2018 TAP Conference Keynote Presentation: Teacher Leaders as the Opportunity
March 23, 2018
Lowell MilkenChairman and Founder
National Institute for Excellence in Teaching
I believe one of the most important things we can do in this life is make the most of the opportunities it affords. Those opportunities are vast and varied. Some are hidden. Others are evident. For highly effective teachers, the opportunities are in plain sight. And none is more important than leading other teachers to maximum effectiveness.
This is the focus of this presentation. Leadership in teachers. How to create and how to expand it.
The effective teacher in the classroom is both the starting point and the engine of excellent and meaningful education. That's because excellent teachers are not only the single most important in-school factor in student learning,1 the best of them are the key factor in improving the instructional practices and strengthening the skills of their peers.
It is completely relevant to this topic that 2018 marks the 20th year of the TAP System for Teacher and Student Advancement (TAP), a system I believed was possible and knew was necessary. A system I set about creating because the quality of an education system depends—absolutely—upon the quality of its educators.
It is also relevant that the representation among educators and education officials is exceptionally broad at this conference: state policymakers and officials, college leaders, district officials, principals, master, mentor and career teachers, foundation and community leaders, and Milken Educator Award recipients. I mention this breadth because it’s going to take this range of professionals and participants to truly fulfill the promise of TAP, of which teacher leadership is an integral part.
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