DIRECTOR OF PROGRAM DESIGN

POSITION DESCRIPTION

ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION

The Black Teacher Collaborative (BTC) believes in the genius and beauty of Black children and the unique role of Black Teachers in cultivating their gifts. BTC seeks to ensure that all Black children will have challenging, affirming, and innovative learning environments staffed by a critical mass of Black educators who are equipped to maximize their shared racial identity to push students’ academic growth, sociopolitical consciousness, and socio-emotional well-being.

Black Teacher Collaborative provides structured ongoing professional development opportunities for Black educators to build the mindsets, skills, experience, and knowledge needed to actualize their effectiveness and impact in racially congruent learning centers; with the ultimate goal of the advancement of Black children, our families, and our communities.

PROGRAM

BTC’s current programmatic scope focuses on improving teacher impact in shared racial identity learning environments (SRILE). BTC is developing an innovative pedagogy, professional development curriculum and teacher fellowship for Black teachers. BTC launched a pilot version of the fellowship with 35 fellows in six sites (Baton Rouge, Louisiana, New Orleans, Louisiana and Atlanta, Georgia) in the 2017-2018 school year.

ROLE OVERVIEW

We are seeking an experienced, dedicated, innovative and entrepreneurial teacher developer with expertise in instructional design and K-12 curriculum to design the next phase of our Black teacher development program and provide ongoing design and curricular guidance to future programmatic efforts. This is an extraordinary opportunity for a visionary instructional leader who can draw on their experience as a teacher/leader to develop a program and a curriculum for a wide array of Black teachers.

The immediate work of the Director of Program Design is to leverage the insights from our pilot year and lead the development and design of the next iteration of the BTC Teacher professional development fellowship. This includes identifying the performance, skills, knowledge and mindsets that Black teachers teaching Black students need to best leverage a shared racial identity learning environment and creating or selecting learning experiences to develop the identified teacher competencies. In the long term, the Director of Program Design will oversee the continued design of the fellowship and lead the efforts to design additional ways to share BTC’s SRILE pedagogy with a broader group of Black teachers (i.e. workshop series).

Our ideal candidate for the role of Director of Program Design will design and lead from a core belief that Black teachers are uniquely positioned to cultivate the genius and beauty of Black children, and will be passionate about creating conditions to help them succeed. This person will also operate with a belief that education is a vehicle for personal and social liberation and be familiar with the educational philosophies and teaching pedagogies associated with Black Education and/or Liberatory Education. They are also extremely attentive to detail, love instructional design, and are a creative, imaginative, strategic thinker.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Planning & Analysis

The Director of Program Design will employ various methods of research and strategic analysis to ensure the BTC’s programming is always on the leading edge of teacher development and pedagogical innovation. This includes:

• Conducting a landscape analysis of existing external professional development interventions serving in-service teachers;
• Using landscape analysis and additional rigorous evidence to fully design and continuously evolve the core Black teacher development program/fellowship. This includes learning arc (what are teachers learning and why) and program components (how/where are they learning it) as well as program model (how should the fellowship be structured);
• Staying abreast of learning theory, real world teaching practice and innovation, research related to effectively training educators, and the experience of Black educators in education, and adjusting program curriculum/model accordingly; and
• Staying abreast of emerging instructional technologies and make recommendation about when to adopt certain systems to enhance learning experiences for BTC teachers.

Program Design & Development

The Director of Program Design will create a teacher training fellowship for developing Black teachers to teach using a Black Liberatory Pedagogy in their classrooms and design a series of learning experiences that deepen teachers’ skills, knowledge, and mindsets, including:

• Refining existing or creating new BTC program model in partnership with the VP of Program & Innovation;
• Developing learning scope and sequence for BTC teachers appropriate for the chosen programmatic intervention;
• Designing the instructional content and materials - possibly in partnership with a team of expert consultants selected by the Director of Program Design - using tested instructional design theories, practices and methods, which may include traditional instructor-led courses, online programs, web-based learning experiences, audio, video, simulations, role-plays, games etc. Leverage and model culturally aligned & liberatory pedagogy reflective of Black education traditions in all program elements & design; 
• In coordination with the BTC Fellowship Director, recruiting and managing a portfolio of design consultants and facilitators to help design and deliver the designated program experiences and curriculum; and
• In the long term, developing additional programmatic intervention products to advance the proliferation and adoption of the BTC SRILE Pedagogy by Black teachers serving Black students (i.e. workshop series). 

Program Evaluation & Monitoring

The Director of Program Design will develop and refine metrics to assess the impact and influence of the BTC training and support programs on teachers, students and schools.This includes:

• In coordination with the BTC’s Data Learning Advisory Group, developing and implementing metrics for measuring the effectiveness of each program element;

• Designing systems, processes and rhythms for continuous program measurement and refinement that evaluate BTC’s program, instruction, and curriculum using designed systems; and

• Consistently iterating on learning experiences, curriculum, or instructional methods to improve efficacy, impact, and efficiency of programmatic interventions.

EXPERIENCE:

• Three to five years of experience and proven successful track record in teacher development, curriculum design, and adult learning instructional design;
• At least two years teaching Black students preferred; and
• Proven success with facilitating and designing adult learning experiences.

SKILLS & KNOWLEDGE:

• Deep knowledge of learning theories and instructional design models;
• Familiarity with instructional technology preferred but not required;
• Outstanding written and verbal communication and solid detail orientation;
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to relate to the life and work of teachers, principals, and other education leaders in K-12 schools;
• Ability to think conceptually (abstract ideas), analytically (use thinking and reasoning to solve problems), and creatively (produce new ideas or concepts); and
• Ability to develop new systems, team rhythms and workflow processes.

OTHER QUALIFICATIONS:

• Passionate about addressing issues of educational inequity and achieving liberation and self-determination for Black students and the Black community;
• Interest and demonstrated experience in engaging emancipatory or liberation based education models;
• Enthusiasm for the entrepreneurial spirit required in a new program and start up organization;
• Willingness to challenge the status quo to innovate, iterate, and create new programs;
• Demonstrated commitment to a high degree of intellectual curiosity, rigor and excellence in work products;
• Exceptionally goal-oriented and outcomes focused;
• Demonstrated comfort with ambiguity
• Demonstrated ability to make critical decisions, independently grounded in organizational values and beliefs; and
• Desire to learn from mistakes, revise thinking, and try again.

REPORTING RELATIONSHIPS

The Director of Program Design will report directly to the VP of Program & Innovation, and may periodically manage a team of consultants.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS 

Compensation will be commensurate with experience. Employee benefits include medical, dental, vision, and life insurance, a 401K plan, and a generous paid time-off package.

LOCATION

Flexible location; Atlanta, New Orleans, Southeast or Mid-Atlantic US preferred.

WORK DEMANDS

BTC is currently a nascent, geographically distributed team, which means the Director of Program will need to be comfortable working from home, able to travel regularly between sites (up to 25% travel), and willing to work occasional evenings and weekends. 

APPLICATION

Interested candidates should submit a resume at Director of Program Design. In lieu of a cover letter, we ask that you submit a brief statement outlining your philosophy of Black education. Please limit your response to 2500 characters or less.

The Black Teacher Collaborative provides equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees.