Teacher Leaders: What We Imagine

Post submitted by Renee Moore, author "The Teachers of 2030" in the May 2010 issue of Educational Leadership.

Rarely have policymakers listened to America's best teachers. To bring teacher voice from the margins to the center of the policy debate, the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ) established a virtual community called the Teacher Leaders Network. The TLN TeacherSolutions 2030 team—made up of 12 recognized classroom experts who teach in diverse settings—spent more than a year reviewing research, interviewing futurists, and looking ahead to 2030. Our recent Educational Leadership article is a partial view of what we anticipate for the future of teaching.

Here's our vision:

• By 2030, students and families will have endless learning options. Teachers who can customize learning experiences and deliver them in both physical and virtual environments will be highly sought after.
• Traditional school classrooms will morph into dynamic study groups, enhanced by the Web's potential for connectivity. Expert teachers will engage students in interactive global learning communities using 3D Web environments, augmented reality, and mobile technologies.
• Standardized tests will be only one of many tools used to evaluate teacher effectiveness as local school communities adapt performance-based compensation programs that fit their context. Guiding these reforms will be unions that have matured into professional guilds and that base membership on levels of expertise.
• The teaching profession will develop into one which talented people can enter, advance, and exit via multiple paths.

The essential component of this vision is teacher leaders. We can begin to build the required teaching force today by investing in residency programs, hybrid teaching roles, and promising models of collaborative teaching that bridge both face-to-face and online learning opportunities.

Our vision of the teaching profession in 2030 may disturb some and thrill others. We realize that this vision will require massive re-engineering, but we will never create what we do not dare to imagine.

What do you imagine the teaching profession will look like 20 years from now?