Chapter 9: Serve Teachers-of-the-year Advisory Committee: Mobilizing and Organizing Southeastern State Teacher Leaders for School Improvement

What is a teacher? For education practitioner-scholars in the last quarter of the 20^th Century, the answer to that question was addressed by University of Chicago professor, Dan Lortie. In his oft-cited book, Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (1975, 2002), Lortie recorded the observed history, recruitment and retention practices, socialization, career and work rewards, and logic and sentiments of the public-school teachers represented in his study sample. In its emic perspective into schools and those who teach in them, the book was required reading in graduate schools of education across the nation. The thinking was that if public schools were to improve, the professional practices of those who inhabit them must improve.