Opportunity Culture Audio

Math Team Reach Teacher™ Brian Tavenner discusses his wholehearted belief in the power of extensive small-group instruction to improve all students’ outcomes and the difference it makes in how he works with student learning data. He delves into reflections and how small groups work in his middle school classes, with 50 students split in half through Reach Associate™ support.

For the 2023–24 school year, Winchester Public Schools had student learning growth results to celebrate: Their seventh-grade math students were number 1 in the state for learning growth; fourth-grade math was in the top 10, and eighth-grade math was in the top 12. All three of these grades had 100 percent of their students reached by Multi-Classroom Leader™ teaching teams. And across the district, 15 teams are now reaching 100 percent of students in a subject or grade, with nine teams students’ making high growth.

Viewing Opportunity Culture^® implementation as a single, cost-neutral solution for multiple issues—student outcomes and educator career paths and satisfaction—Winchester Public Schools Superintendent Jason van Heukelum discusses why the district “jumped all in” and how that’s working out, with strong learning growth results.

Since 2017, the Vance County, N.C., school system has used Opportunity Culture^® teaching teams to improve teacher retention and student learning. How has the district sustained implementation through a pandemic and transition to a new superintendent? Superintendent Cindy Bennett discusses what the district values in the support these teams provide, and how it continues to learn and adjust its use of the model—with a focus on Aycock Elementary, now in year six of implementation and exceeding the state’s expectations for student learning growth.

In this podcast, former Multi-Classroom Leader Okema Owens Simpson provides an overview of the Multi-Classroom Leader role and the power of small-group, in-school tutoring through MCL teams, as a preview for watching the module and understanding our SIMPLE framework for building a tutoring culture.

Successful Opportunity Culture implementation in a school district isn’t all up to the schools: Getting broad participation and communication from multiple district offices provides the support schools need. In North Carolina’s Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, Area Superintendent Timisha Barnes-Jones and Tina Lupton, executive director of professional learning, have collaborated closely to ensure that Opportunity Culture support exists at all levels.

A recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that high-dosage tutoring reaches only about one in 10 students—despite the national push for it. But if schools build innovative staffing models such as Opportunity Culture models, small-group tutoring can happen routinely, during the school day.

Lucama Elementary, a rural, Title I school in Wilson County, North Carolina, implemented several Opportunity Culture roles in 2021–22. Through a focus on data-driven small-group tutoring, instruction based on the science of reading, and greater educator collaboration through Multi-Classroom Leader teams, the school dramatically increased student learning growth.

Superintendent Scott Muri, a finalist for state superintendent of the year in Texas, has Opportunity Culture experience in multiple districts; hear Muri’s thoughts on the impact of Opportunity Culture innovations in areas including teacher residencies, teacher leadership, and other district offices, and the importance of staying faithful to the model.

Susan Hendricks was the principal of Ross Elementary in Ector County, Texas, before becoming the district’s director of leadership in August. Under her leadership, Ross Elementary received high ratings on the annual, anonymous survey given to Opportunity Culture educators. Henricks credits that success to having structures in place that the whole school understands and committing to the belief that the Opportunity Culture initiative is “who you are.”