Although there is no common definition for teacher leadership, the concept is continually advanced as a key component for both the success of schools and the professionalization of teachers (Boles & Troen, 1994; Dozier, 2007; Greenlee, 2007; Lieberman, 1987; Smith, 1999). Teachers need to be given opportunities to leave the isolation of their classrooms to collaborate with others in order to build leadership capacity (Dozier, 2007). The development of teacher leadership is increasingly viewed as an important factor in improving schools, improving student achievement, and retaining teachers for the long term (Boles & Troen, 1994; Dozier, 2007; Greenlee, 2007; Lieberman, 1987; Smith, 1999). Many educators and educational researchers have put forward standards and guidelines for teacher leadership. The most recent contribution to this initiative is a set of teacher leader standards developed by the Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium in 2011 which are the basis for this study. The consortium that developed the teacher leader model standards did so with the intention to provide guidance about teacher leadership and to delineate for universities and other providers of professional development a set of guidelines for the preparation of future teacher leaders (Teacher Leader Model Standards, 2011). The standards have recently been adopted by two teacher leadership certificate programs in southern California. This study seeks to discover how teachers define the term teacher leadership and then compare those findings to the seven domains of the teacher leader model standards. Further, it aims to discover if these standards are in alignment with the viewpoints of practicing teachers.