09.09.16Welcoming Darryl Williams
Darryl Williams
I’m thrilled to announce that we’ve added a new senior member to our team. Darryl Williams, who was formerly Chief Officer for School Leadership at Houston ISD and who before that was a Regional Superintendent with Achievement First, has joined us as Senior Fellow for School Leadership.
I’ve known Darryl and admired his work for a long time. He was a positive outlier as a third grade teacher here in Albany and was one of the first people we taped in the project that ultimately became “Teach Like a Champion.” Some of the videos from his classroom days are among the most compelling and longest serving in our collection.
I’ve also had the pleasure of watching Darryl lead teacher development and found his insight about the classroom, his feedback to teachers, and his knowledge of instruction to be among the best I’ve observed. It’s always been a goal of mine to work with him. Now, after wider travels in the world of education, he joins us, bringing experience as a senior leader in both charter and district settings. This is important to us: our interest is in teaching and how to make people better at it wherever they work, and his insights will help us be even more responsive to issues distinctive to our colleagues who teach in larger districts.
Darryl’s work with the TLAC team will focus on supporting schools and school leaders to build the kinds of environments and conditions that allow for strong development of teachers so in addition to leading workshops and analyzing teachers, he will be heading up our efforts to offer follow-up support to schools and networks that attend our trainings: helping them to plan professional development activities, giving them feedback to improve those activities; helping them identify staff development goals etc.
“Teachers are undeniably the most critical variable in ensuring scholars receive an exceptional education,” Darryl recently told me. “What we’ve learned from many of our partners is that teachers develop, thrive and achieve amazing results within conditions that are ultimately established by leaders. It’s fascinating to observe the varying ways our most effective leaders balance the responsibility of establishing clear standards/expectations for accountability while also committing to their teacher’s professional learning and development.”
You can read a bit more about Darryl here. Suffice it to say we are incredibly excited.
