We’re starting a new three part series this month called “Education Leadership Stories.” This series will offer in depth profiles on people who started in the classroom but who have gone on to impact public education policy either while remaining as teachers or after they left the classroom. We’re specifically looking at how their experience in the classroom has shaped who they are and the decisions that they have made and continue to make.

Our hope is that this may serve as an inspiration to educators who have similar aspirations of positively impacting education policy by offering them insights into how to accomplish that change.

Our first profile is of Brad Leon of Shelby County Schools, who started his career in the classroom and has moved into leadership at the district level. Enjoy!

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When talking with Brad Leon, Chief of Strategy and Innovation for Shelby County Schools it always comes back to one idea – it’s about the kids. After beginning as a classroom teacher in the Louisiana, he is currently the Chief of Strategy and Innovation here in Shelby County Schools. As a part of our series on education leaders, we’re exploring how different policy makers in our community have gotten to where they are today, what motivates them and what advice they have for teachers looking to accomplish something similar.

Mr. Leon is a great example of what can be accomplished and how teaching has informed his decisions as a policy maker. He also has some powerful words of advice for teachers looking to follow a similar path.

Stumbling Into Education

Teaching was not always on Brad Leon’s radar. In fact, you might say he stumbled into education.

As he tells it, he was in line for the LSAT and saw a poster from TFA that said “Not everyone has the same opportunity as you.” He decided then and there that he wanted to be a part of giving kids the same opportunity that he had been given to get a college degree.

He applied and was accepted to Teach for America, which placed him in Louisiana. Brad then taught in a low-income school from 2002-2004, where his kids saw amazing success. While the district average passing rate on the state test was 50 percent, 98 percent of his kids passed and he was voted teacher of the year.

He talks with pride about all of his kids, but specifically mentions one of his students named Thomas, who had a profound impact on him. Nobody thought Thomas would pass the state assessment, but Mr. Leon’s support and the other students in the classroom, eventually did.

This experience and others like it instilled in him the belief that students can accomplish anything if adults hold them to high expectations.

Belief in Teacher Voice

Brad Leon’s experience in the classroom also instilled in him a strong belief in the importance of teachers as advocates. “Schools have come so far” he says, “but need to go further. This requires a leap in rigor” which teachers need to advocate for personally.

“Teachers need to be on the front lines speaking on behalf of student interests” he says. We [teachers] need to be involved in the decisions being made in our schools and fight hard to ensure that we can do the best we are capable of in the classroom each and every day.

This doesn’t just mean speaking at school board meetings or writing elected officials. He also believes that teaching itself is a form of advocacy. “Teaching empowers [kids] with skills they can use for the rest of their lives…my role as a teacher was the most powerful advocacy I could do.”

Leaving the Classroom – A Tough Decision

While Mr. Leon experienced incredible success as a teacher, he realized that one year in his classroom wasn’t sufficient to change the trajectory of his student’s lives.

Mr. Leon remembers to this day when and where he was when it dawned on him how big the problem really is.  In that moment, he realized that “we need wholesale system-wide change. We need to revolutionize the way we look at education in the US.”

It wasn’t just a mountain top moment that led to his departure from the classroom. It was also the day to day experience of how little control he and his fellow teachers had over their own decisions that influenced this move.

During his time in Louisiana, he experienced first-hand the impact of policies that prevent teachers from making this change. He talks about being told what and how to teach to get kids to pass the state test. At times, he says, he and his fellow teachers were instructed to read directly from a script.

He also shares his frustration at decisions that were made for political reasons and not with kids best interests at heart. He related a story about how their superintendent was going to be fired in a very non-transparent way, and how he and his fellow teachers went on to protest that decision.

Though Mr. Leon would leave the classroom, these experiences would carry profound implications for how he would continue to work to empower educators and school leaders in the years that followed.

Moving Into Policy

Since he’s left the classroom, Brad has held several roles. He became the executive director of Teach for America Tennessee and then left that role to head up regional operations for Appalachia, Texas and Tennessee.

From that role, he moved into the role as Chief of Strategy and Innovation within Shelby County Schools.

In every position he’s held, his experience as a teacher has continued to inform his work in all of these areas.

Take for his belief that teachers and school leaders need to be empowered to make decisions that are best for their kids. He’s been able to see this belief carried out through the iZone model here in Memphis.

In his own words “iZone is an empowered school model – we leave the programs up to the school teams and school leaders. We’re empowering educators to get better at their jobs.”

When I asked for an example, he noted how they don’t push one specific program on schools. If a vendor wants to work with the iZone, they [the iZone] promotes the product, but lets the school make the decision in the end about whether or not to adopt it.

As we spoke, Mr. Leon also pointed to the Innovation Department values on his wall and explained how these values all originated from his experience as a teacher. Chief among these is the idea that everything that they do is built around the idea that students can do anything and have unlimited potential. In fact, he notes, they are only limited by the expectations adults put on them. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to believe he was thinking of his former students as he crafted these values and beliefs.

Advice – Don’t Forget What You’re Giving Up

When I asked him, Mr. Leon had several powerful pieces of advice for teachers looking to follow a similar path.

He says that, first and foremost, “know what you believe. What are your core tenants? What do you want to accomplish, and most importantly, why do you do this work?”

Second, he says that you need to “know what you’ll be giving up. Teaching is exhausting, but also energizing in a way that working in a central office is not. There is a richness that you will lose in leaving the classroom.”

He also shares how the time he gets to spend in the classroom is the most energizing time of the week for him. Students fuel everything that he does. When he was a teacher, seeing the contrast between the opportunity his kids had and what he wanted for them was a big motivator. I’d imagine the same could be said for Mr. Leon now.

As the Chief of Strategy  and Innovation, Brad Leon continues to act on the lessons he learned in his own classroom many years ago. Let’s up he continues to do so for years to come.

We’d like to thank Mr. Leon for being a part of our inaugural series on current and former teachers as policy leaders and advocates. Know someone you’d like to see profiled? Send us their contact info at [email protected]!