Opportunity Culture® News and Views
By Public Impact, June 17, 2021
Welcome to the 2021–22 Opportunity Culture Fellows! Public Impact announces with pleasure our seventh cohort of Opportunity Culture Fellows. This year’s eight fellows are all Opportunity Culture principals who have achieved strong results and been leaders in their schools and districts. Read the full newsletter…
By Public Impact, June 17, 2021
Public Impact announces with pleasure the seventh cohort of Opportunity Culture Fellows, made up of eight principals who have achieved strong results in their schools and districts.
Fellows provide support to their cohort, take one another’s ideas back to their schools, write columns or lead webinars about their experiences, and speak locally and nationally about their Opportunity Culture roles. Their feedback and leadership are invaluable in helping to improve the Opportunity Culture initiative, and all materials related to it. Last year, for example, fellows shared their expertise in these webinars and columns.
By Public Impact, May 25, 2021
In 2020–21, Opportunity Culture roles continued to provide a model of support that kept spreading, even in an exceptionally challenging year for educators, students, and families.
Each year, Public Impact analyzes the Opportunity Culture dashboard data to improve its materials and its work with schools and districts. With the overarching goal of reaching all students with high-growth learning, Public Impact has expanded the initiative’s participating schools by 50 percent each year, on average—helping schools and districts make changes that educators love, with increased career opportunities and support.
By Public Impact, May 13, 2021
In 2020–21, Opportunity Culture roles continued to provide a model of support that kept spreading, even in an exceptionally challenging year for educators, students, and families.
As the Opportunity Culture Dashboard shows in its 2020–21 update, 13 more districts joined the Opportunity Culture initiative, founded and led by Public Impact. Nationally, Opportunity Culture sites now reach over 83,000 students with excellent teaching and over 3,400 teachers with advanced roles or on-the-job support and development on teaching teams. Read more…
By Public Impact, April 30, 2021
Tuesday, May 11, at 4:30 p.m. ET, Public Impact will host an online session featuring three Opportunity Culture educators to share information about Opportunity Culture roles and positions available in N.C. districts for 2021–22. Thanks to MCL Yolande Dixon of Vance County Schools, Principal Paul Travers of Guilford County Schools, and former Reach Associate—now teacher— Delmonika Vick of Edgecombe County Public Schools for sharing their stories in this session. Register here! (The session will also be recorded to view later at OpportunityCulture.org.)
By Public Impact, April 30, 2021
The April newsletter includes resources for multi-classroom leaders and principals, a column by the Baltimore City Public Schools Teacher of the Year, updates from Opportunity Culture districts, video playlists, and more. Read the April 2021 newsletter here.
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.
By Sharon Kebschull Barrett, March 29, 2021
Coming into her final semester of college as a student at the University of Texas Permian Basin in fall 2020, Chelsea McMahan decided to forgo a traditional student teaching post, applying instead for a full-time, paid, Opportunity Culture teacher residency in a fourth-grade class in the Midland, Texas, independent school district (ISD).
Six months later, McMahan found herself—as a newly minted, full-time sixth-grade teacher at another Midland school—standing before the district’s school board extolling the benefits of her residency. Read more…
By Sharon Kebschull Barrett, February 23, 2021
Although Nikki Glenn, a first-year MCL, and her team of four fifth-grade teachers at Falkener Elementary got to rejoin their students in the classroom for in-person learning in January (with one teaching children who chose to remain virtual), the tools they relied on last semester continue to prove their value.
Glenn’s team worked hard throughout the fall to determine how to effectively monitor students’ understanding and progress from a distance—useful still in socially distanced classrooms. Read more…
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…