Opportunity Culture® Fellow Bobby Miles, a multi-classroom leader for an eighth-grade science team in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, will share his views on Tuesday, November 10, as a panelist at the launch event for the Teach Strong Campaign, a national partnership...
Beverley Tyndall
The Whole Package: 12 Factors of High-Impact Teacher-Leader Roles
Too often, “teacher leadership” roles intended to attract and retain teachers—especially great ones—and close student learning gaps fail to produce the intended impact. This two-page brief offers a quick list of the common pitfalls of designing such roles, and a chart of the 12 essential factors for creating high-quality, lasting teacher-leader roles.
Opportunity Culture®: Introduction for Educators
Slide deck without speaker notes | Slide deck with speaker notes This engaging slide deck speaks directly to teachers, providing an overview, with speaker notes, of why students, educators, schools and districts need an Opportunity Culture®, how it works, and where...
How One Union-District Partnership Launched an Opportunity Culture®
For superintendents in collective bargaining districts who wonder how an Opportunity Culture could work, Syracuse, N.Y., educators have advice on working with unions. This vignette details the collaboration between the Syracuse district administration and union in launching an Opportunity Culture, highlighting actions to consider and critical moments in the process.
Opportunity Culture® Voices: Keep on Keeping On
“I’m practically a Syracuse City Schools lifetime member—from student, to teacher, to coach, then nearly into administration—but with a happy detour. I got to return to the classroom in a new position of multi-classroom leader. As the MCL, I lead a team of teachers while continuing to teach—the sweet spot for this point in my career.
But at a school new to me, in a new leadership role, with teachers who didn’t necessarily sign up for the total collaboration and openness of this team-teaching model, I faced challenges. I knew we needed to focus on data—we did need data to “drive our instruction”—and that meant sharing our students’ results with the whole team.”
–Syracuse City Schools Multi-Classroom Leader® Maggie Vadala, in Keep on Keeping On: Using Data to Move Students Forward
Data-driven instruction + a new model of teacher-led team teaching + being at a new, high-need school + data systems that must continue to improve: That’s what Syracuse’s Maggie Vadala took on last year–and very happily. In Thursday’s RealClearEducation.com, Vadala describes the challenges.
“As I dug into the data, I realized I left one important item out: relationships! I was working with five third-grade teachers and 75 students. Altogether, the five teachers had just 11 years of teaching experience.
So while we were sharing our students’ sometimes dismal data, a far-from-comfortable experience for teachers used to working alone, I had to simultaneously build trust. They were welcoming but suspicious about my role—was I just there to run to the principal whenever they made a mistake? Where was I going with all that data? I had a group of committed people; now, they had to trust that I could guide us to accomplish more together than independently.”
Read how she did it, in her warm but no-nonsense, straightfoward approach to leading her team, and their ups and downs along the way. And hear more of Vadala’s thoughts on the accompanying video drawn from our September interview with her. She’s just one of the many inspiring Opportunity Culture teachers and teacher-leaders who sees the difference Opportunity Culture is making in schools. Read past columns from her Opportunity Culture colleagues in the Opportunity Culture series–and thanks to Real Clear Education as always for hosting it.
Big Changes in Big Spring
What can a rural, 4,000-student district do to attract and retain teachers, and support many brand-new teachers? In “Reconsidering the Traditional Model: Big Spring ISD Works to Build Teacher Career Pathways,” Cindy Clegg writes in the Texas Lone Star about how and why the Big Spring school district is creating an Opportunity Culture.
A publication of the Texas Association of School Boards, the Texas Lone Star takes an in-depth look at the multi-classroom model being used in combination with paraprofessional support to extend the reach of great teachers to many more students and teachers, within regular budgets–from choosing the model to carefully selecting the multi-classroom leaders–who lead a team, coaching, co-planning, and supporting the team, while continuing to teach themselves.
Texas has created a statewide initiative to introduce Opportunity Culture to interested districts. “We are trying to build statewide capacity for school improvement,” says Mark Baxter, director of school improvement and support for the Texas Education Agency.
Big Spring is starting with six multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) at three campuses, who each earn a $10,000 supplement, funded through teacher vacancies and larger classes, which have increased paraprofessional support. Although Opportunity Culture school redesign models do not require larger classes, Big Spring chose to go from 22 to 30 students because, says School Improvement Director Heidi Wagner, “Would you rather have 30 kids in front of one excellent teacher or 22 in front of a mediocre teacher?”
Read the full article here.
Maggie Vadala on Being a Multi-Classroom Leader®
Syracuse City Schools Multi-Classroom Leader® Maggie Vadala discusses support she gets and gives in her Opportunity Culture® school. Funding for this video was provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York. Read Maggie's related blog post, Keep on Keeping on:...
Keep on Keeping on: Using Data to Keep Students Moving Forward
Real Clear Education, October 15, 2015, by Maggie Vadala, Multi-Classroom Leader®
“So while we were sharing our students’ sometimes dismal data, a far-from-comfortable experience for teachers used to working alone, I had to simultaneously build trust.” Initially, Multi-Classroom Leader® Maggie Vadala was met with distrust from her team teachers, but using student data, she demonstrated how she was there to support them and improve their teaching, not blame them.
Reconsidering the Traditional Model
Published in Texas Lone Star, September/October 2015, by Cindy Clegg The traditional model of one teacher-one classroom is being reconsidered in some districts trying to leverage the impact of effective teachers and create more career opportunity. Traditionally, the...
Start of a Teacher-Led Revolution? Ask the Teacher-Leaders!
“Opportunity Culture is not a program, it’s a culture change.”
Last week, Public Impact convened a select group of 90 teachers, principals, district administrators, and national education organization leaders in Chapel Hill, N.C., to plan the future of Opportunity Culture (OC).
The goal: Learn from pioneering OC districts and teachers and plan ahead to improve this work, with help from leaders of national education organizations.
Our message: We want to help OC districts and schools support principals and teacher-leaders who, in turn, are providing all teachers with significant support on the job every day.
The message we heard back from teachers and principals: Keep this going and grow it faster—within schools, across districts, and across the U.S.
“We had to move the breakout rooms at the last minute when the session on scaling up Opportunity Culture drew the largest crowd. We had scheduled it for the smallest room, not the largest,” notes Stephanie Dean, vice president of teacher and leader policy for Public Impact.
A motivating opening panel of teacher-leaders, all Opportunity Culture Fellows chosen by their districts for teaching excellence and leadership, brought the message home: This works. Districts, find a way to keep and expand Opportunity Culture. Bring it to more teachers and students, now.
“The district needs to create more of this—a strong district commitment is crucial. … We had the highest growth scores in math in grades three through eight in the district, and we’re not a small district. So students are growing, and growing at a rapid pace.”— Middle school Multi-Classroom Leader® (MCL) Karen Wolfson, Nashville, Tenn., who led both novice and veteran teachers to high growth.
“Keep this alive. It’s such a great thing, and so exciting.”—Elementary school Multi-Classroom Leader® Karen von Klahr, Cabarrus County, N.C., who is also featured in a video about supporting new teachers.
“This past year we saw tremendous progress in [my school’s] MCL teams’ [test scores]. But beyond just the academics, we saw a decrease in behavior referrals as well, and we credit the MCLs working more closely with teachers for that…..I am growing professionally … so much more than any other teaching position, instructional coach, that I’ve done in the past.”— Elementary school Multi-Classroom Leader® Maggie Vadala, Syracuse, N.Y.
“Empowering teachers has been incredible. My team was in tears this year when we found out that we made growth for the first time—it was so incredible to see all that hard work finally pay off and for them to buy into all this that I was pushing last year.”—Biology Multi-Classroom Leader® Erin Burns, Charlotte, N.C., who went from reaching 80 students a day to about 500 students in a high-poverty high school, and who began leading a team last year that had made negative growth in its previous three years.
“It’s great, it’s working, teachers are happy, kids are happy, parents are happy!”—Elementary school Multi-Classroom Leader® Danielle Bellar, Charlotte, N.C.
A panel of principals who have achieved high growth using OC models followed:
“Opportunity Culture is not a program, it’s a culture change. … We need to share this work.”—Alison Harris Welcher, who was principal of an Opportunity Culture middle school last year, when its students made extremely high growth, now director of school leadership for the Project L.I.F.T. school zone.
“Teaching is a team sport. … We see that in two years of this work, our math team led the highest gains in the city, teacher absenteeism dramatically reduced … student discipline fell in an astronomical change, because the culture of the school became one of aspiration.”—Christian Sawyer, formerly principal of a Nashville Opportunity Culture middle school.
Watch last week’s new Teacher Support in an Opportunity Culture video—drawn from our interviews with teachers and multi-classroom leaders, who just couldn’t stop talking about the long-awaited support they get and give to help everyone extend great teaching to all their students.
And we debuted our new Opportunity Culture: Teaching, Leading, Learning—a fun six-minute cartoon video showing what an Opportunity Culture is and what it means to all those teachers who want great things happening in their schools and careers. Share it with everyone you know who’s affected by K–12 education today!
What we saw and heard last week was true “teacher voice,” emphatically speaking to those with the power to spread a school revolution that brings an Opportunity Culture to all.