Director of Knowledge,
New Orleans
Position Specification
THE ORGANIZATION:
Leading Educators develops teacher-leaders in order to raise student
achievement and retain talented educators in high-need schools. We aim to
ensure that public education successfully trains its middle managers, thus
retaining our best teachers and bolstering the pipeline of future principals.
Our flagship program is a two-year Fellowship program where teacher-leaders
engage in frequent leadership development sessions, and strengthen their
ability to coach and provide feedback to other teachers. Results from the 2011–
2012 school year show that students of teams led by New Orleans Fellows grew
12 times more than their counterparts across the district while students of
teams led by Kansas City Fellows grew 5 times more than their counterparts
across the district.
Leading Educators also offers Strategic Support Initiatives (SSI), customized
teacher leadership development consulting to districts, charter management
organizations (CMOs), and non-profit organizations. This contract-based work
may include delivery of training modules; teacher leader recruitment, selection,
and retention consulting; train-the-trainer projects; and evaluation consulting.
For example, this year Leading Educators partnered with Houston Independent
School District to implement a Teacher-Leader Pathways pilot for over 60
teacher-leaders across 20 schools.
Leading Educators has trained over 160 teacher-leaders in programs in New
Orleans, Kansas City, and Houston, and is currently launching programming in
Washington, D.C. Building on success in these regions, Leading Educators is
assembling an ambitious team to expand the program nationally. The work is
fast-paced and entrepreneurial; the expansion model aims to serve 12 regions
by 2016.
THE POSITION:
The Director of Knowledge is a new position developed to shape internal
knowledge management practices and establish the research agenda for
Leading Educators. This role will identify what is working in leadership
development across Leading Educators, communicate these effective practices
within our network to support our schools and regions, and beyond Leading
Educators’ network to share knowledge, communicating what we know and
learn from others.
To do this, the Director will learn what needs exist and what questions are on
the horizon for our schools and regions on the topic of leadership development.
The Director of Knowledge will oversee the management of the Fellowship
Portal and design, build, and oversee Leading Educators’ Learning Management
system, the Teacher Leader Community. Working in collaboration with the
Program Team, the Director of Knowledge will prioritize those needs and
questions; identify solutions and tools both within and beyond our network;
and communicate those solutions and tools in a way our schools and external
stakeholders can digest and implement successfully.
The Director of Knowledge will assume the following responsibilities:
Sharing Platforms Management
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Create a culture of sharing among Leading Educators users and staff
Oversee and manage the day to day execution of the Learning Management
System, Fellowship Portal, Salesforce, and other sharing platforms to build
learning across regions and end-users
Manage the development of sharing platforms by establishing and
overseeing workflows and monitoring usage
Set up and implement document libraries, forums, and other contentsharing tools
Ensure information sharing is synching with other platforms appropriately
and support end-user issues by solving the problem and working with
developers when appropriate
Establish processes for monitoring and evaluating the usefulness of the
Learning Management System for teacher-leaders
Meet and collaborate with staff members around the on-going
development of information sharing
Provide trainings for end-users, including creating training materials, on-line
training videos, and how-to documents
Knowledge Management
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Understand from Leading Educators’ stakeholders what leadership
development knowledge is needed
Establish criteria for a research agenda for Leading Educators, both research
to be used for internal organization improvement and research to be shared
with the larger education reform community
Capture and disseminate effective talent, leadership development, and
academic practices in a variety of formats including video capture and
resource sharing
Establish strong relationships and effective partnerships between Leading
Educators and partner organizations like national consulting firms,
universities, state education departments, and policy think tanks
Serve as a research spokesperson for the organization in both national and
local venues by attending and presenting at conferences and publishing
content
Strategy and Thought Leadership
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Plan and execute other key initiatives that support the sharing of best
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practices and that grow leaders across our network, including the Learning
Management System, Fellowship Portal, and video capture
Collaborate with others to share findings across the organization that relate
to teacher leadership (e.g. common challenges and emerging needs of
regions)
Support the rest of the team in various activities including system
administration, systems support, and strategic consulting
Support the needs of coaching, facilitators, and regional and national teams
through knowledge management
Work closely with Program team members to maximize learning of teacherleaders and continually sharpen the direction of the organization
Leadership
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CANDIDATE
REQUIREMENTS:
Direct the day-to-day growth of Knowledge Management through start-up,
pilot, and critical growth stages, building staff and systems
Hire a learning management team and manage its performance,
deliverables, and overall success
In order to be successful in this role, ideal candidates should have:
 A bachelor’s degree
 6+ years’ experience in the education research filed with significant portion
of that experience in education policy
 Strong quantitative skills and research design skills and experience
 Familiarity with key national education research issues relevant to teachers
and teacher policy
 The ability to translate research findings into layperson language and
understanding
 Excellent oral written and communication skills
 A results-oriented, goal-driven, collaborative approach to work
 A passionate commitment to improving public education by retaining and
supporting outstanding teachers in high-needs schools
 Outstanding problem-solving skills, with the ability to manage multiple
projects and ambitious deadlines simultaneously
 Excellent organizational and project management skills
 Self-motivated with ability to anticipate and take initiative to work
independently or collaboratively as needed
 Fluency in Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint,
Publisher) and basic Web browsers and searches
 Familiarity with Salesforce a plus
LOCATION:
New Orleans, LA
COMPENSATION:
Salary and benefits will be competitive, commensurate with experience.
TO APPLY:
Please follow the link to submit your application form and choose Director of
Knowledge from the pick-list:
http://www.clicktools.com/survey?iv=1ucixicfg1x87
Leading Educators is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate
against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color,
religion, sex, or natural origin.