Teaching as leadership_workshop_final

Agenda

• Context for Our Study of Leadership

• Six Pillars of Great Leadership

• Pillars in Practice

• Self-Assessment

• Skill Strengthening

• Next Steps

Meet the presenter

Baylor University

Business Management

Higher Ed Recruitment

Teach For America

Recruitment Associate

Manager of Strategy

Director of National Alliances

Managing Director of National Alliances

Board Member of Many Hopes

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Context for Our Study of Leadership

Educational Inequity Is Our Nation’s Greatest Injustice

*[Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2005]

**[Source: Mortenson, Tom. “Family Income and Higher Education Opportunity,”Postsecondary Education Opportunity, 2005]

*** [Source: National Center for Children in Poverty, 2006]

• 9 year olds living in low-income communities are 3 grade levels behind their high-income peers*

• About half won’t graduate from high school. Those who do will perform on average at an eighth-grade level*

• Only 1 in 10 students from low-income communities will graduate from college**

WHERE CHILDREN GROW UP DETERMINES THEIR EDUCATIONAL PROSPECTS

For 16 million children growing up in poverty today, these disparities severely limit opportunities in life. Because African American, Latino or Hispanic, and Native American children are three times as likely to live in a low-income area***, children of color are disproportionately impacted by this inequity.

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Our Mission

Teach For America’s mission is to enlist our nation’s most promising future leaders in the

movement to eliminate educational inequality.

Long TermAlumni have the insight, commitment, and talent to provide sustained leadership in education and across all sectors.

Corps members gain added commitment to address the problem and insight about real solutions.

Short TermCorps members work exceptionally hard to help ensure their studentsexcel academically, thereby improving their educational and life prospects.

Our Current Footprint

In 2012:

•Teachers: More than 10,000 corps members, spread almost evenly across elementary, middle, and high schools, with under 10% in pre-K/K

•Students: More than 90% are African American or Latino; More than 80% qualify for free or reduced price lunch

•Geography: Teacher placements in 46 urban and rural regions, from Los Angeles to the Rio Grande Valley to Newark, NJ

•Alumni: More than 28,000 alumni working to influence education reform, with more than 60% working full-time in education

38,000 Corps Members and Twenty Years Later… What Have We Learned?

The Question:

What distinguishes teachers whose students are making dramatic progress despite the

challenges of poverty?

The Answer:

Leadership. Teachers who are most dramatically changing their students lives are using the same

strategies that distinguish highly effective leaders in any sector or context.

Six Pillars of Great Leadership

Six Pillars of Great Leadership

LEADERS. . .

Set big goals that align and focus a team’s energy on an audacious vision of success, creating a sense of urgency and excitement.

Invest those around them

in believing they can and want to achieve the goal and in working extraordinarily hard to achieve it.

Plan purposefully by first asking where do we want to be and how will we know we are there, before mapping “backwards” a path to that aim.

Execute effectively as they make wise adjustments to those plans based on the changing realities encountered during implementation, always keeping the ultimate objective in mind.

Continuously increase effectiveness

through critically gauging their own progress, reflecting on their performance, and seeking ways to growand change.

Work relentlessly as they define their role as doing whatever it takes—including expanding time and resources—to lead the team to success.

Set Big Goals

Set powerful, big goals that are measurable, ambitious, and meaningful.

In a college setting… As a corps member … After the corps …

• “ALL of us will go to college. The lucky ones will attend Baylor!!”

• “By the end of the year, my first graders will read, write, and do math and behave like third graders.”

• “Dance Marathon will double last year’s proceeds by bringing in $500,000 this year.”

• “The Mock Trial team will make it to nationals this year.”

• Jessica Rauch and Eli Savit (NYC ’05), The Generation Project

• Chris Barbic (Houston ’92), founder of YES College Prep

Invest Your Constituents

Get everyone intently focused on and committed to achieving the goal.


• Joseph Almeida makes 20 calls to parents each week to celebrate their children’s progress.

• KIPP teachers hang banners all over their classrooms with slogans like “ALL of us WILL learn” and “There are no shortcuts.”

• Sondra Youdelman (L.A., ’94), executive director of Community Voices Heard

• Julie Mikuta, D.C. School Board

• Jarrett Reid Whitaker, Principal, Port Houston Elementary School

• Chair for Relay for Life brings team to the children’s cancer ward at a local hospital to inspire them.

• RA meets with each hall member weekly for workshop suggestions to increase attendance and satisfaction.

Plan Purposefully

Work backwards from the big goal with meticulous plans.


• For an annual campaign, create mini financial or performance benchmarks over the duration of the campaign

• Chair of the Student Activities Committee creates an event schedule for the entire year over the summer.

• Start their lesson plans at the bottom of the page

• Create long-term plans from thinking about the end of the year first

• Dr. Michelle Smith, vascular neurosurgeon

• Brett Kimmel, Principal of WHEELS in NYC

• Jerry Hauser, CEO of the Management Center

Execute Effectively

Align all actions – micro and macro alike – around the big goal and make wise adjustments in response to changing realities.


• Restaurant shift manager assigns primary and secondary tasks to employees during set up/shut down to eliminate uncertainty or wasted time.

• Service recruitment chair creates comprehensive marketing plan.

• Mariel Elguero: “We have these symbols students can use to show me whether they ‘need help’ or ‘can give help’… I can circulate to the spots in the room where I am most needed.”

• Tim Morehouse, Olympic Silver Medalist, Sabre

• Sarah Hughes (Bay Area ’95), broadcast journalist

• David Muse, Associate Artistic Director for The Shakespeare Theater Company

Continuously Increase Effectiveness

Seek feedback and engage in frequent self-critiques.


• Meeting students in class before and after school, and at lunch

• Applying for grants

• Saturday pancakes

• Serving as nurse, social worker, etc.

• Alec Ross (Baltimore, ’94), Senior Advisor for Innovation, State Department

• Cami Andersen, Superintendent, New York City, District 79

• Campus coffee shop manager creates customer surveys to define performance gaps and readjusts employee work hours.

• Pres. of Sigma Chi holds ‘office hours’ with national reps to sit in on meetings for feedback.

Work Relentlessly

Go above and beyond conventional parameters to do what it takes to achieve the goal.


• Dr. Ira Leeds (Memphis ’06), working in rural Haiti

• David Levin and Mike Feinberg (Hou ’92), Founders of KIPP

• Taylor Delhagen: “I am an educator, social worker, mentor, colleague, administrator, activist, student and friend, all of which equate into a teacher… failing to mend the achievement gap for my students is simply not an option.”

• Biology TA revises curriculum, adds additional office hours, and adjusts class format to get students’ grades up a full grade level.

• Alternative Spring Break leader rearranges trip despite location change.

Self-Assessment

Skill Strengthening

Next Steps

• Learn more about how these leadership principles apply in the classroom at

www.teachingasleadership.org

• Apply to the Corps at www.teachforamerica.org - Our 1st DL is Friday, August 16th

• Explore undergraduate leadership opportunities at www.teachforamerica.org/support-us/action-center/opportunities-underclassmen

• Tweet your biggest lesson from today’s #CwSI workshop @teachforamerica and use #NSCSSummit

One day, all children in this nation will

have the opportunity to attain an excellent

education.

Next Steps

Teaching as leadership_workshop_final

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