Background: What is our WHY?

Boston Public Schools has a rich tradition of teacher leadership, with teachers influencing curriculum, teaching and learning, professional development, and policy in their schools, the wider district, and beyond. Our current system though, is characterized by isolated, ad-hoc opportunities for leadership with a lack of transparency and equity of access. This is, in part, because there is not a district-wide teacher leadership strategy with coherent, visible, and predictable leadership opportunities available for teachers to assume and to aspire to within a career-long growth continuum.

Over the past few years, there has been investment in developing teacher leadership programs within BPS that empower teachers to lead when they see challenges they want to solve within their school and the district. However, many of these new ideas and practices exist in isolation without a system or strategy for sharing the learning across schools.

After several fits and starts, this grant, catalyzed by our transition to new leadership gives us an opportunity to coalesce around a common vision for teacher leadership in service of our students.