BTC  FELLOWSHIP DIRECTOR

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

The BTC Fellowship Director will lead and manage the implementation of the BTC SRILE Fellowship. This includes managing a team of facilitators (independent contractors) who design and deliver teacher PD sessions, occasionally designing additional whole and small group PD sessions for BTC teachers, monitoring the implementation of BTC pedagogical elements in BTC classrooms, providing direct and ongoing individual teacher coaching, and assisting the program team in refining the teacher fellowship program beyond the pilot year(s). The role is supported by an operations associate who handles logistics and on-site support for trainings. 

The BTC Fellowship Director sits on the Program and Innovation Team, and will report to the Founder & CEO for the first several months on staff. The team also includes a Director of Program Design, Manager of Data and Learning, and a Program, Operations, and Administration Associate.  This role involves consistent  travel.

Our ideal candidate for the role of BTC Fellowship Director will enthusiastically lead and coach teachers 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 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 an outstanding project manager, a committed coach and mentor, are a creative, imaginative, strategic thinker.

OBJECTIVES

• To improve the instructional practice of fellows in BTC core elements through professional development and direct coaching.
• To manage and execute the BTC Fellowship program such that fellows and school leaders find participation in the BTC Fellowship valuable and relevant to their practice and an efficient use of their time.
• To foster strong relationships and affinity between BTC, fellowship participants, and school leaders.
• To support the overall strategy for growth and development of BTC’s work as an active leader on the Program & Innovation team. 

RESPONSIBILITIES

Teacher Coaching and Support

The BTC Fellowship Director will ensure that teacher fellows are growing in their practice by providing outstanding coaching, support, and guidance. This includes:

• Providing coaching and support for a select group of BTC Fellows; 
• Supporting the integration of BTC SRILE elements into fellows’ lesson planning and classroom instruction by creating and monitoring ongoing instructional assignments and follow-up exercises;
• Managing an evaluation dashboard to monitor fellowship efficacy/impact that align with coaching and support plans, in order to provide regular updates on progress towards goals; and 
• Maintaining communication with school-based leadership staff in each of the six pilot sites to maximize synergies between BTC’s work and the schools’ broader professional development strategies while also solving for any conflict or misalignment with BTC programming and the schools’ PD strategies.  

Program Development, Management, and Execution

The BTC Fellowship Director will oversee the fellowship, ensuring that it is an outstanding, rigorous, and high-impact experience for both teachers and the students they serve. This includes:

• Planning, coordinating, and managing the execution the BTC SRILE Fellowship to encompass a series of professional development sessions, content specific professional development experiences, individual teacher coaching, and instructructional rounds;
• Developing and delivering training for school-based SRILE Coaches, and then overseeing their growth and development as coaches;
• In coordination with the Director of Program Design, recruiting and managing a portfolio of designers and facilitators to design and facilitate high quality professional development sessions for BTC fellows;
• Delivering and analyzing ongoing fellow  evaluations, collecting data in alignment with the Fellowship Data, Learning & Evaluation Plan;
• Using fellows’ feedback to ensure continuous improvement of professional development sessions and coaching, sharing insights and learnings with the full program team to inform continuous improvement of the BTC fellowship model;
• Providing high quality and timely communications to fellows to ensure they are both informed and have clarity on the objectives and purpose of program activities, the program calendar, session dates, logistics, and assignments and coaching objectives;
• Ensuring strong attendance and engagement by fellows in all aspects of BTC SRILE Fellowship programming; and
• In partnership with the Director of Program Design, managing the design and execution of standalone workshop series as needed.

Organizational  Development and Communication

The BTC Fellowship Director will be an active contributor to the overall health of the organization, serving in a key leadership capacity to expand BTC’s visibility, reach, and impact. This includes:

• As needed, supporting fundraising by sharing program updates, insights, and stories that highlight the impact of BTC;
• Supporting  marketing and communications work by identifying fellowship contributors for BTC newsletters, eblasts, and social media strategy; and
• Elevating bright spots, stories, and perspectives from the SRILE Fellowship that can be leveraged to tell positive stories of our work, what’s happening in our schools, and our Fellows. 

EXPERIENCE

• At least seven years of work experience, including direct responsibility for managing a program and its outcomes;
• Three to five years working in teacher development or teacher coaching, with a successful track record of creating professional development that helps teachers to improve their impact via instructional practice;
• At least two years teaching Black students;
• Proven success planning and implementing large-scale projects and executing programmatic events with multiple moving components; and
• Demonstrated history of building relationships with multiple stakeholders, including but not limited to teachers, school principals, and/or district leaders.

SKILLS & KNOWLEDGE

• Deep knowledge of adult learning theory and K-12 instructional practice;
• Strong training and coaching skills;
• Outstanding interpersonal skills and ability to lead adults;
• Ability to build replicable systems and processes for managing program work flows;
• Ability to think conceptually (abstract ideas), analytically (use thinking and reasoning to solve problems), creatively (produce new concepts and ideas), and with goal orientation (focus on a goal and obtain a predetermined result);
• Outstanding written and verbal communication and solid detail orientation; and
• Strong-decision making abilities.

OTHER QUALIFICATIONS

• Passionate about addressing issues of educational inequity and achieving Black student and community self-determination and liberation;
• Interest in and demonstrated experience engaging emancipatory or liberation based education models;
• Willingness and excitement for the entrepreneurial spirit required in a new program and startup organization;
• Willingness to challenge the status quo to innovate, iterate, and create new programs;
• Commitment to a high degree of intellectual rigor and excellence in work products;
• Comfort with ambiguity;
• Ability to make critical decisions independently, grounded in organizational values and beliefs;
• Desire to learn from mistakes, revise thinking, and try again; and
• Experience in and appetite for personal development work that accelerates professional learning and growth.

REPORTING RELATIONSHIPS

The BTC Fellowship Director will report directly to the Founder & CEO.

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-Atlanta US preferred.

WORK DEMANDS

BTC is currently a nascent, geographically distributed team, which means the BTC Fellowship Director will need to be comfortable working from home, able to travel regularly between sites (up to 50% travel), and willing to work occasional evenings and weekends. 

APPLICATION

Interested candidates should submit a resume at BTC Fellowship Director. 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.