Teachers can take effective schoolwide leadership roles if the principal encourages each teacher to take responsibility for an aspect of school life that the individual teacher cares strongly about. Such opportunities to engage in school leadership are attractive for teachers because (1) they offer possibilities for improving teaching conditions; (2) they replace the solitary authority of the principal with a collective authority; (3) they provide a constructive format in which the school's adults can interact and overcome their daily classroom isolation; (4) they help transform schools into learning contexts for adults as well as for children; and (5) they make teachers feel and become more important and professional in the eyes of students, other teachers, parents, administrators, and themselves. To encourage teachers to take leadership roles, principals should (1) make it clear that they want to see a community of leaders develop; (2) relinquish some power; (3) support the teachers to whom responsibility has been delegated; (4) involve teachers in decision making; (5) give responsibility not to teachers already proven responsible, but to teachers interested in the issues concerned; (6) accept a share of the responsibility for failures while allowing the teacher credit for successes; (7) admit their needs for help; and (8) seek ways to enhance their own self-confidence. Reviewing the experiences of small, democratically-organized schools around the country can provide insight into how communities of leadership can be developed. (PGD)