Re-Imagining Teaching: Five Structures to Transform the Profession

In recent years, there has been a focus on what constitutes effective teaching and how to measure teacher performance. Efforts to more rigorously evaluate teachers, to hold them accountable for student learning, and to help them improve practice have been initiated at the district, state, and federal levels. However, many teachers believe that additional accountability, in the absence of efforts to improve the conditions in which teachers work, is a step in the wrong direction. The National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) has identified five critical structures that is lacking in education: (1) professional career continuums; (2) distributed leadership models; (3) collaborative practice; (4) actionable feedback to inform practice; and (5) guiding professional principles developed by educators, for educators. In this white paper, the authors examine the five critical structures, with educators' perspectives, and advocates for the inclusion of these critical structures for two primary reasons: (1) educators are the best suited and best situated to determine what the profession should look like internally and externally; and (2) the inclusion of these structures in the profession creates an educator-developed framework around which district, state, and federal policies can be developed to support what educators have determined is needed most in their profession.