About the Book
Foster Trust, Accountability and Engagement in Your Teams
Creating strong, cohesive teams is an art, and How Teams Work: A Playbook for Distributing Leadership is the essential guide for school leaders looking to master this craft. This interactive playbook doesn′t just advise but actively equips leaders with the tools they need to foster trust, accountability, and engagement in their teams.
School leaders today face a critical mandate: to empower, engage, and work in concert with their teams to foster a positive and productive school environment. How Teams Work doesn′t offer mere platitudes—it offers practical strategies and tools, with concept maps, learning intentions, team challenges, reflection prompts and more. Information is organized into six modules exploring:
The foundational role leaders play in team dynamics
Strategies to bring together and mobilize effective leadership teams
Methods to forge and maintain team unity and collaboration
How to build and maintain trust and respect within teams
Practical tools for maximizing team productivity and decision-making
Guidelines on reflective leadership to assess and improve team performance
How Teams Work isn′t only a resource; it′s a roadmap to sustainable success, illuminating the path to nurturing leadership at every level. In an age where the turnover of educators is high and the need for sustained, collective school improvement efforts is urgent, leveraging the power of teams isn′t just advantageous—it′s essential.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Module 1: Leading Teams is the Work of Leaders
Module 2: Activating Leadership Teams
Module 3: Creating Leadership Team Cohesion
Module 4: Conveying Collective Leadership Team Credibility
Module 5: Leveraging Processes, Protocols, and Tools for Leadership Teams
Module 6: Thinking Evaluatively as Leadership Teams
A Call to Action: Rethinking Leadership Teams
About the Author :
Cathy Lassiter, Ed.D., is a consultant and author with Corwin Learning with over forty years in public education. Prior to this role, she served as a middle and high school social studies teacher, award-winning middle school principal and respected central office leader in a large urban district in Virginia. Her published titles include Everyday Courage for School Leaders, How Leadership Works, Leader Credibility and How Teams Work, all published by Corwin. Cathy’s consulting expertise includes all aspects of school and central office leadership, school improvement, curriculum, instruction, assessment and professional development. She is a certified consultant in all facets of Visible Learning, Teacher Clarity, and a number of other Corwin service lines. Cathy served as an adjunct professor at The George Washington University, teaching graduate courses in educational leadership. Douglas Fisher is professor and chair of educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. Previously, Doug was an early intervention teacher and elementary school educator. He is a credentialed English teacher and administrator in California. In 2022, he was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame by the Literacy Research Association. He has published numerous articles on reading and literacy, leadership, and curriculum design, as well as books such as The Teacher Clarity Playbook (2nd ed.), Your Introduction to PLC+, The Illustrated Guide to Teacher Credibility, Instructional Strategies to Move Learning Forward: 50+ Tools That Support Gradual Release of Responsibility, and Welcome to Teaching!
Toni Faddis joined Corwin as a full-time professional learning consultant in 2021. Before that, she was a bilingual teacher in elementary and middles schools as well as a Reading Recovery specialist before becoming a principal and principal coach in San Diego, California. In addition, Toni served as the Director of Equity, Access, and Leadership Development at the district level. Toni holds teaching and administrative services credentials in California and earned her doctoral degree in Educational Leadership from San Diego State University.
Toni is the co-author of Collaborating Through Collective Efficacy Cycles: Ensuring All Students and Teachers Succeed, PLC+ for Instructional Leaders, How Teams Work, and The Ethical Line, as well as numerous professional articles about adolescent literacy.
Nancy Frey is a professor in educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. She is a credentialed special educator, reading specialist, and administrator in California. She is a member of the International Literacy Association’s Literacy Research Panel. Her published titles include 50 Strategies for Activating Your PLC+, The Illustrated Guide to Visible Learning, Welcome to Teaching Multilingual Learners, Teaching Foundational Skills to Adolescent Readers, and RIGOR Unveiled: A Video-Enhanced Flipbook to Promote Teacher Expertise in Relationship Building, Instruction, Goals, Organization, and Relevance.
Review :
This sums up my thinking about leading teams: Observation, conversation and evaluation are the heartbeats of building and sustaining leadership teams!
This is a MUST read for anyone who takes on the role of leadership in education. Fisher and Frey make the compelling case, with a sense of urgency, for a new way of leading schools through expanded, empowered, and engaged school leadership teams. They argue that doing anything less is irresponsible and fraught with consequences! How Teams Work provides a perfect synergism of reflection, insight, and learning that leads to sustained, competent, cohesive, and credible leadership teams.
This book goes beyond basic personality tips to generate shared leadership opportunities. Creating schools with shared leadership teams must have successful processes and protocols to create teams who live with purpose, speaking in unison.
How Teams Work makes it clear that distributive leadership is not about delegating responsibilities or lightening the proverbial workload of the principal. Instead, it is an opportunity to empower and engage teachers and other staff members as decision-makers and leaders in their own right. After reading this publication, I am convinced that leadership teams are some of our most underutilized and undervalued resources.
