If you're interested in: --Spreading your excellent teaching to many more students --Leading a team of teaching peers toward the great outcomes you've gotten with your students by: collaborating with them co-teaching coaching co-planning giving (and getting)...
recruitment and retention
School Turnarounds: How Successful Principals Use Teacher Leadership
As the Opportunity Culture® initiative was beginning, three principals signed on to lead low-performing, high-poverty schools in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Metropolitan Nashville districts. The odds were stacked against them and their students—one school, for...
Creating Sustainable, Attractive Teacher Career Paths: NNSTOY Case Studies
What makes a sustainable teacher career path that attracts and retains great teachers? In a new report, the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) looks at eight school district and charter career advancement initiatives for lessons and challenges,...
Where Is Teaching Really Different? New Opportunity Culture® Video
What could you do in an Opportunity Culture®? In a new video, teachers in Opportunity Culture® schools tell how their roles let them: --Reach more students with great teaching --Lead other teachers without leaving teaching—“the best of both worlds” --Give and get...
Opportunity Culture® Results: Dashboard 2.0
22,000+ students reached by Opportunity Culture® teachers, more than 800 teachers in advanced or team roles, $2 million in higher pay in one year alone, and more high growth and less low growth than other schools: These are just a few results from the schools in...
Opportunity Culture® Voices: Mixing Team Leadership, Specialization
“ 'One-teacher-one-classroom' is a phrase you hear a lot in education these days: For the past 11 years, that described me. I taught on my own in self-contained third- and fifth-grade classrooms, and I loved my job. But I had enough leadership opportunities, such as...
The Whole Package: 12 Factors of High-Impact Teacher-Leader Roles
District leaders love the thought of “teacher leadership” that might attract and retain teachers—especially great ones—and close student learning gaps at a time of rising teacher vacancies.
But too often, teacher-leader roles fail to produce the full impact district leaders intend. They rarely dramatically improve student learning or teacher effectiveness.
What are the usual pitfalls? How can districts avoid them?
The Whole Package: 12 Factors of High-Impact Teacher-Leader Roles, a two-page brief from Public Impact, offers a quick list of the pitfalls, and a chart of the 12 essential factors for creating outstanding teacher-leader roles.
Low-impact teacher-leader roles are a distraction from what great teachers really crave: helping their peers and more students succeed. Defining and organizing high-impact teacher-leader roles can allow great teachers to have a far greater effect on vastly more students and teaching peers.
DO design teacher-leader roles with these 12 factors in mind, involving teachers in the design decisions:
• Selectivity: make advanced roles selective
• Preparation: train teacher-leaders for their roles
• Greater Reach: use roles to give more students access to great teachers, not fewer
• Continued Teaching: let teacher-leaders keep teaching students part time
• Time to Lead—and Learn: give teacher-leaders time to plan and collaborate
• Development Opportunities: let teachers in the same role help one another improve
• Accountability: make teacher-leaders formally responsible for their students and teams
• Formal Authority: give teacher-leaders formal authority to spread their practices
• Higher Pay: pay supplements of at least 10%– 50% of average pay
• Funding Stability: fund higher pay with recurring budgets, not grants or tenuous line items
• Funding Scalability: for big scale, fund extra pay with stable, state-level funds
• Prevalence: ensure that each school has many advanced roles, not just a few
DON’T stumble over pitfalls with plans that have these unfortunate qualities:
Big Changes in Big Spring
What can a rural, 4,000-student district do to attract and retain teachers, and support many brand-new teachers? In “Reconsidering the Traditional Model: Big Spring ISD Works to Build Teacher Career Pathways,” Cindy Clegg writes in the Texas Lone Star about how and why the Big Spring school district is creating an Opportunity Culture.
A publication of the Texas Association of School Boards, the Texas Lone Star takes an in-depth look at the multi-classroom model being used in combination with paraprofessional support to extend the reach of great teachers to many more students and teachers, within regular budgets–from choosing the model to carefully selecting the multi-classroom leaders–who lead a team, coaching, co-planning, and supporting the team, while continuing to teach themselves.
Texas has created a statewide initiative to introduce Opportunity Culture to interested districts. “We are trying to build statewide capacity for school improvement,” says Mark Baxter, director of school improvement and support for the Texas Education Agency.
Big Spring is starting with six multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) at three campuses, who each earn a $10,000 supplement, funded through teacher vacancies and larger classes, which have increased paraprofessional support. Although Opportunity Culture school redesign models do not require larger classes, Big Spring chose to go from 22 to 30 students because, says School Improvement Director Heidi Wagner, “Would you rather have 30 kids in front of one excellent teacher or 22 in front of a mediocre teacher?”
Read the full article here.
Keep on Keeping on: Using Data to Keep Students Moving Forward
Real Clear Education, October 15, 2015, by Maggie Vadala, Multi-Classroom Leader®
“So while we were sharing our students’ sometimes dismal data, a far-from-comfortable experience for teachers used to working alone, I had to simultaneously build trust.” Initially, Multi-Classroom Leader® Maggie Vadala was met with distrust from her team teachers, but using student data, she demonstrated how she was there to support them and improve their teaching, not blame them.
Teachers, It’s Time for Us to Say, ‘Show Me the Money’
Real Clear Education, September 15, 2015, by Romain Bertrand, Multi-Classroom Leader®
“I was not ready to leave a profession I loved, even though I needed the money and wanted the respect.” Many teachers are forced to choose between their profession and financial stability, but Romain Bertrand was able to get both by becoming a multi-classroom leader—one piece of the solution to the profession’s struggle to attract and retain great teachers.