The March newsletter includes resources for recruiting and hiring for Opportunity Culture roles, a blog about one Texas teacher’s experience as an Opportunity Culture resident, Public Impact’s brief about federal policy recommendations, video playlists, and more. Read the March 2021 newsletter here.
Paola Gilliam
Resources, Videos, News: March Opportunity Culture® Newsletter
By Public Impact, March 30, 2021
The March newsletter includes resources for recruiting and hiring for Opportunity Culture roles, a blog about one Texas teacher’s experience as an Opportunity Culture resident, Public Impact’s brief about federal policy recommendations, video playlists, and more. Read the full March 2021 newsletter here.
How 5 Superintendents are Planning the 2021-22 School Year
From K-12 Dive, March 22, 2021, by Kara Arundel
School system leaders are cautiously optimistic that the 2021-22 school year will see more students learning in-person and that the school day will resemble pre-pandemic routines, but with safety protocols in place. Increased vaccine administration for adults and the hope of childhood vaccines this fall, winter or early in 2022 are helping drive this confidence.
Superintendents, however, say it’s difficult to predict the status of the pandemic five months from now. That uncertainty is pushing them to prepare for multiple scenarios as COVID-19 continues to be a major health crisis. Read more…
Opportunity Culture® Expanding Next Fall
From OA Online, March 22, 2021, by Ruth Campbell
A program to place effective teachers in front of more Ector County ISD students is expanding this coming school year to more campuses.
Executive Director of Talent Development Ashley Osborne said 10 campuses are going to be added to the Opportunity Culture arsenal. The district currently has eight Opportunity Culture campuses.
The ECISD website says Opportunity Culture is “an innovative approach to staffing that multiplies the impact of highly effective teachers, thereby improving student performance.” No longer available online.
Education Lessons from the Pandemic
From The Hill, March 13, 2021, by Thomas Toch and Lynn Olson
The nonprofit Public Impact has helped introduce the concept in 45 school districts and charter management organizations in 10 states, where lead instructors manage as many as eight teachers, paraprofessionals and teacher residents in the same grade or subject. These team leaders coach teachers and track students’ progress while earning larger pay checks. Before the pandemic, a national study found that the teaching teams boosted students’ math and reading results significantly. Read more…
Analysis: Mentors, Team Teaching, 7-Week Class Cycles 12 Months a Year — Some School Innovations in Staffing and Scheduling During COVID-19
From The 74, March 10, 2021, by Lynn Olson
The coronavirus crisis is prompting schools and districts to embrace innovative staffing and scheduling strategies that are extending the reach of great teachers, leveraging co-teaching models in new ways and providing more support for students and educators. Read more…
Quick Take: Leading Opportunity Culture® at the State Level
By Sharon Kebschull Barrett, February 17, 2021
How does it work to lead Opportunity Culture from the state level? I spoke recently with Kelly McLaughlin, who leads the Opportunity Culture state initiative in the Division of Elementary & Secondary Education within the Arkansas Department of Education, to get the scoop on the benefits to districts when the state takes the lead to spread Opportunity Culture (OC) implementation. McLaughlin took this role in August 2020, after more than 20 years as an English teacher and literacy facilitator and five years in other areas of the state department.
“It is our hope, at least from my perspective, to increase teacher retention and recruitment in the state by meeting equitable goals, and we believe we can reach these goals by increasing and growing OC throughout the state so that all students will have equitable access to effective teachers,” McLaughlin said. Read more…
No More “Zoo Wallace”: Becoming a Welcoming, Successful School
By Jeremy Baugh, February 15, 2021
In 2015, when I came to Lew Wallace Elementary in Indianapolis Public Schools as its fourth principal in four years, the community referred to the school as “Zoo Wallace,” and families openly expressed disappointment in being placed there.
Still, after sending out flyers and emails and making calls home about our meet-the-teacher night, I was shocked to have only one parent show up. In my 10 years as a principal, I had never seen anything like it.
Like the parents, teachers were demoralized and disengaged. One day, the school’s only other leader, an instructional coach, and I wanted to ask a quick question of some teachers. But at 3:30, just five minutes after the kids left for the day, the teachers had all disappeared, too. Read more…
Teaching Innovation: New School Staffing Strategies Inspired by the Pandemic
From Future Ed, February 3, 2021, by Lynn Olson
Amid the profound disruption of the coronavirus pandemic, some schools and districts have responded with highly innovative staffing and scheduling strategies. They are extending the reach of great teachers, leveraging co-teaching models and teacher teams in new ways, and creating more flexible student groupings and more student-centric classrooms—all with the goal of playing to teachers’ strengths, better serving students, and providing more support for educators.
A new report from FutureEd and EducationCounsel, Teaching Innovation: New School Staffing Strategies Inspired by the Pandemic, explores these new staffing strategies, the conditions that enabled them, how educators have overcome barriers to the innovations, and what it would take to sustain and scale them post-pandemic.
Earle Area Schools Among Districts Joining Opportunity Culture® Initiative
From The Evening Times, February 1, 2021
As part of its commitment to implement Opportunity Culture in schools across the state, the Arkansas Department of Education is supporting its third cohort of school districts this year joining the national initiative to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams, for more pay, within regular school budgets. The school districts of Brinkley, Crossett, Earle and Osceola will begin implementing Opportunity Culture roles in the 2021–22 school year. The Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) committed to spreading Opportunity Culture in its Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan; Arkansas districts already using Opportunity Culture roles are North Little Rock, Forrest City, Gentry and Lincoln Consolidated. Read more (article behind paywall)…