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What Could You Do in an Opportunity Culture®?

“The best of both worlds.”

“There’s no other job like this.”

“This is one of the greatest opportunities teachers have to increase their salary, as well as increasing their skill set, their strategies, and their leadership abilities. I think it’s an amazing opportunity that you just cannot get anywhere else.”

“I think kids are thriving in the environment. I think it’s really powerful.”

“As a professional, this has been the most feedback and constructive criticism in creating this teacher that I’ve always aspired to be, and now I have the support to do it.”

What could you do in an Opportunity Culture? For the teachers in the latest Opportunity Culture video, the possibilities seem far greater than in their former one-teacher-one-classroom roles. As they note, an Opportunity Culture gives them the chance to earn more, learn more, reach more students, and support and lead other teachers.

Teachers, watch and share this video with your colleagues–and then go see what job openings are posted in Opportunity Culture schools at OpportunityCulture.org/jobs/.

Districts, if you’re doing an Opportunity Culture, share this with potential hires. If you’re not doing it, see what you’re missing!

Policymakers, hear directly from teachers and administrators about why an Opportunity Culture appeals to excellent teachers and those aspiring to excellence–then see how you can make an Opportunity Culture possible.

This video can also be viewed on Vimeo.

Opportunity Culture® in the News: How to Transform Education

How can state and district leaders transform education by extending the reach of great teachers and their teams to many more students, for more pay, within budget? Read our latest thoughts this week:

  • On EdNC.org, Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel exhort North Carolina’s leaders to focus on the destination–giving all students access to excellent teaching, consistently–and set the guideposts districts need to get there. “State leaders can transform North Carolina by funding a diverse set of districts to design financially sustainable, scalable advanced pay systems that reward excellent teachers for reach and leadership,” write the Hassels, co-directors of Public Impact and founders of the Opportunity Culture initiative.
  • On GettingSmart.com, the Hassels write about the challenges–and a possible solution–to the need for great school leaders at a time when schools must achieve deeper learning, not just learning basic skills. They call for a new model–one that combines Multi-Classroom Leadership with multi-school leadership.
  • And EducationNext.com highlights our video about the Opportunity Culture choices of Ranson IB Middle and Ashley Park PreK-8 in Charlotte.

Coming Monday: All about our latest Opportunity Culture video!

What could you do in an Opportunity Culture®? (2015)

Teachers and staff in Opportunity Culture school districts discuss how new teacher-leader roles offer teachers “the best of both worlds,” allowing them to work directly with teachers and students to help both reach their goals, while earning large pay supplements, within school budgets. Team teachers receive the support and feedback they need to develop into the excellent teachers they aspire to be, and students thrive in an environment where excellent teachers are directly accountable for their growth.

In the News: Charlotte Multi-Classroom Leaders Explain Jobs

Learn about an Opportunity Culture from some of the people who know it–and love it–best: Ranson IB Middle School multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) Bobby Miles and April Drakeford, along with Principal Alison Harris, and Ashley Park PreK-8 MCL Kristin Cubbage told Andrew Dunn of the Charlotte Observer and TimeWarner Cable News how Opportunity Culture roles keep great teachers in the classroom and provide the support, collaboration, and coaching all teachers need.

“This definitely is my dream job,” Drakeford told TWC News. “Teachers are getting better each week because they’re coached weekly. …It’s a lot of work, but you see so much success.”

In video clips for Dunn’s Opportunity Culture primer, Miles, Cubbage, and Harris explain some of the differences between Opportunity Culture positions and usual teaching roles, and tell how an Opportunity Culture creates career paths for teacher-leaders to stay in the classroom and keep and support great teachers.

Parts 1 and 2: Paying Teachers More—Within Budget (10:08)

Watch this space for an updated motiongraphic, based on the experiences of the first pilot schools to implement their own Opportunity Culture®s, showing the importance of models that let teams led by excellent teachers reach many more students, and let all teachers...

In the News: Charlotte’s Opportunity Culture®

New Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) Superintendent Ann Clark highlighted the district’s Opportunity Culture career paths in her “State of our Schools” speech Thursday, the Charlotte Observer reports.

Discussing the need to be competitive on teacher pay to retain teachers, Clark pointed out how an Opportunity Culture helps great teachers stay in the classroom while making much more money, using such models as Multi-Classroom Leadership and Time-Technology Swaps. Pay supplements for multi-classroom leaders can be as much as $23,000, or 50 percent more than average teacher pay in North Carolina, for example–within current school budgets.

Shortly into the first year of Opportunity Culture implementation in four schools, the district’s top leaders, including Clark, were so pleased that they decided to dramatically scale it up to reach nearly half the schools in the district by 2017-18. Now in their second year, those four schools were joined by 17 more, with up to eight more joining next year.

How 2 High-Poverty Schools Planned an Opportunity Culture® Overhaul

High-need schools. Lagging student performance. Teacher churn. “We’ve tried everything.” For many school principals, this may sound unpleasantly familiar.

At two Charlotte schools, though, the principals found something they hadn’t tried: creating an Opportunity Culture for their students and teachers.

By extending the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to many more students—for much higher pay,within available budgets, and adding time to plan, collaborate, and improve—the schools saw a way to address their dilemmas using the Opportunity Culture formula. By involving teachers at each school from the start in choosing how to extend teachers’ reach and pay more, they improved teachers’ morale, recruited more great teachers, and kept them.

“Opportunity Culture spoke to me,” says Alison Harris, principal of Ranson IB Middle School in Charlotte, in a new case study. When Harris arrived at Ranson in 2011, it was a school in trouble, unable to recruit and retain enough teachers for its struggling students.

“In the 2011–2012 school year, I just made it clear that we’ve got to do something to help our scholars catch up,” Harris says in an accompanying video. “They are already coming to us behind—it is no one’s fault, but it is everyone’s responsibility. … For many of our scholars, it is truly life and death whether or not they get a great education in middle school.”

Nearby, Tonya Kales and Jeanette Reber at Ashley Park PreK–8 felt similar concerns about getting their students a great education. At both schools, the principals and school teams that included teachers chose to use new Opportunity Culture teaching roles—Multi-Classroom Leadership for teacher-leaders, and Time-Technology Swaps, which blend learning through in-person and online instruction.

Those roles and the support for teachers, time for collaboration, and paid career advancement options they offer would, Reber says in another new case study, help Ashley Park attract and keep teachers and further boost her students’ learning.

In Multi-Classroom Leadership, excellent teachers continue to teach while leading, supporting, and developing a team of teachers. “Teachers don’t always want to leave the classroom,” Reber says in the video. “They don’t always want to get far removed from being directly involved with scholars. So Opportunity Culture was the perfect thing for these teachers who want to stay connected with the kids and grow themselves.”

After settling on the new roles, Ranson and Ashley Park began the multiyear process of introducing, implementing, and adjusting their models.

Ashley Park PreK-8 Case Study

This case study addresses why Ashley Park chose to implement an Opportunity Culture using Multi-Classroom Leadership and blended learning through a Time-Technology Swap, and how the early days of implementation helped the school retain its best teachers.

Ranson IB Middle School Case Study

This case study looks at the early days of Ranson’s implementation of two Opportunity Culture job models—Multi-Classroom Leadership and Time-Technology Swaps—and how an Opportunity Culture improved its recruitment and retention of great teachers.

Ranson and Ashley Park Choose an Opportunity Culture®

Principals at Ashley Park PreK-8 and Ranson IB Middle in Charlotte tell why they chose to create an Opportunity Culture® in their schools, working with teachers to choose new job models that would suit their schools best—and how an Opportunity Culture® helps them...