Teacher Leadership, Teacher Retention. Is There a Link?

In the district where I currently work, there is a  team of teachers called the Instructional Leadership Team, the ILT. They are classroom educators who have taken on a different kind of role. They work alongside colleagues who ask for support, stepping into classrooms, modelling practice, offering the kind of mentorship that is hard to find in the middle of a demanding school day. They are credible because they have done the work themselves. They are effective because they understand what it feels like to stand in front of a class when things aren't going well.

What strikes me most about this group is not what they do, though what they do is remarkable. It is who they have become through doing it. Teachers who stepped into this role have grown in ways that are unmistakeable. They are more confident, more reflective, and are more connected to the broader purpose of the profession. The role shaped them as much as they shaped it.

And yet, a team like this can only reach so far. The need in any district is larger than any dedicated group can absorb. Which raises a question worth sitting with: how do we grow this kind of culture at scale? That question feels particularly important right now.

The teaching profession across Canada and the United States is under real and sustained pressure. According to the Learning Policy Institute's most recent analysis, roughly one in eight teaching positions in the US is either unfilled or filled by a teacher not fully certified for their assignment — a number that has grown each year of their tracking. The Canadian picture is similarly concerning. According to the Fraser Institute, British Columbia has seen a near-tripling in the number of uncertified teachers working in schools, and Quebec entered the 2023-24 school year with more than 8,500 vacancies. Ontario's Ministry of Education projects, according to the Canadian Press, that the shortage will worsen system-wide by 2027, compounded in part by a 2015 decision to extend teacher education to two years — a change that reduced annual graduates from over 7,600 to approximately 4,500. Provinces and states are responding with accelerated certification, international recruitment, and expanded training seats.

Underneath all of it, the retention picture is also concerning. Nearly half of Canadian educators, 45 percent, have considered leaving the profession in the past year. And yet 93 percent say that working with students remains a core reason they stay. That gap is worth pausing on. The commitment to students hasn't wavered. Something else has.

The conversation in education right now is heavily focused on stress and burnout. Nearly 80 percent of teachers report difficulty managing unpredictable and increasing workloads. Educator wellness matters, and any leader who dismisses it is not paying attention.

At the same time, wellness alone is an incomplete vision for what we want teaching to feel like as a profession. The educators on teams like the ILT, the ones who are energized, who are staying, who are growing, tend to share something that is worth paying very close attention to. They have a sense of professional purpose and agency. They are learning. They are leading. They feel like the expertise they have built over years of practice is valued and put to use.

The 2024 TALIS survey found that teachers actively involved in school leadership roles, in shared decision-making, in curriculum and instructional work, report higher levels of job satisfaction and professional well-being. A 2024 review in the Journal of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies identified five in-school factors most associated with retention: positive school culture, supportive administration, strong professional development, mentoring programs, and classroom autonomy. These are conditions that schools and districts can build intentionally.

The scaling question is genuinely hard. A high-functioning ILT is not built overnight, and the teachers who thrive in those roles don't all arrive as experienced leaders. Some were already strong and the opportunity gave them a wider context. Others grew into the role in ways that surprised everyone, including themselves. Both things are true, and both matter for how we think about growing this work.

Because if the goal is simply to identify the already-exceptional and deploy them, the reach will always be limited. The deeper opportunity is to create the conditions where more teachers can surface, develop, and lead, where instructional mentorship is part of the fabric of how a school operates rather than concentrated in a dedicated team. Where the culture of a school says, in the way it actually functions day to day, that your growth as an educator matters here.

That is a different kind of investment than the ones most districts are currently making in response to the teacher shortage challenges. Recruitment campaigns, signing incentives, and streamlined certification all have a role. The profession also needs school districts willing to ask a harder question: what kind of place are we building, and why would a talented, committed educator want to spend a career here?

The teachers on the ILT in the district where I work could probably find other things to do with their professional energy. They stay because the work is meaningful, because they are trusted, because they are growing alongside the colleagues they support. That is not a complicated formula. The capacity for it already exists in our schools, in teachers who are ready to lead if given the conditions to do so. The question for district and school leaders is whether we build those conditions intentionally, or keep waiting for the resources, the policy, the perfect moment. In a system under pressure, that moment rarely comes. The schools that move forward are the ones that start anyway.