Teacher Teams

Teacher Leadership in the NYC Department of Education is driven by ongoing professional collaboration. Professional collaboration can manifest in many forms, most notably teacher teams. Whether grade teams, content teams, inquiry groups, instructional cabinets, or school leadership teams, teacher leaders are valuable designers and facilitators of professional collaboration opportunities.

Teacher leaders strategically plan and facilitate high-quality and relevant teacher team meetings. Team meetings are centered on the student learning experience and follow a planned process or task, such as using responsive protocols in meeting agendas that are considerate of engaging participants in learning, performing a task, or reflecting on team’s product, process or learning. Teacher leaders routinely reflect on successes and challenges as a facilitator. Teacher leaders communicate with colleagues in order to collectively decide on changes for future team meetings, and create conditions for all team members to follow-through on shared actions.

This collection highlighting Eximius Preparatory High School in the Bronx illustrates how teacher leaders are leading their teacher teams in the 2019-2020 SY. Specifically, Eximius articulates how their school-wide inquiry process is embedded in their teacher teams and led by teacher leaders in order to collectively shift teacher and student practice according to the needs and focus of their school community.

The corresponding artifacts are highlighted in the video, and meant to be utilized as teachers and schools are implementing teacher teams throughout the city.