, they become performative in their transition to a new professional identity.
This can rupture the identity they once held as a classroom practitioner and further distance them from the teaching community.
3. The legitimacy problem
Linked to this, the promoted leader has gained their credibility from being an excellent practitioner, immersed in their environment. Staff trust them because they have done the work.
After a time, as leaders, this trust erodes because they can no longer credibly claim to understand what frontline work feels like.
Relationships with the teaching community then change, with that credibility being lost, especially with any new staff who have no knowledge of the leader as a former teacher.
How to avoid losing touch
So how can we narrow the gap in insight in the transition from classroom practitioner to senior leader?
From my experience, it is about keeping professional relationships close through:
- Continuous, honest dialogue and check-ins: taking (or engineering) opportunities to cross paths with colleagues - for example, in briefing or when they are on duty - can create informal settings that open up a natural dialogue on what they are observing or thinking about. So many of my most insightful conversations have been in the corridors, having bumped into staff.
Ìý
- Wellbeing walks: Catch up with staff while on a walk around the school. Once a fortnight, you may want to conduct a line-management meeting as a “walk and talk†opportunity, away from the confines of an office.
Ìý
- Working groups: gather information through your enthusiastic staff members. If there is a developmental point on your school improvement plan, create a working group to gain insight from different staff members. Some can be specifically invited while an open invitation remains for all staff.
Ìý
- Line-management meetings: open the meeting with a general question on how things are going. Try to gain an insight into the world of your middle leaders and teachers. What is their biggest barrier to success at the moment? How can it be overcome?
Ìý
- Consulting teachers: this enables trust and is linked to the idea of participative leadership. There is a time and place for a survey or an impromptu meeting with staff on an area of school needing intervention, where staff lead the discussions and SLT facilitate the dialogue.
The reality is that there will always be a gap between the classroom and leadership - the option leaders have, though, is to make an effort to cross it and ensure that it remains as narrow as possible.
Rafeef Kadhum is an English teacher at the British School Al Khubairat in the United Arab Emirates
