VirtualVocations

Remote Director, Regional Outreach

Teach For America is the national corps of outstanding recent college graduates of all academic majors who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong leaders in the effort to expand educational opportunity. Our mission is to build the movement to eliminate educational inequity that exists along socioeconomic lines.

Since our founding in 1990, we have become the nation’s largest provider of teachers for low-income communities, and have been recognized for building a pipeline of leaders committed to educational equity and excellence. This year, approximately 5,000 corps members are teaching in 26 urban and rural areas across the country, collectively reaching approximately 440,000 students. At the same time, more than 12,000 alumni are working within education and from every field to effect fundamental change.

We are a high-growth, performance-driven organization, with over a $100 million budget and 800+ staff. We operate in an entrepreneurial and fast-paced work environment, maintain focus on quantitative measures, and are committed to continuous improvement. While approximately 50 percent of our staff members are alumni of our program, fully half – from support staff to senior management – bring a range of outside experience and perspectives to the organization. Our staff is diverse in every respect, and we are committed to maximizing the diversity of our organization as we want to engage all those who can contribute to our effort and ensure our access to and participation in the circles of influence in our diverse society.

Fueled by a sense of urgency to do more, we have launched an ambitious plan to grow in scale while at the same time increasing our corps members’ short-term and long-term impact. By 2010, we aim to have some 7,500 corps members teaching in 33 regions and to foster the continued leadership of some 23,000 alumni. To support these goals we are working to grow our operating budget to over $150 million and the size of our staff to over 1,000.

Summary

In advance of launching its new corps member and alumni website, Teach For America is founding a new team to promote the self-directed learning of its teachers. The team will enable and inspire corps members, alumni and staff to use Teach For America's best knowledge to date -- and build upon it -- in order to create a vibrant hub of ongoing professional development. Given the nature of multimedia and online learning, the team will address this mission by amassing and developing concrete resources, cultivating community through discussion boards, forums and social networking, curating a space for knowledge development through wikis, showcasing the stories of classrooms across the country, and creating online workshops and courses. The team's "Multimedia and Online Learning" shop will also support the other design teams of Teach For America in their pursuits to deliver content through multimedia. Teach For America seeks individuals of all ethnic and racial backgrounds to apply for the position.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities will include, but are not limited to:

• Overseeing the development and execution of marketing strategies to build a vibrant community of participants on the Teaching and Learning Center online

• Liaising with the Teacher Preparation, Support and Development Teams to maximize formal opportunities to introduce TFANet to corps members

• Prompting program staff to make contributions to the site in the form of underlying factors they are discovering and the learning experiences they are finding/crafting to address those needs

• Promoting resources from the Resource Exchange to program directors explicitly, helping them trust and use the resources (e.g. publicizing resources that link to common underlying factors and sharing testimonials about their success)

• Evaluating and addressing the effectiveness of solutions by observing program staff in action and partnering with the Teacher Support and Development Team to improve the success of staff-driven learning experiences

Education and Experience

• Bachelors degree required

• Years of work experience: 3-5 years minimum

• Experience marketing products and events required

• Experience working with teachers preferred

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Passionate belief in the mission of Teach For America, and commitment to ensuring that more students growing up today in our nation’s lowest-income communities have the educational opportunities they deserve

• Strong critical thinking and problem solving skills

• Strong project management skills

• Strong writing required

• Moderate travel required

• Exemplifies Teach For America’s core values

Compensation

Salary for this position is competitive and depends on prior experience. In addition, a comprehensive benefits package is included.

Employer Posted:Wednesday, April 30, 2008