The January Opportunity Culture newsletter includes opportunities for community, a reflection from educators on continued pandemic challenges, tools and videos for educators, Opportunity Culture news, and more. Featured stories include:
“Everybody is Traumatized”: Opportunity Culture Fellows on Keeping On
By Sharon Kebschull Barrett, January 25, 2022
With ongoing Covid-related stresses this year, many Opportunity Culture educators have wondered how much their challenges match those of other Opportunity Culture schools. Before the winter break, educators from multiple cohorts of Opportunity Culture Fellows gathered online to share their experiences and support one another—and found their stresses mirrored much of what has been in the news for months.
As they sought to offer ideas for alleviating some of the stress, high on most Fellows’ minds were: deep concern for what students have suffered—both academically and emotionally; staff shortages and a lack of substitutes; exhaustion from unrelenting pressure in what was expected to be a “recovery” year; the pull on multi-classroom leaders to provide more—and more varied—support than ever before; and the need for a more focused, national response to support schools. Here’s a bit of what they shared. Read more…
Harness the Power of Small-Group Tutoring with Opportunity Culture Staffing
By Public Impact, January 27, 2022
We, like Opportunity Culture educators, believe that students can make dramatically more learning growth than they typically do—with the right instructional approaches and adult support. So we continuously look for new, research-based ways to achieve this vision.
Here’s an approach that meets our high bar: providing students with more small-group tutoring, delivered by both teachers and paraprofessionals. Many studies in recent years show the very positive learning impact of tutoring by both teachers and paraprofessionals. Small-group tutoring does not mean forming fixed-ability groups, but instead grouping and regrouping students often, based on current learning needs. Some great teachers have used this strategy, sometimes with teaching assistants, in their own classrooms for decades.
But the efforts studied haven’t scaled up to reach millions of students in need—and Covid has magnified the urgency.
How can Opportunity Culture models maximize the research-proven power of tutoring? Read more…
Tools You Need Now
For multi-classroom leaders:
- For planning ahead: Action Planner for MCLs—Winter
- For strong relationships with students and families: Connect
For principals
- For planning ahead: Action Planner for Principals—Winter