Six Ways to Retain Teacher Autonomy

In the last post, we examined the role of rhetoric in our modern classrooms, and we discussed how to both detect it and filter it into categories that you can live with or live without. 

Once you become more adept at detecting rhetoric and categorizing it, you may be concerned about how it affects your ability to do what is right for kids.  Whether you call this something like “teacher empowerment,” “teacher autonomy,” or just plain ethical decision-making, the idea is the same: Good teachers want, need, to know that they can make ethical, equitable, and practical decisions for their students and the families they serve. 

Here are six ways to do what your class needs, regardless of your present situation.

Keep Your Philosophies Visible, Tangible and Transparent

Administrators these days like to think of themselves less as site directors and more as “instructional leaders” of a school. Yet, in all of their busy schedules, remember that most of them know little more about actually teaching than you do. In fact, many administrators during the NCLB era, unlike in decades prior, were fast-tracked out of the classroom after only 3-5 years in a classroom. Often, these folks, identified early as quality practitioners of the current pedagogy, were moved into the coaching cycle and then took positions in school leadership. 

Even if they do have experience, they may or may not understand your particular grade level or program, nor have they possibly taught a demographic similar to yours. They may not have even taught in a school setting similar to yours.  Even if they have, by the very nature of them being out of the classroom, your current experience and recent coursework are far more relevant. 

You won’t hear this a lot, so let me tell you what this means here: You are the expert of your classroom, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Keep in mind that most principals are wonderful. But they are human, and they are pulled in too many directions. As a result, being an instructional leader is often based on ideas that they do not always have time to fully understand themselves. 

In the whirlwind reality of life, principals often get their ideas from a variety of sources, and some are not as academic as you might expect. They may occasionally attend conferences and hear about best practices from colleagues at their level, which can become filtered in umbrella one-size-fits-all approaches. This can often happen in a cohort of other principals and is often geared towards comparative results. That’s right, principals have to share their data at PLCs too. In other words, they learn about the latest best practices, and then they administer this as instructional leaders to the bulk of their teaching staff. Sometimes this is excellent stuff. Other times it’s excellent for someone else’s site but not yours. Sometimes, it’s excellent for the bottom line.  Sometimes, it just doesn’t work, and it’s very difficult to let your boss know when that is. 

One way you can let your administrator know what your own best-practice priorities are- is to be transparent and visible with your philosophy of education. 

One of my favorite techniques to do that is to house a visible bookshelf somewhere in my classroom. I keep a rolling cart which is about 2 feet wide and 3 feet tall. On it, I display the latest books I have read, books that I want my instructional leaders to know I’ve read and that I take seriously. Those books include Readicide by Kelly Gallagher, Other People’s Children by Lisa Delpit, and Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves. All send a clear message to my administrators, which I know have most likely heard about these books in educational circles.

Clear message to administrators

The messages go like this…

• I read Readicide, so I know the research behind SSR (sustained silent reading) and take it seriously as a best practice in my class.

• I read Other People’s Children, and so as much as I’m a proponent of progressive movements towards social and emotional learning, I am here to learn from my parents, who often need me to be in ways for them that are at odds with well-intentioned school reforms from, frankly, white people.

• I read Of Boys and Men, and I take the fulfillment of restorative practices seriously. I refer a child to you, especially one of my young men, and I expect school staff to follow through to make sure justice is restored for all, including for the young man I’m worried about. If the modern principal is concerned over the number of suspensions they hand out for their school ranking, I want my principal to know I’m far more concerned about the hearts of my students.

Even better, put stickies in the books in key sections that you found important or where you found convincing data to support an area of your teaching philosophy that you deem essential. In so doing, you will have quick data at your fingertips when or if someone questions your practice and you deem that questioning isn’t for the best of your students.

You may also want to post clear messages on your door or other places around your room where administrators will see them. For example, on the outside of my door, I post several things such as “You are not allowed to fail in this classroom”, “Brains and a dollar buys a cup of coffee,” and “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives,”-the latter being a quote from Jackie Robinson.  Each sends a signal to my students, but it also sends a signal to visiting instructional leaders that in my class, whatever policy has just come down the pipe, that I have my own standards here.

Here, students must earn their grades, students must work together and care for one another, and I try my hardest to give students everything they need to earn those grades-through their own hard work. This way, when a child or parent is in the office, my principal knows I take a student’s work ethic seriously. This then becomes the basis for our problem-solving talk instead of what my boss thinks it should be.

Think about ways you can make your teaching philosophy clear and transparent. Think about ways you can base it on sound practice you took from your credential program. Then, when an administrator wants to know more about your great lesson, you can point to a sign and let them know it’s a core part of your practice. If an administrator questions what you’re doing, which will feel like an attack, you also have a shield you can rely on, a shield with your coat-of-arms.

Keep Up With the Times

Rhetoric runs deep in our schools, and you may think that the latest rhetoric would take a long time to catch up on. But this, fortunately, is not the case. Educational rhetoric is like a Starbucks cup that gets thrown into the recycling. Every so often, it comes back around, bringing something hot and steamy and filled with pumpkin spice back in time for Fall. 

In fact, educational rhetoric has both a shelf life and a cycle to it. Just take several of the common practices you see discussed in educational literature today such as cursive handwriting, reading for pleasure, spelling, homework (to believe or not to believe is the question) and phonics-just to name a few. Throughout my long teacher tenure, each of these areas has been hotly debated in and outside of my school. However, at my site, each has been both victimized and championed, sometimes with mandates to do it, and others as direct or indirect non-negotiables. These debates make the practice for or against any of them very hard to incorporate at all. Wait a few years, wait for a new administrator, wait for a new conference, a new best-seller and voila-the cycle begins anew.

But this is not how good, nor veteran, teachers work.  We see a practice has merit, hear from parents, find out how we can best incorporate it, how to do it well, and then we make it a part of our practice until or if something better comes along for our kids. When you’ve had decades of success, that isn’t going to be an easy sell-nor should it. So how does an administrator get you to focus on the upcoming benchmark instead of practicing cursive handwriting after recess? They very often provide a basis from educational literature, including books, periodicals and other published materials-not all of which is extraordinarily academic in nature.

But what you may not know is that as many articles and conference sessions, as there are in any year to defend removing cursive writing from your class, there are, in any year, countless articles in defense of it. So is this the case for anything else teachers have done for decades, because wait for it, teachers were not stupid doing it for years. The key is to know if it is working for your students. If it truly is, and you have the evidence to defend it, if you have the buy-in from students and parents, then categorize it as such and defend it with rhetorical evidence you’ve found yourself.

 Whatever you do, don’t do as I did and wait years until you feel worthy enough to find out what current pedagogy is out there and what it says to defend your best practices.  Do yourself a favor and sign up for newsletters from free educational periodicals like ASCD, Edweek, and The Educator’s Room. You will find that just by scanning your email from time to time, you’ll be able to read the titles of articles being written in these places.

Even with a scan, this gives you some quick information and potent insights of what the latest buzzwords and phrases are. It also gives you what I call quick “data-bytes” to use in defense of your practice. Its hard to argue with, “According to several articles I read recently in Edweek, students who study spelling for just 15 minutes a day improve several reading levels. Therefore, I’m incorporating this strategy in my classroom this year.”

Protip #1: Always remember that your school is a microcosm of a much larger educational field. If something you are doing falls into the category of both student growth and is championed by the families you serve, you will find defense for it happening someplace else-even if your school has gone to an extreme to ban the practice outright.

Become an Expert Yourself

Once during the height of No Child Left Behind, a principal told our staff during a particularly contentious staff meeting: “Look, until your kids are 100% proficient, don’t tell me you’re an expert on anything, ok?”

Hopefully, you’ll have a principal who actually wants you to feel like an expert. If you don’t, you can simply become one yourself-beyond the school campus. The major reason for doing this is twofold. First, deepening your pedagogy beyond the school site sends a clear message to your administrator that you are someone who takes your job seriously and that you aren’t just there for bottom lines. You have your own self-efficacy, thank you very much, and you have a right, and a responsibility to grow above what you are told to do (that’s why we are sworn in people). You do not simply accept practices unless they work for your kids. Second, becoming an expert sends a clear message to yourself. It improves your own self-efficacy, something that is aligned directly to those teachers who are happy and remain in the profession.

You may think that becoming an expert in something takes getting a second credential or loads of units but that is not always the case. Many professional development programs exist for teachers, and honestly, some are just down-right fun. In some, you can travel for free, and in others earn free units towards salary advancement. In yet others, you can earn stipends that help pay the summertime bills. 

Another way to make yourself an expert is to find, reach out, and join a cohort of teacher leaders doing professional development beyond your classroom. In California, for example, teachers can join any of the California Subject Matter cohorts, located and based at UC campuses around the state. Each emphasizes sound pedagogy, not pedagogy tied to a bottom line.

If you have taught at least 3 years in most states, you can become National Board Certified. This is firstly a terrific way to earn more money-as many states are offering both a stipend to complete it and a monetary reward once you’re done. For example, in California, as of 2023, the cost of the program is essentially waived, and those who become certified receive a check for 5000 dollars each fall for up to five years if they work in a high-priority school (of which half of all schools in California are designated). 

But just as importantly to your sanity, National Board Standards are ripe with what I like to call “I know what I’m doing fruit.” The standards for National Boards essentially ask you as a teacher to seek out your own data, seek out your own resources, and reflect on your own practices. Becoming an NBCT is therefore a terrific method to let your administrator know that you are going to dig far deeper than their quarterly benchmark for what your kids really need.

Give ‘Em Data-Develop a Bank of Evidence and Stories

Depending on where you are teaching, you may also wish to evaluate the particular and acute need of your administrator to obtain standardized test scores. If you are at a no-excuse charter school, then you already know what happens when objectives are not stated, and critical criteria is not embedded in your lesson. If you are at an inner-city public school, you also know the expectations regarding testable material school-wide. If you are at a high-performing school, especially in an affluent neighborhood, this is most likely the case as well.

Wherever you are, one thing is certain: Your administration loves results-and that means test score data showing high achievement, or yearly growth. Administrators also love growth in target students or increases in data for subgroups of students that are a district or school focus. When you know that you have any of this positive data, and you know it is based on something you are doing that you’d like to keep doing (ie. a particular adoptive text, a model of instruction you love such as writer’s workshop or shared reading, or a strategy you feel necessary to employ) then toot your horn. The next time you are in a professional learning community with colleagues or supervisors, give clear and compelling reasons why your thing is leading to the results you are seeing. You don’t have to get technical, just draw a clear line from point a to point b. 

For example, our entire school was once told not to do any small group instruction, or guided reading of any kind, around novels. When that principal left, I was afraid to share with the new principal that I had been doing novel studies in literature circles with students for fear she, too, would outlaw the practice in my room. However, when I noticed a huge bump in my test score data on a first-quarter benchmark around reading comprehension (or RC) standards, I brought it up at the next PLC with my fifth-grade colleagues.

I explained that the constant cycle of prediction and inferencing I had students do showed clear gains on inferential questions on their benchmark. Over the years, this practice has strengthened my scores still, and far more importantly to me, it has led many of my students to fall in love with books in an authentic way alongside their friends. It’s also allowed me to keep putting amazing and culturally affirming stories in my kids’ hands.

Pro-tip #2: Be careful when employing this strategy without a solid basis for an argument on actual data that is both clear and compelling. If an administrator can argue that your practice is not the particular reason for your data, then that administrator can also argue you should stop employing the strategy or model or using the particular curriculum you love.

Another way to retain your autonomy is to harness the power of stories. Collect, anecdotally, stories of best practices that you’re proud of as they relate to actual students. This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how often a staff can forget that we are here for kids. Use the student’s name, use the student’s parent’s name. Again, explain what you are doing, and how you know that this thing is improving the student’s academics. Do not explain that the student “feels better” or has improved social and emotional competency. That will be extrapolated. Base your story around what you are doing and how it is showing gains for this student in ways your administrator understands. 

Prot-tip#3: You may be tempted to tell stories about students from other school sites or from previous experience. Don’t. School staff do not want to hear success stories that begin with, “At my old school we used to…”, principals especially. Also, as much as you’ll want to discuss how your thing is making kids feel, or “behaving better”, avoid using  words like “feel” and “behave”.  Administrators often are too achievement-oriented. Instead, use phrases like “improved participation”, “increased stamina”, or use a quote that the child told you himself, such as this: “A student in my phonics group mentioned to me the other day that, ‘We all love reading, now.”

Enlist Others to the Cause

If it takes a village to raise a child, it sometimes takes a grade level to raise a teacher. Sometimes, and often, schedules are so tight that unless you can get your entire grade level on board with an idea, you’re going to be hard-pressed to do what you love. This has been particularly relevant since the inclusion of PLCs in the school setting, where teachers meet once every couple of weeks. In some schools, this time empowers and uplifts teacher autonomy, and teachers share best strategies and celebrations and work together authentically. In others, it is used as a base to have all grade-level teachers agree to use only the same practices, curriculum, or methods to ensure higher standardized test scores.

If your school appears to be leaning towards the latter, and you’ll know quickly if that is so, you’ll want to enlist others to the cause you care about, before the PLCs occur. This is the toughest case scenario and is frequently the norm in schools with traditionally low-test scores and no-excuse charter schools.  I have found that the best time to speak with grade-level colleagues in this environment is during times of low stress, such as at off-site meetings, or while on break over a glass of wine.

You’ll know your colleagues best, but the important part is to clearly explain how the thing you love will help, by helping each of your work peers see it falls into an ethical, equitable and authentic category. If you are on friendly terms with your work peers, they may well try and help you explain the practice collectively to admin, and some may even take it on. If you have more veteran staff, and especially if you are the most junior of the group, you may find it very difficult to get them to budge. Afterall, it’s taken them years to establish their things, and they aren’t going to risk giving up a tried-and-true technique for something they themselves haven’t categorized as solid yet. In that case, try flexibility and compromise.

For example, a colleague of mine once followed the Benchmark reading program to the letter. She was good at it, and she had great scores as a result. This was the bread and butter of her ELA program and I respected it as she had a lot of parent support. Nevertheless, I knew parents appreciated my authentic writer’s workshop. Even though our agreed weekly schedule didn’t provide time for it, my colleague and I agreed that if I used the same standards and incorporated Benchmark skills, it would keep us aligned. We agreed to calibrate our writing based on standards, regardless of the text we used to have students write about. At our next PLC, what would have placed me between a schedule and a principal, gave me backup from a colleague to keep doing what I knew my kids needed and their parents wanted-to write authentically. 

You’ll find the best army to support your work isn’t your fellow teachers, but instead is the parents and kids themselves. These folks are terrific purveyors of information that your school leadership will never otherwise hear.  This may sound a bit odd at first, but this is a first-rate veteran teacher move and was taught to me by an amazing teacher, my own grandmother.

If you love to incorporate something into your teaching, it is most likely that your kids love it too. Whenever we have one of those moments, where a child gets very excited about something we are doing, say where little Joey realizes he likes poetry now, or little Jimmy feels smart working in a PBL team, I say the following, “Wow. That’s pretty awesome. I wonder what our school principal would think if you said that to her?” Count on Jimmy to let her know by the end of the day, and probably before recess is over.

Parents love to support what is working for their children too. Some parents are also more vocal than others and make great allies. Keeping in mind that parents themselves are our customers, I tend to use parent-teacher conferences as a means to enlist parents to a cause if that cause works for both of us. For instance, several students during Covid loved the Global Scholars program I used. We occasionally wrote back and forth to students from various countries and even Zoomed with them. During Covid, there was no pressure to incorporate it into my schedule. However, once we were back and testing was expected, this program became hard to find time to do. 

Nevertheless, this program was 100% something parents supported in my class. During the first conference, several of my parents noted that their children were excited to be “global citizens.” We also noted in their work that they were writing better short-constructed responses, and many of them were beginning to read and study about other countries outside of class. Without suggesting any one thing or person was to blame, I asked each parent who had given support of the program verbally to do the same, if they wished, to our school principal sometime. A parent doesn’t have to attend an SGT meeting, or become the president of the PTA, to give school input. 

Protip #4 Never speak on behalf of a parent. School leadership doesn’t receive it well. Parents don’t like it and they may actually be upset if you do. 

Protip #5 Never use parents in an effort to fix something you perceive as a wrong, especially between you and other staff. For example, if the school has moved on from an old curriculum, never say something to a parent like, “Well, the staff voted to stop using Open Court, so I have to teach from Pearson now. Maybe you could…” Parents are not employees of the school, and they will not handle the situation well. It is also unprofessional, and will eventually backfire. Stick to simply letting parents know they can let school leadership know they like something if they wish and let them know they can let school leadership know if they do not.

Pushback, If and When You Absolutely Must

When all else fails, sometimes, as a teacher, we have to either take a stand or allow our thing to be steamrolled by the rhetoric over the reality of our days. It’s never easy when this happens, and it can eat away at us because of how much we care about our jobs and students. When we’ve reached this point, we sometimes have to consider pushing back.

For many teachers, pushing back to retain some autonomy is scary as hell. To others, it is akin to speaking to their union site rep. The key problem with doing the latter is that the site rep is typically a far older, more veteran no-nonsense teacher. They always remind of a miserly old wizard in the dark part of the forest that you go on a quest to find. They’ve fought their battles, and frankly, the administration is usually more afraid of them, then the other way around. 

When you complain to your site rep, it becomes an anonymous “grievance,” and that grievance will be brought directly to the principal soon.  If this is something you feel is merited, then you may need to pursue it, but do not have any illusions before you do. The person with the grievance, you, will likely not remain anonymous, nor will the principal appreciate you taking this route. 

Instead, my advice is to request to speak with the principal directly, at least first, and especially do so when she is in a state of reduced stress. Then ask her if she has “just a minute.” This is going to be hard to find, and you may need to wait sometime. Once you do, ask her if you can talk about that thing. Keep your comments brief and your reasoning tailored to objective outcomes at first. Put your emotions in check so that you can state your case matter-of-factly if she decides to push back herself. Briefly sprinkle in a short statement of what this thing means to you, your acknowledgment of schedules and norms, and your willingness to compromise and be flexible. Generally, if this is something truly right for kids, your school leadership will work with you to incorporate it into your teaching. 

At the end of the day, we lose 50% of teachers in their first year. Many of those teachers say that the number one reason is a loss of their own autonomy. Use these techniques if you think you can, but definitely develop your own.  Remain in the job you love and remain a person of conscience for your students, even if the system around you isn’t conscionable itself.