1st Edition
Your Teacher Leadership Journey A Blueprint for Growth and Success
Build your success as a teacher leader with the practical advice in this book. Award-winning educator Melissa Collins shows how you can grow in your role by fostering relationships with colleagues, organizations, and mentors. She also spotlights rock star educators. She offers thorough advice on a wide variety of topics such as finding the right support, building your reputation, reinventing yourself, knowing your purpose, and developing leadership mindsets. She also explains how to manage your time wisely, build a network, enact purposeful practice, and, most of all, dare to dream. Appropriate for teachers at any level of their career who want to take on a larger role in their school or beyond, the book’s honest anecdotes and step-by-step suggestions will put you on the right path, so teacher leaders can develop in their careers and help their students thrive.
Part 1: What is a Teacher Leader? 1. The Road to Teacher Leadership 2. The Goal and Not the Role 3. Teacher Sighting Part 2: Becoming a Teacher Leader 4. Mentor Matchmaking: How to Find the Perfect One for You 5. Navigating Key Relationships in Your School and Community 6. Building a Reputation of Positive Transformation 7. Growing into Teacher Leadership 8. Why Reinventing Yourself Will Elevate Your Career to New Heights Part 3: Evolving as a Teacher Leader 9. Dare to Dream 10. Moments that Transform Teachers’ Lives and Careers 11. Creating Your Own Opportunities Part 4: Thriving as a Teacher Leader 12. Thriving as a Teacher Leader 13. What We Need: Nine Things to Help Teacher Leaders Thrive 14. What to Do When You Don’t Have Enough Time Part 5: Developing Teacher Leaders 15. How to Champion Teacher Leaders 16. How to Educate Teacher Leaders 17. How to Reward Teacher Leaders 18. How to Lead by Example
Biography
Melissa Collins is an elementary school teacher in Memphis, TN, where she is constantly amazed by her students’ curiosity about the world around them. Melissa has been the recipient of several awards and honors, including Amazon Future Engineer Teacher of the Year, National University Award, Harriet Sanford Award, National Board Fellowship Program, the Global Teacher Prize Finalist (Top 50), the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Teaching, the National Science Teaching Association Sylvia Shugrue Award, and the NSTA-Shell Urban Development Award. She was inducted into the National Teacher Hall of Fame in 2020.
