First-year teacher Emily Angles, from Winecoff Elementary School in Cabarrus County, N.C., tells why she wants to be like Karen von Klahr, her Opportunity Culture multi-classroom leader who explains the joy of having a teaching role that allows her to provide in-depth, on-the-job development for a brand-new teacher.
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How to Hire Great Teachers and Teacher-Leaders: Free Toolkits
In an Opportunity Culture, districts and schools offer new roles that extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets and without forcing class-size increases. The new roles put districts in a much stronger position to hire great teachers—but only if they recruit and select well.
We’ve posted two new toolkits to make that work easier, walking human resources officers and principals through the steps to great hiring, informed by the experiences of early Opportunity Culture districts. These tools are useful for any district hiring teacher-leaders, team teachers, blended-learning teachers, elementary subject specialists, and advanced paraprofessional support—not just Opportunity Culture positions.
The Recruitment Toolkit, downloadable as a PDF, walks districts and schools through the major steps of a successful recruiting effort. It explains why districts that rely on passive strategies—expecting candidates to find out about available positions and apply—will not get the recruitment results they want.
The toolkit addresses key details, such as the timing of recruitment, which ideally begins each year no later than March, to attract a large pool of excellent candidates and capture their interest before they commit to other jobs. Strong recruitment enables districts to attract great candidates regionally, even nationally, who could be a perfect fit for Opportunity Culture or similar roles—including those not actively seeking a new job.
Once schools and districts have a pool of great candidates, what next?
The Teacher and Staff Selection Toolkit provides a four-step guide to help districts and schools select teachers and staff members from competitive talent pools. Districts that have created an Opportunity Culture have seen a surge of applications, even in high-poverty schools. This toolkit helps leaders adapt to a higher volume of applications and the opportunity that volume offers to become very selective in hiring.
The selection kit helps leaders screen and prioritize candidates for these new roles, which require new behaviors and skills beyond those needed in a one-teacher-one-classroom setting. Each step includes a set of considerations, action steps, and links to relevant tools and resources.
Looking for an Opportunity Culture® Job?
Are you intrigued by all you’ve read and heard about an Opportunity Culture?
Interested in extending your reach to more students, for more pay?
Ready to lead from within, sharing your great teaching without leaving the classroom by leading a team, for significantly higher pay?
Are you a new teacher interested in all the support an Opportunity Culture has to offer?
Or do you know teachers who deserve the respect, support, career advancement possibilities, and higher pay that an Opportunity Culture could offer them?
Find Opportunity Culture job postings from several districts here!
Learn more about what current Opportunity Culture teachers think here—multi-classroom leaders, blended-learning teachers, and team teachers discuss their jobs, and principals talk about the benefits of an Opportunity Culture and why they wanted this in their schools.
Indianapolis Public Schools
Schools began using Opportunity Culture® models in: 2016-17 Learn more about the Opportunity Culture® initiative in Indianapolis by visiting the district website. Details: In August 2015, Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) became the first district in the country to...
Get Inspired: Listen to Some Opportunity Culture® Teachers
Interviewing Opportunity Culture teachers and multi-classroom leaders recently in Charlotte and Cabarrus County, N.C., I got a little embarrassed. I never was much of a hard-bitten reporter, but still, I really shouldn’t start to cry at the teachers’ answers to my questions, should I?
But I teared up several times anyway, listening to them tell me how much their new Opportunity Culture roles meant to them, their students, and their school. Videographer Beverley Tyndall and I began taping these interviews eight months ago, asking all about the good, the bad, and the ugly of being Opportunity Culture pioneers. While teachers haven’t shied away from telling us what’s been tough as they work out initial implementation kinks, overwhelmingly, they tell us the good–or, more accurately, the really great.
You can see some of what they’ve told me in our Opportunity Culture Voices on Video collection. But since it will be a little while before we post more videos from these Charlotte and Cabarrus visits, I wanted to go ahead and share some of the thoughts of these multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) who lead a team of teachers; teachers using subject specialization for the first time in elementary school, teaching just one or two subjects to multiple groups of students; and teachers extending their reach to more students by using blended learning for the first time–plus a few of their students:
- Mary Price, Rocky River Elementary, which is in its first year using Subject Specialization and Multi-Classroom Leadership. Price is the kindergarten reading teacher, on an MCL’s kindergarten team: “I’ve been teaching 22 years. This is the year that I can really focus on that one subject and all the children I’m teaching. I know what they need, and that’s what I’m focusing on. … I’ve never had so much support (as from the MCLs). … I’m not leaving this school, and I’ve told other people, you need to come here or go somewhere that has this program. It’s great for the children.”
- Cyndal Brenneman, kindergarten and 1st grade MCL at Rocky River Elementary: “You make your teachers happy when you do (MCL) with specialization and when you give them more support. I have found that to be huge this year.”
Indianapolis District Lays Opportunity Culture® Groundwork
Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) is joining the Opportunity Culture initiative to extend the reach of its excellent teachers and teams they lead to more students, for more pay, within budget. With the support of Public Impact, IPS will lay the groundwork by June for up to six schools to opt into piloting Opportunity Culture staffing models, to reach many more students with great teaching and create career paths for teachers to join teams, advance their careers, and lead peers without having to leave the classroom.
In an Opportunity Culture, teachers lead the way to change their schools. Opportunity Culture models use job redesign and age-appropriate technology to extend teachers’ reach. A school design team of teachers and administrators at each school selects and adapts the models to fit their school best. IPS pilot schools will create these teams over the summer, and they will work toward implementing the new models in the 2016–17 school year.
“We’re delighted to give our schools the opportunity to give all teachers the support, on-the-job learning, leadership opportunities, and higher pay they deserve,” said Superintendent Lewis Ferebee. “I want all students to benefit from excellent teaching.”
Support is a hallmark of Opportunity Culture schools. Teachers typically work in collaborative teams, with set-aside time during school hours for planning and developing their skills, along with frequent feedback from the teaching team leaders.
Pilot schools will receive help changing their schedules to make this set-aside time possible and developing an effective team process focused on excellent teaching. This team collaboration and teacher-led improvement provides a supportive environment for teachers to address student needs.
Op-Ed: N.C. Must Invest to Magnify Great Teachers’ Impact
“North Carolina will never make the educational strides it needs until the best educators have far greater impact for a lot more pay,” say Public Impact’s co-directors in an op-ed in Saturday’s Raleigh News and Observer.
Noting that the state’s General Assembly “rightfully added 6 percent focused primarily on early-career teachers’ base pay,” Bryan C. Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel point out that other states also increased salaries for teachers, and likely will again. So, they say, state leaders must complete the 10 percent average raise, and then some, just to stay on par in the region.
“Meanwhile, the pay gap with neighboring states yawns wider for experienced teachers,” the Hassels write. “Most importantly, base pay bumps for early-career teachers don’t empower or entice excellent teachers, many of whom are veterans, to lead from the classroom – reaching more students and helping peers excel.”
But North Carolina could change that, and lead the region in the process. They write:
Opportunity Culture®: A New Model for Education
Published on Real Clear Education, May 8, 2015 by Public Impact® Co-Directors Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel Schools don’t have enough truly excellent teachers to fill all our nation’s classrooms. Even if schools use all their best recruitment and retention...
Opportunity Culture® in the News: Real Clear Education, NPR
Looking for an overview of an Opportunity Culture®, and an example of multi-classroom leadership in action? These could get you started: Today, Public Impact® co-directors Bryan and Emily Hassel kick off a monthly series of posts on Real Clear Education by Opportunity...
What Makes an Opportunity Culture® Different?
When Public Impact launched the Opportunity Culture initiative, we were clear on the goal: reach as many students as possible with excellent teaching. As our team worked with teachers and principals, we committed to a second goal: provide outstanding, lasting, well-paid career opportunities to educators.
As researchers, we saw many pay and career path programs fall short of those goals–and still see too many today. Too often, pay programs fail to provide opportunities for teachers to learn from outstanding peers and others at work–to collaborate, plan with, and support one another. Too many new roles are funded with temporary or politically tenuous money. And very few pay or career path programs increase the number of students who have excellent teachers formally responsible for their learning.
So we embodied our goals and the guidance to achieve them in the five Opportunity Culture Principles. Those principles set Opportunity Culture schools apart from the other efforts.
Here’s a primer on what makes an Opportunity Culture different: