“Teacherpreneur” has got to be one of the most influential educational buzzwords of the decade. I sometimes wonder if Barnett Berry ever regrets adopting the term, along with Ann Byrd and Alan Wieder of the Center for Teaching Quality. Not only has the term been misapplied to teachers who become educational entrepreneurs, but the foundations of the concept have been disrespected by districts whose financial resources have been demolished in recent years, with Arizona as a prime example.
Having been in workshops with both Berry and Byrd, I am convinced that their intentions with the term “teacherpreneur” are absolutely in the right place. CTQ, thanks to hard work, represents the highest aspirations of the teaching profession, as does Berry’s definition of “Teacherpreneur”:
“For us, the word teacherpreneur represents the bold concept that teachers can continue to teach while having time, space, and incentives to incubate big pedagogical and policy ideas and execute them in the best interests of both their students and their teaching colleagues.”
For the CTQ and other educational leadership organizations who have adopted the term, a teacherpreneur is not only a teacher leader, but someone whose expertise and ability to innovate pedagogy and create sound policy is honored by the fact that he or she is given “time, space and incentives” in order to do this important work. And, in order to become a true teacherpreneur, a teacher’s work in the classroom with students must be honored as well.
However, Arizona districts cannot afford to create many positions for teacherpreneurs (although teachers have spoken loud and clear through the national RESPECT project and the work of the Arizona Teachersolutions Team, and have supported the idea of various levels of career advancement in teaching). Cash-strapped districts, instead, create “teacherprefakeur” positions. These positions are an awkward combination of full-time teaching piled on with the demands of innovation based on national, state, district and school initiatives, usually initiatives which demand the creation of curriculum and assessments.
A true teacherpreneur would be given a reduced teaching load in order to devote the time needed to truly think, reflect, collaborate and innovate. Teacherprefakeurs who agree to be on curriculum committees are given release days from their classrooms to go to meetings to think, reflect and collaborate a handful of times a year. While they are out of their classrooms, they must provide substitute lesson plans and still must assess student work. In addition, under Arizona’s new evaluation systems, a large percent of their evaluations will be based on their students’ progress. So, in effect, teachers are teaching AND innovating and collaborating all at the same time. In these situations, teachers are not given any additional time and space to do this important work. In fact, they are given additional pressure which takes away from their ability to invest themselves in innovation.
In addition to the extra duties a teacher takes on by joining such committees, the teacher usually agrees to do this important work with little to no financial incentive. Because the teacher is doing this leadership work during the school day, she receives no extra pay. Perhaps a few summer work days bring extra money, if she is lucky. More often, I see districts opting to offer the release time.
The end result is that, typically, there is little to no incentive for teachers who serve on committees during release time to be innovative, except for the intrinsic reward of creating something useful for students and teachers. Luckily for districts, teachers are conditioned to be happy with the intrinsic rewards of the job. There are many intrinsic rewards. And they are what keep us going when the systems around us demand more without giving teachers the professional time, space and incentives to keep giving.
Lately, I see more teachers dissatisfied with this fakeurism. They want to do the rewarding work, but they feel the pressure of accountability in their classrooms, and they recognize that their work with students is the highest priority. Many talented professionals choose to stay in the classroom rather than try to do it all. But education needs their voices and visions, and schools should not have to scrounge for special grants in order to do that. My hope is that slowly, documents like the RESPECT vision statement and the Arizona Teachersolutions Team’s Journey to 2030 will help policymakers to see new, valid roles for true teacherpreneurs.
Amethyst Hinton Sainz
Amethyst Hinton Sainz is National Board Certified Teacher in Adolescent and Young Adult English Language Arts, and is constantly trying to live up to that standard! This year she will begin teaching at Westwood High School in Mesa, Arizona as an interventionist. She has taught junior high ELD and high school English in Arizona for 25 years. She has been a Stories from School blogger since 2012. Amethyst’s alma maters are Blue Ridge High School, the University of Arizona and the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. Her bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and Philosophy led her toward the College of Education, and she soon realized that the creative challenges of teaching would fuel her throughout her career. Her love of language, literature, and culture led her to Bread Loaf for her master's in English Literature. She is a fellow with the Southern Arizona Writing Project, and that professional development along with, later, the National Board process, has been the most influential and transformative learning for her. As a board member of the Mesa NBCT Network, she works with other NBCT’s to promote this powerful process throughout the district. She supports candidates for National Board Certification, and loves seeing teachers realize and articulate their teaching and leadership power! She enjoys teaching students across the spectrum of academic abilities, and keeping up with new possibilities for technology in education. Last year she had the privilege of running our school garden, and will really miss that this year. She is currently learning more about social and racial justice and is striving to be an antiracist educator. She lives in Mesa, Arizona with her family. She enjoys time with them, as well as with her vegetable garden, backyard chickens, and the two dogs. She also enjoys reading, writing, cooking (but not doing dishes), kayaking, camping, and travel, among other things.