Dear Educator,
How do you define teacher leadership? Do you consider yourself or any teachers with whom you work to be teacher leaders? What roles do teacher leaders currently serve within the educational community? How can teacher leaders help to move education forward and provide our students with 21st century skills?
We, as practicing teacher leaders, are excited to invite practicing teacher leaders to join us as we launch the Teacher Leader Model Standards Community this spring. We can’t wait to virtually explore, discuss, and promote the Teacher Leader Model Standards.
The Teacher Leader Model Standards represent the various forms teacher leadership can take on a school, district, state, or national level.
These standards were created by the Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium, an assembly of partner organizations devoted to spreading the message of teacher leadership and its impact on student achievement.
Check out the website created for these standards (http://www.teacherleaderstandards.org/), launched in October of 2011, and see what the buzz among teacher leaders is all about.
The community will be housed on the Teacher Leaders Network, a virtual platform monitored by The Center for Teaching Quality. Members of the community will have the opportunity to participate in a number of ways, including sharing examples of teacher leadership, participating in asynchronous virtual discussions, and engaging in webinars around topics of teacher leadership reform, policy, and practice.
As a community, our goals are modeled after those of the Teacher Leader Model Standards. We aim to:
- promote awareness of teacher leadership and what this looks like in action
- analyze research to expand our understanding of teacher leadership
- contribute experiences and examples of teacher leadership in development
To achieve these goals, we again invite you explore this community, which we hope will inspire you and other teacher leaders and provide a vehicle for your expertise to be shared beyond your own classroom.
Please consider encouraging teacher leaders to join the Teacher Leader Model Standards Community. For additional information, please visit the website (http://www.teacherleaderstandards.org/) . Interested teacher leaders may visit http://www.teacherleaders.org/member-survey to complete the survey. (Please note: When prompted to select a Teacher Leaders Network community, applicants should select “Teacher Leader Model Standards”.)
Sincerely,
Sarah Henchey, Anne Jolly, Danielle Kovach , and Patrick Ledesma,
Virtual Community Organizers for the Teacher Leader Model Standards Community
Join Teacher Leader Model Standards on Facebook
Follow Teacher Leader Model Standards on Twitter @teachlead .