When Susan Jarnot-Benthem—now assistant principal at Interlake High School—was starting her work in the Bellevue School District as a teacher and instructional mentor, she noticed a troubling phenomenon.
Student teachers would do a great job. They’d get hired based in part on their good performance—then struggle and flounder as first-year teachers.
“It really bothered me to see first-year teachers put on a plan of improvement,” she said. “I asked myself, ‘What are we doing to support teachers so they can make it in this profession?’”
That was when Jarnot-Benthem learned about the UW College of Education’s Master in Instructional Leadership (MIL) program. What she heard—about its goal to empower teachers to elevate their practice by working together as informal instructional leaders—led her to believe it might provide the answer to her question. But her boss disagreed.
“She asked me, ‘Why would anyone want to do that?’ Because in that old school way of thinking, you’re either a teacher or an administrator,” Jarnot-Benthem said. Despite the discouragement, she persisted—and graduated with the second MIL cohort.
“It’s been life changing, professionally. The experience helped me realized there’s a third role, beyond teacher and administrator. It’s a boundary-spanner role. The teacher-leader is able to connect what teachers are experiencing with what districts are asking them to do.”