Book provides insight into growth and building capacity in teacher leaders
Dr. Kimberly Strike, coordinator of doctoral studies and professor of education at Southern Wesleyan University, is the author of a new book, “Identifying and Growing Internal Leaders: A Framework for Effective Teacher Leadership,” to be published in November.
This is Strike’s seventh book and is being developed with colleagues, Dr. Janis Fitzsimmons, professor at North Central College; and Dr. Rebecca Hornberger, assistant professor and chair of SAIL in the Department of Leadership at Concordia University Chicago.
While serving as Program Leader for the Teacher Leadership Program, which was in partnership with the state of Ohio, Strike noted common questions they asked: “Where do I fit? Am I a teacher or administrator? How am I being viewed? How am I being paid? How am I being evaluated?”
“I found out very quickly that there weren’t tools for people who were serving as teacher leaders, so as I was developing this (framework for effective leadership), I actually started developing a framework for teacher leadership,” Strike said.
“Once you get beyond teaching, there isn’t that same kind of structure for targets of how you want that person to develop, what is distinguished, what is advanced, what is proficient or whatever their skillset is,” Strike said.
In 2016, one of Strike’s graduate students nominated her to work with Teach to Lead, a partnership of the U.S. Department of Education, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She traveled to Washington, D.C. and met with Ruthann Buck, assistant to then-Education Secretary John King.
“My student and I started telling of our interest of looking into teacher leadership in a different way and we got permission to work through Teach to Lead at a national level to do some research. She was going to do it for her dissertation then. What happened was that in July she came to me and told me that her husband was being sent to Germany. She ended up not being able to do the research, so I felt like this was something that needed to be done” Strike said.
Not wishing to pass up the opportunity, Strike began doing the research and started to look for coauthors.
“I feel very strongly that we need to mentor, so I specifically looked for people who had not published before. I chose a young lady who was just getting into the field. She had just finished her doctorate that May. And I chose a veteran who had not had an opportunity to publish. I felt that both of them brought different gifts to the table and that together we would make a really strong team,” Strike said. “We finished final edits and it’s now in production and due out in mid-November.”
Strike’s book can currently be pre-ordered through Rowman & Littlefield, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
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