Teaching Like a Queen: 7 Lessons in Leadership

Teach Like a Queen: Lessons in Leadership from Great Contemporary Women 
By Tracey Leese and Christopher Barker
(Routledge/David Fulton, 2022 – Learn more)

Reviewed by Katie Durkin

“If we made it our mission to empower the women we work with and continually push ourselves and progress our careers, and create a culture in which women can unapologetically ascend and are empowered to challenge discrimination, what would the collective impact be?” (p. xxiii)

When I was younger, I was obsessed with the queens of history. I loved studying women who served as queens for their country, but I was particularly drawn to the wives of King Henry VIII of England. I read every fiction and nonfiction book I could get my hands on.

When I first picked up Teach Like a Queen: Lessons in Leadership from Great Contemporary Women, written by two British educators, I can’t lie – I was secretly hoping to be learning about how the great queens of history related to another passion of mine: education.

What I found though was a quick, fun read about how women like Michelle Obama and Lady Gaga can provide profound lessons that every educator can bring into their own space.

Lessons in contemporary leadership

Inspired by the musical Six, Teach Like a Queen is a book discussing how modern women, and their successes, can teach us valuable lessons that can be directly applied to teacher leadership. The book is divided into nine chapters: an introduction, seven chapters (each focusing on a present-day woman the authors have crowned “queens”) and a final chapter that is penned with the title “Happily Ever After” to conclude the authors’ thoughts.

The seven chapters focusing on the seven queens are grounded in the Nolan Principles, which the authors explain in the introduction were principles created by Michael Patrick Nolan, a former chairman of the Committee of Public Standards in Great Britain. He was tasked by the Prime Minister at the time to determine principles that public servants need to follow, including selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.

Based on these principles, the authors have chosen seven women they believe represent these archetypes, using the following definition of a queen:

(S)omeone who rises by elevating others. Women who are intangibly powerful and exert influence over others…[they] eschew societal norms, achieve more than they’re apparently entitled to, who fight for recognition (p. xxii).

The queens featured in this book include Michelle Obama, RuPaul, Meghan Markle, Lady Gaga, Jacinda Arden, Kim Kardashian, and Malala Yousafzai.

Each chapter about the queens follows the same format. The chapter begins with a brief introduction to the queen in the form of a short biography. The authors then move into the lessons teacher leaders can use in their space based on the queen’s experiences. Finally, they end with a case study of how an educator used the lessons from the queen in their respective space. Personally, I really enjoyed the lessons provided because they helped me to reflect on how I could transfer this knowledge into my own work as a teacher leader.

Yes, PD can be fun

There are two features of the book that I think are important to note. First, I love how the authors also incorporated art and creativity throughout the text. Each of the chapters focusing on a different queen begins with a personalized crown, designed to represent the queen herself. The authors also provide their dictionary definition of each queen. For example, Michelle Obama is defined as “to stand up to the highest level of scrutiny without fault or flaw. See also: powerhouse, dignity” (p. 9).

Second, I felt like this was a refreshingly different professional development read. I found the book to be more about the message of empowerment for women and leadership in education, rather than a book with ready-made strategies to use in the classroom. It is also written in a very informal tone. I felt like the authors were speaking to me through the page as a colleague or friend. I enjoyed this aspect of the book because it made for a fast read.

I would recommend the book to anyone who is willing to read with an open mind. I think that teacher leaders or anyone in a position of leadership in a school system would benefit. While many of the arguments made in the text are geared toward women, I believe you could make an argument that male leaders would also benefit from reading the authors’ claims.

I originally picked up this book because I am a huge history buff. I was met with seven vastly different modern “queens” being used as exemplars. Some of the choices the authors made could be considered controversial. I’m not sure that I personally would have chosen some of the women highlighted; however, the authors provide strong persuasive arguments why teacher and teacher leaders can learn a lot from  these figurative queens.

I think if you’re looking for a fun, quick read to complete during the school year, Teach Like a Queen: Lessons in Leadership from Great Contemporary Women may be a good option for you.

Dr. Katie Durkin (@kmerz610) has been teaching middle school students for over a decade, and currently teaches English Language Arts at public Middlebrook School (6-8) in Wilton, Connecticut, where she is the 7th Grade Team Leader.

Katie is a zealous reader of middle grade and young adult books and enjoys sharing her love and passion for reading with her students. In 2022 she earned her doctorate from Northeastern University, where her dissertation research examined the impact of classroom libraries on middle school students’ reading engagement.

Katie was the 2020 recipient of the Edwyna Wheadon Postgraduate Training Scholarship from the NCTE. She writes regularly for MiddleWeb and in early 2023 launched a two-teacher podcast, That’s Novel Reading.