This Year's MetLife Survey: Good News for Teacherpreneurs

Several years
ago, with support from MetLife Foundation, CTQ helped make the case for teacherpreneurs—classroom experts who teach
students regularly but also have time, space, and reward to incubate and
execute bold pedagogical and policy ideas.

Since then, and with generous funding from the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rose Community Foundation, we have
begun to cultivate and pay for teacherpreneurs in Colorado (Jessica Keigan and Jessica Cuthbertson) and Florida (Megan Allen and Ryan Kinser) as they lead Common Core and teacher
evaluation reforms, create virtual learning communities, and organize National
Board Certified Teachers as online mentors. And with continued funding from
MetLife Foundation, Seattle-based teacherpreneur Noah Zeichner is leading work at CTQ to launch
an international network of teacher leaders to fuel a 21st-century
teaching profession.

We have been embraced by forward-thinking
administrators (and program officers) who want to transcend the 20th-century
debates over teaching and learning. They want to ensure that all students are
college- and career-ready and help blur the lines of distinction between
those who teach in schools and those who lead them. But we have faced
resistance from a number of reformers who do not believe teachers can or should
lead.

Now MetLife, with its 29th annual
survey, continues to shed light on teachers and the future of their profession.
This survey speaks volumes to our concept of teacherpreneurism.

The latest poll has found that 23 percent
of America’s teachers—or about 700,000 of them—are “extremely” or “very
interested” in serving in a hybrid role as a teacher and leader. (And about half are at least “somewhat interested” in
such an assignment.)

These findings are compelling,
especially when set in the following context: The vast majority of the same
teachers (84 percent) are “not very” or “not at all” interested in becoming a
principal, and with good reason. The same MetLife survey revealed that 75
percent of our nation’s principals believe their job has become “too complex,”
and almost half (48
percent) report they are “under great stress several days a week.”

It is time to
get over fallacious boundaries between teachers and administrators and rebuild
the profession that makes all others possible. It is time to create more time
for teachers to incubate and execute their own ideas—making the job of “principal-ing”
more manageable and encouraging more of our best teachers to lead without
leaving. Thanks to MetLife for teaching us that 700,000 teachers are ready to
do so—and continuing to support us and our new book, TEACHERPRENEURS, which documents how innovative teachers lead without leaving.