Where were you 15 years ago? What was life and information-gathering like back before educators felt comfortable on smartphones and social media? If you were teaching, how did you connect with professional colleagues? Did you have a professional network? If so, what did it look like? Did it include anyone beyond your school or district?

The context

In 2003, a group of more than 200 teachers connected online as the founding cohort of the Teacher Leaders Network (TLN). This was perhaps the first true virtual network of teachers. That group of teachers gathered around the peculiar idea of teacher leadership. Over time, the network grew to include thousands of educators. Although teacher leadership started as a peculiar idea, now it is embraced as a means to advance student learning and the teaching profession.

Over the next two months, this roundtable will focus on the ways that networks like TLN (that later became the CTQ Collaboratory) have driven the work of CTQ since 2003. We will hear from educators who engaged with the community through the different CTQ “generations” of teacher leadership. We will hear how growing leadership by leveraging network connections  has impacted the bloggers’ students, their careers, and the profession.

Join us on this retrospective journey of the last 15 years of the CTQ “generations” and of teacher leadership as a concept. Let us cast our eyes backwards for a few moments and reflect on where we have been in order to appreciate where we are and where we might be going.

We invite you to join the conversation and share your own networking story, including its impact on your work in education. Invite your colleagues to join on social media with #CTQCollab and be sure to follow CTQ on Facebook and Twitter for new blog postings.

The blogs

 

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