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Opportunity Culture® Virtual Site Visit

Welcome to a virtual visit to two districts using Opportunity Culture® models!

During site visits, participants observed a team leader co-teaching with a team teacher at Legacy Senior High in Midland ISD…

…and a team leader meeting with her teaching team at Sam Houston Elementary in Ector County ISD.

Public Impact®, which founded the national Opportunity Culture® initiative, periodically collaborates with districts to host site visits that allow visitors to see Opportunity Culture® roles in action. The videos on this page come from the daylong site visit hosted in April 2022 by two neighboring Texas school districts, Midland and Ector County—to whom we offer many thanks for their time and hospitality! Their generous educators allowed site visit participants into their classrooms to see how Multi-Classroom Leader™ teams, which included Reach Associate™ paraprofessionals and teacher residents, collaborate to improve student outcomes and teacher experiences.

For more information about this staffing design or future in-person site visits, contact us!

Opportunity Culture® Site Visit, Permian Basin, April 28, 2022

The videos below offer a condensed version of the busy site visit day, including comments from both superintendents, words of introduction from school principals, classroom footage, and question-and-answer time with several educators in Opportunity Culture® roles, especially those in the Multi-Classroom Leader™ (MCL™) role, who lead small teaching teams. (Our apologies that some audio quality is not up to the standard of our other videos, due to our efforts to avoid disrupting the experience for the on-site audience.)

For a glossary of terms used throughout the day, see here.

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Opening Session: Introduction to the Districts

Opening Session: Introduction to the Districts

This video includes introductions from:

  • Troy Smith, Assistant Vice President, Public Impact®
  • Chris Hightower, Opportunity Culture® Director, Midland ISD
  • Jessie Garcia, Talent Development Director, Ector County ISD
  • Dr. Larry Daniels, Dean, College of Education, UT Permian Basin
  • Dr. Anjelica Ramsey, Superintendent, Midland ISD
  • Dr. Scott Muri, Superintendent, Ector County ISD

Elementary School Visits highlighting team leaders in the MCL™ role and their team teachers

In this video, you will observe:

  • Team leader leading a team meeting on data-driven instruction with his third-grade teachers
  • Team leader and her teacher resident co-teaching a fourth-grade lesson

In this video, you will observe:

  • An ELAR team leader co-teaching with her fourth-grade team teacher
  • A Math team leader teaching a fifth-grade class with the support of her Reach Associate™ paraprofessional

In this video, you will observe:

  • A team leader leading a team meeting with her three kindergarten team teachers
  • A team leader co-teaching a fourth/fifth-grade combo class with two teacher residents

Secondary School Visits highlighting team leaders in the MCL™ role and their team teachers

In this video, you will observe:

  • An English II team leader co-teaching a class with a first-year team teacher
  • A biology team leader leading a team meeting with two team teachers

In this video, you will observe:

  • An English I team leader co-teaching a class with a first-year team teacher

In this video, you will observe:

  • A biology team leader co-teaching with a first-year team teacher
  • An English II team leader leading a team meeting to plan for a lesson

School Q&A Session Topics

Featuring:

  • Permian High School: Principal Delesa Styles, Associate Principal Johna Straw, and Jessie Garcia, Director of Talent Development, Ector County ISD
  • Legacy High School: Principal Shannon Torres

Featuring:

  • Permian High School: Jessie Garcia, Director of Talent Development, Ector County ISD

Featuring:

  • Legacy High School: Jessica Webb, leader of a math team, and Principal Shannon Torres

Featuring:

  • Legacy High School: MCL™ Jessica Webb and Principal Shannon Torres

Featuring:

  • Permian High School: Jessie Garcia, Principal Delesa Styles
  • Sam Houston Elementary School: Principal Crystal Marquez
  • Dowling Elementary School: MCL Lennie Garcia
  • Emerson Elementary School: Principal Christin Reeves

Featuring:

  • Legacy High School: Principal Shannon Torres

Featuring:

  • Legacy High School: MCL™ Jessica Webb and Team Teacher Evelyn Mojica

Featuring:

  • Emerson Elementary School: MCL™ Laura Ball, Principal Christin Reeves

Featuring:

  • Dowling Elementary School: Teacher Resident Kristen Campbell, MCL™ Lennie Garcia
  • Emerson Elementary School: Principal Christin Reeves

Featuring:

  • Midland Freshman High School: MCL™ Ashley Brandt
  • Dowling Elementary School: MCL™ Lennie Garcia and Principal Julie Marshall

Featuring:

  • Legacy High School: MCL™ Jessica Webb
  • Dowling Elementary School: MCL™ Lennie Garcia

Glossary of terms you will hear in these videos:

ECISD: Ector County Independent School District

MISD: Independent School District

MCL™: The Multi-Classroom Leader™ role is the foundational Opportunity Culture® role. A teacher in this role has a track record of high-growth student learning and leads a small teaching team in lesson planning, data analysis, and instructional changes. This team leader observes, gives feedback, and coaches team teachers, co-teaches with and models instructional delivery for them, and continues to teach some portion of the time, and takes accountability for the results of all students taught by the team. They may be designated as MCL™ I or II depending on the size of the team they lead.

TRT™: Team Reach Teacher role™; these teachers teach on an MCL™ team that reaches more students. The Master TRT™ role is for educators who also have a track record of high-growth student learning and assist with team leadership and/or reach significantly more students. 

RA™: Reach Associate™ role—an advanced paraprofessional who supports the MCL™ team with a focus on providing instructional support, with the strong guidance and coaching of the team leader. These paraprofessionals typically tutor small groups or individuals, as the leader and team determine, in a learning lab or in a teacher’s classroom.

TR: Teacher resident, who serves on an MCL™ team for a yearlong, paid teacher residency in a role similar to the Reach Associate™ role; residents also co-teach, learn student data analysis, and get observation/feedback.

TEKS (pronounced TEAKS): The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, the state standards for what students should know in each subject/grade.

CFA: Common formative assessment

STAAR: A series of standardized tests—the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness

Note: When these videos were filmed, districts were just coming out of Covid shutdowns, so you will hear references to schools not having official accountability for the previous school year.

For many more videos about the Opportunity Culture® initiative, see here; for videos for educators focused on key elements of instructional leadership and excellence, see here.