Loudon County Teacher Leader Program

Loudon County is committed to developing teacher leaders to optimize the district’s strengths and efficiently impact student readiness across the district. Given the regional opportunities for highly effective teachers, Loudon County recognizes the need to purposefully allocate resources in alignment with the district strategic plan to retain, leverage, and develop the most talented teachers across the district. The focus of the program is to provide teachers with leadership and advancement pathways beyond traditional administrative roles. Through this shared leadership, teacher leaders can become a vital component of strengthening instructional practice to improve teacher and student success.

Roles and Responsibilities

Teacher Leader

• Provides model lessons of best practices through lesson plans, videos, or live lesson demonstrations
• Models, facilitates, and/or coplans lessons or units with colleagues
• Mentors new and veteran teachers identified by the administration
• Commits to use time efficiently, as duties may require some use of regular planning time, relief time provided by principals, and/or no more than 35 hours per semester before or after school with training provided by district coaches once every 9 weeks
• Creates, leads, and/or facilitates school/district-level professional learning sessions as needed

Master Teacher Leader

• Teachers with leadership potential who wish to expand into a coaching role
• Performs teacher leader responsibilities
• Informally observes colleagues and gives feedback for growth in the areas of instruction and technology integration
• Provides follow-up to professional learning with job-embedded coaching cycle
• Attends TEAM evaluator training, but does not evaluate teachers (certification optional)

Aspiring Administrator

• Teachers with leadership potential who wish to pursue an administrative role in the future
• Performs administrative tasks with relief time provided as needed
• Leads professional learning that includes a data action cycle for follow-up
• Assists in coordinating parental involvement
• Observes/shadows administrators
• Facilitates administrative tasks and communication for grade level or content team
• Attends TEAM evaluator training, but does not formally evaluate teachers (certification required)
• Has the willingness to pursue administrative certification if not certified

Cost & Sustainability

The startup cost for the teacher leader program primarily focuses on stipends for selected teachers to participate, train, and identify incentives (such as attendance at conference and technology) to support their work. There is some cost associated to provide coverage for those teachers’ classes when they are engaged in district meetings or professional learning opportunities. Given that the funding for this program comes from district monies, it can be written into the budget recurrently.

Budget