Biographical Info

Areas We Address

A day school would engage with us if they are looking to develop or enhance:

• Classroom teachers’ ability to work effectively with colleagues as teacher leaders.
  Teacher leaders’ capacity to facilitate teacher learning as part of the ongoing work of teaching.
• An adult culture in their school where teachers feel comfortable making their practice public, sharing their challenges as well as their successes and learning with and from one another.

Expected Outcomes

Working with us, a school should expect to accomplish:

• The cultivation of a collaborative professional culture
  Retention and satisfaction of outstanding teachers by giving them opportunities to work with colleagues on the improvement of teaching and learning
• Distributed leadership for the ongoing study and improvement of teaching and learning

Key Activities

We help schools achieve their goals by implementing the following:

• Select (on the recommendation of school leaders) strong classroom teachers with the potential to become leaders of instructional improvement
• Provide 4 semesters of professional learning (both in person and online) focused on a) instructional improvement and b) school organization, culture and change
• Provide 2 years of individualized coaching as teachers develop a new identity as a teacher leader and a repertoire of practices to facilitate to teacher learning
• Enable and empower teacher leaders to work productively with colleagues to address an adaptive challenge related to student learning

Setting Expectations

To ensure the impact of our support, we expect schools to:

• Identify and nominate potential teacher leaders who are respected and trusted by school leaders and teaching colleagues
• Enable teachers to meet with colleagues on a regular basis for ongoing professional learning grounded in authentic questions, issues and problems.

To ensure the impact of our support, we expect administrators to:

• View teacher leaders as lead learners, not experts with solutions to problems
  Enable teacher leaders to meet regularly ( 1:1 and/or in appropriate groups) with the teachers involved in their initiative
• Give teacher leaders the time and space to take advantage of this professional learning opportunity and not assign them additional responsibilities for the 2 years they are in the program
• Legitimate the teacher leaders role by making public their initiative and its relationship to school priority

To ensure the impact of our support, we expect classroom teachers to:

• Participate fully in the in-person and online learning (2 in-person summer sessions at Brandeis & 2 online courses during the school year)
• Take advantage of 2 years of professional, 1:1 coaching (meetings 2x/month via Zoom)
• Set goals for their own professional learning as a teacher leader
• Reflect on their new identity and practice as a teacher leader
• Plan and facilitate learning opportunities for colleagues related to a change initiative