Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Helping Teachers Develop as Leaders

"The ultimate for those who promote teacher leadership and those who would be teacher leaders."
―Roland S. Barth, Educational Consultant
Author, Lessons Learned

"Katzenmeyer and Moller usher in a new age of teacher leadership, an age of mutuality in learning and leading, broad-based participation, and shared responsibility. Their work is based on the powerful assumption that all of us―especially teachers―have the right, capacity, and responsibility to lead."
―Linda Lambert, Professor Emeritus
California State University, Hayward

"This seminal text left me nothing short of energized when I first picked it up almost ten years ago. Filled with new surveys, tools, and suggestions for today′s teacher leader, the newest edition is simply a must-read for anyone driving meaningful change in the classrooms of our country."
―Bill Ferriter, Senior Fellow
Teacher Leaders Network

Empower teachers as leaders to improve student learning and performance!

This third edition of a bestseller draws on the authors′ two decades of experience in studying and observing the work of teacher leaders. Marilyn Katzenmeyer and Gayle Moller expand on the definition of leadership and its importance to improving outcomes in schools, and cover the career-long development of teacher leaders from preservice preparation programs through ongoing support for veteran teacher leaders.

This exceptional, teacher-focused resource discusses three factors critical to stepping into a leadership role: sustaining teacher leadership relationships between adults in the school, organizational structures, and the actions of the principal. The authors discuss the challenges that many teacher leaders face, including:

• Deciding to accept a leadership role
• Building principal–teacher leader relationships
• Working with peers
• Facilitating professional learning for themselves and others

With the latest research from the teacher leadership literature and new teacher inventories and surveys, this updated edition of Awakening the Sleeping Giant demonstrates the benefits of investing in teachers and their learning to sustain meaningful change in today′s schools.

Marilyn Katzenmeyer is president of Professional Development Center, Inc., and she currently engages in consultation, instructional design, and professional writing. She most recently served as a faculty administrator at the University of South Florida, where she was responsible for the development and implementation of the Executive Leaders Program, a leadership development opportunity for school-based administrators and teacher leaders who were transitioning into district-level leadership roles, and for the coordination of a Transition to Teaching project with a local school district. She was formerly executive director of the West Central Educational Leadership Network, which provided leadership training and school improvement assistance to educators throughout 13 school districts in southwest Florida. She has been a human resource development professional throughout her career, and she was the first director of the Broward County School District (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) Human Resource Development Department.

Katzenmeyer worked in Ohio and Florida as a secondary school teacher. She received her doctorate in adult education from The Florida State Uni¬versity. Her research focused on effective strategies for measuring the impact of leadership training programs on the behavior of school administrators.

Gayle Moller recently retired as associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Foundations at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. She was formerly executive director of the South Florida Center for Educational Leaders. The Center served large, urban school systems in South Florida that provided staff development for school leaders. Moller worked in the Broward County Public Schools (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) for 19 years as a teacher, school administrator, and staff development administrator. She received her doctorate from Teachers College/Columbia University. Teacher leadership and professional learning communities are her research interests. Moller served on the board of trustees of the National Staff Development Council. She is a co-author, with Anita Pankake, of Lead with Me: A Principal’s Guide to Teacher Leadership.