At Teach For America – Charlotte-Piedmont Triad, we’re working to strengthen our program and will spend this year gaining clarity on the strategic bets we should be making about how leaders develop in our program throughout their journey as a member of our network. We will leverage our learnings from this year as the foundation of our ongoing program strategy.
In FY19, the Director, Leadership & Learning will lead four Leadership Coaches in working together to shape a new way of supporting second-year corps members as they work to fulfill their visions for student outcomes in their classrooms. These coaches will also apply their learning to help shape the support for our base of more than 250 alumni teachers. Each Leadership Coach will support a cohort of mostly second-year teachers (and possibly some alumni included or as a separate cohort) and their specific task is two-fold:
- Reconceive how we support second-year corps members aligned to our theory of leadership development and strategic plan, and
- Coach their teachers to dramatically exceed previous years’ results
The Director, Leadership & Learning will also manage a learning cohort to help contribute to the development of a strong, local theory of leadership development in Charlotte.
This position will report to the Head of Program Strategy and will manage four Leadership Coaches. The Director will also work closely with the Directors of Program Design & Data Strategy, District & School Strategy, and Leadership Development.
Leadership Development Strategy & Team Management (65%)
- Create strategy for second-year corps member and alumni teacher leadership
- Plan and execute annual alumni induction
- Plan professional development for second-year corps member and alumni teacher leadership in conjunction with Director(s) of Program and Network Strategy
- Coach and manage four leadership coaches
- Plan and execute team development/meetings for leadership coaches
- Support & engage with the regional collective action working group to refine our knowledge and practice
- On a regular basis, you will come together with your Leadership Coaches, the Managing Director of Program Strategy, the Directors on the Program Strategy Team, the Director of Alumni Strategy & Engagement, and the Executive Director to support and inform our theory of leadership development based on what you are learning from our Learning Fellowship.
Manage Leroy “Pop” Miller (LPM) Learning Fellowship (25%)
- Lead the evolution of our Leroy “Pop” Miller Fellowship into a year-long learning fellowship/teaching award for alumni teachers, managing accompanying benefits and responsibilities
- Build a strong culture and learning community among our cohort of fellows
- Set goals, gather data, conduct mid-year and annual progress checks aligned to the intentions of our learning cohort
- Leverage the learnings from this cohort to inform our localized theory of leadership development
- Track expenses and process payments of benefits for existing LPM Fellows
Regional Team Responsibilities (10%)
- Participate in shared regional commitments such as biweekly staff meetings, quarterly staff retreats, communicating regularly with incoming corps members, and interviewing applicants to Teach For America
- Meet compliance expectations for timesheets, expense report, and performance management documentation and submission
- Support and participate in regional events, requiring occasional evening and weekend work
- Exhibit a desire to learn and develop your cultural competence and understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusiveness
Specifically, to be successful, you must be:
- A learner and iterator. You are hungry to learn and regularly seek out opportunities for feedback and growth. You see feedback as a path to strengthening your work, actively seek it out, and respond positively to it. You are open and collaborative and love working in a team environment to strengthen your practice. You view mistakes as a way to learn and are therefore eager to dissect them with peers to find a path for improvement.
- Passionate about coaching. You love your corps members, see their full potential (even when they themselves doubt it) and see your job as doing whatever it takes to help them achieve their visions. You are able to have high-stakes feedback conversations that drive towards outcomes, strengthen relationships and broaden perspectives. You define your success by how successful your corps members feel they are and actually are.
- A strong culture builder. You have experience creating a thriving, inclusive, connected culture amongst a group and believe it is mission critical to achieving short- and long-term success. You are passionate about creating a culture among adult learners where they are mutually accountable to one another and lead their learning amongst peers. You model our core values and regional values in all your interactions.
- Obsessive about outcomes. You have an incredibly strong past record of results of achieving ambitious goals, specifically in direct and lateral coaching engagements, despite obstacles and have experience doing so in complex situations with diverse teams. Your decisions are data-driven. You also have experience in change management and are motivated to achieve extraordinary performance and cultural outcomes in the midst of change.
- Self-driven and highly mature. You demonstrate an uncommon level of personal responsibility for achieving results, define broadly what is within your control persevere in the face of challenges and you’re exceptionally optimistic about what is possible. You take initiative to do what it takes to achieve success, including sharing your successes and failures openly and fully with your team.
- A conscious leader. You are always oriented towards social justice and equity. You have a pattern of modeling a set of values for others through self-reflection, curiosity and exploration, and an ability to connect and empathize with people. You have a history of operating in the spirit of our commitment to diversity and a strong understanding of the dynamics of race and class in America. You lead, and believe others must lead, through a culturally responsive lens and in a way that empowers others in our network.
Prior Experience
- 6+ years of professional experience required
- Previous Teach For America experience preferred
- Experience designing and executing leadership programming for early career teacher leaders
- Experience working with teacher leaders to determine a theory of action aligned to their understanding of the opportunities/problem in their classroom, school and community
Work Demands
- Ability to work an average of 50 hours per week, majority during business hours
- Occasional evening and weekend work required
- Occasional travel to in-person meetings in various US cities (2-3 times per year)
Skills
- Ability to set vision and direction for a team and invest others in a compelling vision
- Operate with an orientation to innovation
- Willingness to internalize and align strategy to Teach For America’s Theory of Leadership, Position on Adult Learning, and the Teaching as Leadership Broader Outcomes
- Excited to develop skills, orientations and knowledge that will lead to teacher leaders taking a systems-level approach in their work
- Desire and readiness to coach and support a team for leadership coaches who will execute the first-year teacher leader strategy