Leadership Traits

TFA LV Arc of Development for Teacher Leaders

What are the Leadership Traits?

These four traits are our best guess at what it will take for our alums to create transformative change in the education system. Our 2025 vision guides us to ensure we have alumni in key roles in education - including as teachers, school leaders, school system leaders, civic leaders, social entrepreneurs, …. In order for our alums to not only get into those roles but to create transformative impact for students in those roles, they need to be rooted in Las Vegas, centered on student excellence, critically conscious & emotionally resilient, and lead with an innovative systems-change lens. While this is our best thinking for now, this is a living document that will evolve over time as we continue to learn from the amazing leadership in our community about what it takes for us to collectively lead towards our mission of One Day all children will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas Leadership Traits

  • Rooted in Las Vegas

    Our alums live and breathe Las Vegas. They understand the past, care about the present, and are thinking about the future. They deeply know and love our community and are committed to the people and place because they have found their niche here. They are a group of diverse leaders that have a network that extends far beyond their TFA network and includes relationships with the people of Las Vegas, colleagues, organizations, students, and families. Our alums leverage these networks to inform their passions, experience, and to work towards causes that will improve the lives of their fellow community members because of their deep sense of belonging to people and place.

  • Centered on Student Excellence

    Our alums are contributing to transformative student impact in Las Vegas. They embody empowering mindsets around academic excellence, personal growth, culturally responsive pedagogy, and access to pathways of opportunity. The schools/organizations they work in, lead, or sit on boards are having significant impact for students and serve as proof points of what’s possible for students in Las Vegas.

  • Critically Conscious & Emotionally Resilient Leaders

    Our alums are living out and inspiring others to live out our core values and commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusiveness. They do continual self-work to build their emotional resilience capacity, to ensure they have a deep understanding of historical and current system oppression, and to build awareness of how their own identities relate to themselves and others. They can build deep and meaningful relationships across all lines of difference - identity based and ideological. They believe deeply in the power of building a broad, diverse, and inclusive coalition and that it is the only way to achieve our mission.

  • Innovators with a systems-change lens

    Our alums think outside the box in order to disrupt the status quo. They are well-versed on research and best practices in education, and learn from systems of excellence. They are deeply aware of the needs of the community and are able to strategically problem-solve, create, and innovate to ensure we are propelling forward towards our mission of One Day. They are also able to motivate, inspire, and influence others towards a shared vision for educational equity. This looks like everything from innovation in classrooms to innovative school models to social entrepreneurship needed in our community

What kind of coaching is available to achieve these traits?

As we learned from the past, we get better student results when first year corps members get additional support and consistent touch points, so we restructured our cohorts to enable first year corps member coaches to have much smaller cohorts to provide more frequent support:

  • 4 first year coaches.

  • Ratio: 1 coach per 14 first year corps members.

  • Classroom visits and feedback cycle: every 1-3 weeks.

For second year corps members, the most common feedback was teachers wanted more opportunities to build community, so we have restructured second year cohorts to be grouped together based on which part of the community corps members are teaching in.

  • 3 second year coaches.

  • Ratio: 1 coach per 28 second year corps members.

  • Classroom visits and feedback cycle: every 4-5 weeks.

Coaches focus on student excellence to increase culture of achievement and rigor in the classrooms with a goal of a year and a half of learning in one year. Their feedback is aligned to Nevada Educator Performance Framework (NEPF) indicators. This means that our coaches are able to give more specific feedback after an observation or a check-in to strengthen corps members’ instructional practices with students.

How do we achieve these traits?

Dive into the specific goals for each level in more detail below.

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