Why teachers in a professional practice? A professional practice gives teachers the same opportunity as other professionals to work for themselves. It abandons the principle that teachers must always be employees. The cooperative membership believes that ownership is the key to a complete professional role for teachers.
Teacher ownership gives teachers new roles: control over and accountability for learning programs; determining appropriate fees for service; controlling budgets, compensation, administrative services, supplies, and technology; designing performance evaluation processes; and creates working relationships with students, parents, boards and colleagues.
Teacher ownership allows for dynamic decision-making with less hierarchy. Site teams can make a decision one day and make changes the next. The teams can react to parent or student needs immediately. They can react to action research almost immediately. Teacher ownership allows for continual growth for educators, with a focus on the teacher as central to student learning; a focus on individual, collegial, and organizational improvement; respect for and the nurturing of intellectual and leadership capacities of teachers; and reflection on available research practices in teaching, learning and assessment.
Want to create a TPP? Or join EdVisions Cooperative? EdVisions staff can help you create a Cooperative, or any other legal entity that would constitute a Teacher Professional Practice.
For more information, contact Andrea Harder, the EdVisions Co-op Director.