Phi Delta Kappan

Editor in Chief Kathleen Vail introduces the Summer 2026 issue of Kappan on Teachers as Leaders

Ashlie Crosson, 2025 National Teacher of the Year, shares highlights of her education journey, how she encourages students to find their voice, and the impact of being a teacher.

Bryan Butcher Jr., Oregon’s 2025 Teacher of the Year, discusses overcoming math anxiety, building confidence as a new teacher, and teaching as an art form.

In Talladega County Schools in Talladega County, Alabama, teacher leaders known as Experts Down the Hall drive the diffusion of innovation across the district. For over a decade, these teacher leaders, with strong district-level guidance, have supported colleagues to embrace classroom innovation through project-based learning, STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math), and computational thinking. The program develops teacher leadership while promoting a unified instructional approach districtwide, resulting in sustained innovation that benefits students, teachers, and school communities alike.

Special education teachers often act as hidden leaders in schools, juggling multiple roles such as instructing students with disabilities, managing support staff, leading teams, and guiding families through the special education system. Despite the importance of their work, it’s rarely recognized as leadership, which can lead to professional isolation and burnout. David D. Yang and Lindsay Foreman-Murray use a Collaboration Architect framework to reframe their role. They suggest that school leaders acknowledge and support these invisible leaders to improve inclusive practices and teacher retention.

This article follows Katie Ryan’s uneasy entry into a department leadership role and her shift from viewing leadership as an individual authority to a collective practice. Through a series of evolving department team meetings, Ryan illustrates how norms, shared agendas, and protected collaborative time can transform isolated teachers into a distributed leadership community. Drawing on research and lived experience, she argues that sustainable teacher leadership requires time, trust, and institutional support, not just titles or added responsibilities.

Teachers at the Anaheim Union High School District have been leading innovation efforts alongside their students. Barnett Berry, Mike Matsuda, and Michael Fullan describe the work of two AUHSD teachers and explain how Superintendent Matsudo developed a culture that encourages innovation by focusing on what teachers and students do together. The district is structured so that teachers have time to learn from each other and experiment with their students. The authors suggest that abandoning hierarchical, top-down structures in favor of more networked structures where teachers work in teams can create the conditions for lasting change in more districts.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping teaching and learning at a pace that outstrips traditional, top-down school decision-making. As students adopt new tools rapidly, teachers are forced to rethink instruction, assessment, and academic integrity in real time. This article argues that the leadership schools need most is already present in classrooms and needs to be encouraged. Through examples of teacher-led AI innovation and district efforts to structure practice-based professional learning, Elizabeth Radday highlights how teacher leadership can emerge through modeling, experimentation, and peer-to-peer sharing. It concludes with shifts leaders can make to build distributed capacity.

STEM teacher retention is essential to student success but must mean more than just keeping teachers in the classroom. The Knowles Teacher Initiative has found that building communities of teacher leaders is a powerful strategy for sustaining early-career educators. Through collaborative inquiry, inclusive learning communities, and multi-layered mentoring, teachers gain agency, support, and a shared sense of purpose. The Teaching Fellows program emphasizes teacher-driven growth, identity-affirming relationships, and leadership development over time. With 85% of Fellows remaining in the classroom after five years, the program suggests that teachers stay when they are connected, empowered, and trusted to lead.

Assistant principals play a complex and often underappreciated role in K-12 schools. Lilicea H. Hester examines three leadership models that tend characterize the work of the assistant principal – collaborative, reactive, and defender–and their implications for school culture, instructional leadership, and professional growth. Intentional development, mentorship, and systemic support is needed to empower assistant principals as strategic leaders. By elevating the visibility and influence of second-chair leadership, schools can build stronger, more resilient leadership teams that drive meaningful student success.

Classroom teaching is increasingly complex and stressful, often resulting in burnout. While many solutions emphasize individual self-care, Meghan A. Kessler, Alexis L. Jones, and Evthokia Stephanie Saclarides advocate for institutional support through instructional coaches. Positioned uniquely within schools, coaches can promote teacher well-being by centering care in their practice. Based on a study of seven coaches, they introduce “caring coaching” – a responsive coaching model that explicitly addresses teachers’ holistic needs. To help implement this model, they offer a three-part framework with practical tools to foster a more supportive, humanizing environment that prioritizes care for teachers.

As part of a multiyear, multistate National Science Foundation-funded research study, Liz Carletta, Douglas B. Larkin, Suzanne Poole Patzelt, Khadija M. Ahmed, and Mayra Perna interviewed educators from districts with higher-than-average novice science teacher retention. They found six factors that can be applied at the school level to increase the likelihood of K-12 teacher retention across grade levels and subject areas. They present the framework of teacher embeddedness as a useful tool to help predict and improve retention efforts and suggest specific strategies teachers and administrators can employ to improve teacher retention in their schools.

Teacher attrition continues to challenge schools nationwide, especially during the early years of teaching. The BOOST framework, Backup systems, Ongoing coaching, Open communication, Strategies for mentorship, and Thriving wellness, is a practical, research informed guide for school leaders seeking to support and retain beginning teachers. Grounded in a five-year longitudinal study, the framework is shaped by new teachers’ real experiences and offers actionable strategies that schools can implement immediately. BOOST provides a clear, compassionate roadmap to help new teachers feel supported, capable, and committed to growing in the profession.

Education reforms are doomed to fail if they don’t get at the underlying reasons students are learning. Stanley Pogrow has found that one hidden barrier to learning is that curriculum and instruction are not presented in engaging or entertaining ways. He describes how he has observed teachers incorporating dramatic scenarios into lessons. These approaches get students excited about creative problem-solving using curriculum content. He urges teacher education programs to offer instruction in the use of drama and schools to give teachers freedom to use these techniques.

New Jersey is facing an unprecedented teacher shortage. Governor Phil Murphy created a Task Force to search for new ways to recruit and retain teachers. Under the leadership of Superintendent David Aderhold, West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District has implemented a new student-teaching program that provides a stipend for select student teachers. Jamie Meeker-Ansloan discusses the origins of this program and early signs of its effectiveness.

Many U.S. high schoolers seem unprepared or ill-equipped when it comes to their understanding of what it means to speak another language and how to positively participate and interact in an increasingly globalized world. Rachel Hawthorne unpacks and questions current accepted practices in foreign-language instruction in U.S. high schools and its effect on this reality. By focusing on grammar over conversation, she argues, language courses are failing to foster fluency. Drawing on research and international comparisons, she calls for a redefinition of language-learning success and urges schools to adopt methods that cultivate confident, communicatively capable students ready for global engagement

District leaders want professional learning (PL) experiences to change teachers’ practice for the benefit of students, but too often it has no effect. Teacher educators Sarah Lupo, Joshua M. Pulos, Chelsey M. Bahlmann Bollinger, Mark A. Lewis, and Ben Riden describe five tips to help district leaders engage educators in meaningful and impactful PL experiences with the goal of improving student outcomes. Tips include: listen to teacher voice when selecting topics for PL, connect research and practice to garner buy in for PL experiences, encourage participation by making learning relevant to their school and classroom, provide opportunities for teachers to apply what they are learning, and start small and go “deep” into topics.

Children’s educational experiences are often shaped by where they live. Lloyd Lindley describes the gap between the elementary school he was zoned based on where he lived and the school he was admitted to because of his academic performance and his parents’ persistence. He urges education leaders to recognize the inequities within the system and to take action so that geography does not determine young people’s destiny.

Most teachers care deeply about their students and their work, but the demands of the profession lead many to leave. Teacher preparation and development focus on content and pedagogy, rather than the soft skills that can prevent burnout and enable teachers to stay. Deborah Connelie and Carlotta Cooprider recommend a SCAN model that enables teachers to specify the source of their stress, center the most important aspect of the task, ask themselves and others what will help, and navigate within the boundaries set for them.

In this regular Kappan column, Starr Sackstein responds to educators’ work-related questions. A teacher wants to dip her toe into leadership but without leaving the classroom. Starr Sackstein suggests some formal and informal roles teachers can take on to be leaders in their schools and the wider professional community while remaining classroom teachers.

The language teachers use to describe instructional situations can affect what they do next. Connie Hamilton explains how the way teachers frame student work can inform their beliefs about what students can do and how teachers can help them. By adopting language that focuses on concrete observations and invite solutions, teachers take ownership of their ability to improve student learning.

The traditional pathway into teaching delays exposure to the realities of the work. At the same time, tutors, paraprofessionals, and others who are already working with young learners are not traditionally treated as being on the pathway into the teaching profession. PDK CEO Jeanie Lee explains how Educators Rising gives middle and high school students opportunities to explore teaching, building the front end of the educator pathway. More systems that reduce costs and create a seamless transition into teaching are needed.

The 2025 PDK Poll asked Americans to grade the public schools in their communities and the public schools as a whole.