Teachers as Servant Leaders

By (author) Joe D. Nichols

Publication date:

16 December 2010

Length of book:

130 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Dimensions:

244x168mm
7x10"

ISBN-13: 9781442204522

In today's political environment with the emphasis on testing, standards, and accountability, teachers can easily feel frustrated by the amount of time and resources left over for teaching—for guiding students not only in academics but also in character education. Educators can find themselves losing focus of what initially inspired them to teach. Teachers as Servant Leaders provides pre-service teachers and those currently in the profession with a renewed perspective of not just being a content expert or classroom/behavioral manager, but leaders within their own classrooms, school buildings, and local communities. Building on Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness by Robert Greenleaf, this book applies the concept of servant leadership to the classroom teacher where the focus is on service to students, parents, colleagues, the school and community.

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 The Teacher as Teacher
Chapter 3 The Teacher as Leader
Chapter 4 The Teacher as Servant and Steward
Chapter 5 The Teacher as Servant Leader to Students
Chapter 6 The Teacher as Servant Leader to Parents and Families
Chapter 7 The Teacher as Servant Leader to Colleagues and the School Administration
Chapter 8 The Teacher as Servant Leader to the Community
9 Final Thoughts and Conclusions

Taking Robert K. Greenleaf's philosophy of leader as servant as a starting point, Nichols (Indiana Univ.-Purdue Univ.) paints a compelling image of the values and beliefs of an exemplary teacher who leads by serving students, parents, colleagues, administrators, and the community—the teacher as servant leader. This image of the teacher necessarily goes far beyond the No Child Left Behind era emphasis on test scores and rote learning that has dominated discourse about the teaching profession during the first decade of the 21st century. Drawing upon the work of such iconic thinkers such as Emerson, Thoreau, Dewey, George Counts, Howard Gardner, and Alfie Kohn, Greenleaf envisions a teacher who tends to the cognitive, psychological, and socio-emotional dimensions of students with great passion and who stimulates interest and enthusiasm in learning. Leading by serving parents and community occurs within an interconnected, ecological system paradigm instead of a deficit paradigm. Leadership theory is presented, but mainly consists of descriptions of traits, including attitudes and values. Summing Up: Recommended.