MS Content Leads; SY, Middle School

Purpose

The Content Lead is a teacher leader collaborating closely with the Principal and Assistant Principal. They are responsible for creating a culture of high academic expectations and ensuring teacher support and development around teaching and learning, e.g., lesson planning and data-informed practices. The Content Lead receives a stipend for additional work outside of their teaching role and hours.

• Facilitate weekly planning meetings to support teachers in their intellectual prep and understanding targeted standards for a unit (or the text and standards if ELA)
• Lead unit launches to ensure the team utilizes backwards planning, is grounded in exemplars, and prioritizes appropriate standards
• Collaborate with an AP to prioritize pacing for the unit and to clarify where individual teacher choice points exist in daily lesson plans
• Model the use of exemplars to drive discussions about planning
• Utilize an anti-racist lens when facilitating discussions about curriculum, instruction, and planning

• Use See It, Name It, Do It structure to facilitate weekly data meetings grounded in standards and student work, such as exit tickets, interim assessments, unit assessments, etc.
• Support the team in prioritizing which student assignments to review each week
• Actively use Jumprope to understand trends in student learning and mastery of standards
• Collaborate with an AP to identify strengths and gaps in student learning
• Keep academic goals front and center and report out regularly to the team around progress and challenges
• Utilize an anti-racist lens when looking at data to help identify equity strengths and gaps: ensure student data compilations, meetings, and reports provide data for subgroups including but not limited to race, gender, language learners, and students with learning disabilities

• Ensure the team has access to curriculum materials, unit and daily lesson plans, and all assessments (
  
  NOTE:
  
  The focus here is on making sure people have access to the unit plans, lesson plans, and assessments that already exist. Any new units will either come from a professional curriculum site or from paid curriculum writers on our team who get a lot of feedback. This is materials management and organization, with small tweaks, and supporting the team in intellectually prepping.)
• Create a curriculum and assessment calendar in close collaboration with an AP so teachers know what to teach when and are prepared for administration of assessments
• Collaborate with the Director of Operations and/or AP around test administration (e.g., ANet, MCAS, ACCESS)
• Keep Dropbox and/or Google drive organized so teachers can easily access needed materials (if we do not adopt curriculum materials that are already posted somewhere).
• Ensure teachers are clear about priority standards and key resources to use for tutoring.
• Internalize Veritas Anti-Racism Standards and utilize them to ensure curriculum reflects our students’ lives and that assessments are intentionally developed and selected with anti-racism principles in mind.
• Be available to support teachers who need extra guidance around intellectual prep

• Effectively communicate clear grade-level academic goals at each meeting
• Ensure space for multiple voices/perspectives at all grade-level meetings while also being transparent about decision-making, leading to concrete decisions, next steps, and progress toward goals
• Model positive, assets-based communication around student strengths and growth areas
• Use the delegation cycle effectively to ensure team has access to curriculum and assessment materials and resources they need
• Send weekly forecasting emails or meetings to help teams prioritize and manage the workflow

• Encourage team collaboration around anti-racism and equity work at Veritas using key tools such as Veritas Anti-racism Standards and the Teaching for Equity Framework from Leading Educators
• Model how to effectively partner with Special Education and MLL Teachers to support student needs
• Support team members in learning how to navigate and utilize tech platforms, e.g.,…