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? […]
Start of a Teacher-Led Revolution? Ask the Teacher-Leaders!
“Opportunity Culture is not a program, it’s a culture change.”
Last week, Public Impact convened a select group of 90 teachers, principals, district administrators, and national education organization leaders in Chapel Hill, N.C., to plan the future of Opportunity Culture (OC).
The goal: Learn from pioneering OC districts and teachers and plan ahead to improve this work, with help from leaders of national education organizations.
Our message: We want to help OC districts and schools support principals and teacher-leaders who, in turn, are providing all teachers with significant support on the job every day.
The message we heard back from teachers and principals: Keep this going and grow it faster—within schools, across districts, and across the U.S.
“We had to move the breakout rooms at the last minute when the session on scaling up Opportunity Culture drew the largest crowd. We had scheduled it for the smallest room, not the largest,” notes Stephanie Dean, vice president of teacher and leader policy for Public Impact.
A motivating opening panel of teacher-leaders, all Opportunity Culture Fellows chosen by their districts for teaching excellence and leadership, brought the message home: This works. Districts, find a way to keep and expand Opportunity Culture. Bring it to more teachers and students, now.
“The district needs to create more of this—a strong district commitment is crucial. … We had the highest growth scores in math in grades three through eight in the district, and we’re not a small district. So students are growing, and growing at a rapid pace.”— Middle school Multi-Classroom Leader (MCL) Karen Wolfson, Nashville, Tenn., who led both novice and veteran teachers to high growth.
“Keep this alive. It’s such a great thing, and so exciting.”—Elementary school Multi-Classroom Leader Karen von Klahr, Cabarrus County, N.C., who is also featured in a video about supporting new teachers.
“This past year we saw tremendous progress in [my school’s] MCL teams’ [test scores]. But beyond just the academics, we saw a decrease in behavior referrals as well, and we credit the MCLs working more closely with teachers for that…..I am growing professionally … so much more than any other teaching position, instructional coach, that I’ve done in the past.”— Elementary school Multi-Classroom Leader Maggie Vadala, Syracuse, N.Y.
“Empowering teachers has been incredible. My team was in tears this year when we found out that we made growth for the first time—it was so incredible to see all that hard work finally pay off and for them to buy into all this that I was pushing last year.”—Biology Multi-Classroom Leader Erin Burns, Charlotte, N.C., who went from reaching 80 students a day to about 500 students in a high-poverty high school, and who began leading a team last year that had made negative growth in its previous three years.
“It’s great, it’s working, teachers are happy, kids are happy, parents are happy!”—Elementary school Multi-Classroom Leader Danielle Bellar, Charlotte, N.C.
A panel of principals who have achieved high growth using OC models followed:
“Opportunity Culture is not a program, it’s a culture change. … We need to share this work.”—Alison Harris Welcher, who was principal of an Opportunity Culture middle school last year, when its students made extremely high growth, now director of school leadership for the Project L.I.F.T. school zone.
“Teaching is a team sport. … We see that in two years of this work, our math team led the highest gains in the city, teacher absenteeism dramatically reduced … student discipline fell in an astronomical change, because the culture of the school became one of aspiration.”—Christian Sawyer, formerly principal of a Nashville Opportunity Culture middle school.
Watch last week’s new Teacher Support in an Opportunity Culture video—drawn from our interviews with teachers and multi-classroom leaders, who just couldn’t stop talking about the long-awaited support they get and give to help everyone extend great teaching to all their students.
And we debuted our new Opportunity Culture: Teaching, Leading, Learning—a fun six-minute cartoon video showing what an Opportunity Culture is and what it means to all those teachers who want great things happening in their schools and careers. Share it with everyone you know who’s affected by K–12 education today!
What we saw and heard last week was true “teacher voice,” emphatically speaking to those with the power to spread a school revolution that brings an Opportunity Culture to all.
Free, In-depth Training Materials for Teaching-Team Leaders
With advice and feedback from the first multi-classroom leaders (MCLs) in the Opportunity Culture initiative, Public Impact has created a free set of in-depth training sessions uniquely suited to the MCL role. The sessions may also benefit other teacher-leaders who lead teams and develop colleagues on the job.
Multi-Classroom Leadership is the most popular model chosen by school design teams implementing Opportunity Culture models. Multi-classroom leaders are excellent teachers who continue teaching while leading a team of teachers, taking full accountability for the success of the team’s teachers and students—for a lot more pay. But that combination of teaching and team leadership requires new skills that few teachers—even excellent ones—have developed. Feedback from MCLs indicated that leadership programs focused on aspiring principals or traditional coach/mentor roles don’t suit the needs of the high-accountability MCL role, which requires daily instructional management and leadership to succeed.
Opportunity Culture models use teamwork, job redesign, and technology to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets. Each school creates a design team that selects and adapts models that will suit their school best. Teachers and principals on these teams cite the importance of genuine team leadership and consistent, on-the-job feedback and development as key factors in the frequent choice to use Multi-Classroom Leadership, as well as the desire to reach as many students as possible with great teaching. In some schools, MCLs operate as a team of leaders for the school, supporting one another and the principal.
The MCL training sessions are structured to run over three summer days, followed by six shorter sessions during the school year. New and experienced MCLs can experience these sessions in formal training, study them on their own, or study them in meetings with other MCLs in their schools. District professional learning staff, principals, assistant principals, and other training providers can lead sessions using the included facilitator notes. Public Impact also organizes formal training and train-the-trainer sessions—with experienced, successful MCLs co-facilitating—and helps districts and schools establish a clear process for MCLs and principals to support one another’s success.
In 2014–15, the Opportunity Culture initiative included more than 30 schools, 450 teachers, and 16,000 students, and will include more than 60 schools in 2015–16. Early data from the initiative reveal that:
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.
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.
Nashville Student Teachers Earn, Learn, Support Teacher-Leaders
Better-prepared new teachers, more adults in every classroom, more small-group instruction, more adults caring for every student—how can a school wrap all that up in one package? Three Metropolitan Nashville Opportunity Culture schools are trying a novel approach with paid, yearlong student teaching positions. In a new case study, Public Impact examines this “aspiring teachers” program and its early implementation.
In 2013–14, the two elementary schools and a middle school, part of Nashville’s Innovation Zone created to help high-need, low-performing schools, combined the aspiring teachers program with the Opportunity Culture Multi-Classroom Leadership model. Multi-Classroom Leadership extends the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within budget. A multi-classroom leader, or MCL, leads a team of teachers while continuing to teach, helping the team teachers develop and excel through extensive co-planning, co-teaching, and feedback on the job. MCLs take accountability for the learning of all students in their “pods,” and delegate responsibilities to teachers and paraprofessionals that make the best use of everyone’s time.
How has the program, which pays student teachers nearly $15,800 and benefits—in a position that is usually unpaid—affected all the teachers on these teams? Aspiring teachers say they will enter their first teaching jobs, especially in high-need schools, much better prepared. Team teachers and MCLs working alongside them appreciate the assistance in the classroom and the quiet pressure to “up their game” even more. While MCLs are formally accountable for the whole team’s outcomes, team teachers mentor the aspiring teachers, too, forcing them to think about the effectiveness of their own teaching methods.
Giving thanks for Opportunity Culture Multi-Classroom Leaders
Need more to be thankful for this year? Add these committed, enthusiastic, deeply determined teacher-leaders to your list! I recently interviewed multi-classroom leaders in in three Metro Nashville schools that use Opportunity Culture models. Videographer Beverley Tyndall and I couldn’t wait to share at least a few bits of these inspiring interviews, and we’ll soon be posting more videos from Opportunity Culture team teachers and principals–for whom we’re also quite thankful! For now, enjoy hearing just a bit about why these teacher-leaders love what they do!
Being a Multi-Classroom Leader: “It Is My Dream Job”
“I glance at my computer clock; it is already time for the next block and I forgot to eat lunch. When a Frenchman forgets about eating, this is a sign that he loves what he does.”
So says Romain Bertrand, the first multi-classroom leader (MCL) at Ranson IB Middle School in Charlotte, N.C., today in “Expand Your Reach: New-world role combines coaching teachers and teaching students” on Education Next. Walking readers through a piece of a typical day, Bertrand explains how he leads two pods of three teachers and one learning coach (or teaching assistant) each–and is responsible for the learning outcomes of 800 sixth- and seventh-graders.
In an Opportunity Culture, MCLs earn significantly higher pay; in the Project L.I.F.T. schools within Charlotte-Mecklenburg, that means up to $23,000 more, or 50 percent more than average teacher pay in North Carolina. MCLs get to continue teaching while providing on-the-job professional learning for their teams, planning, coaching, and collaborating with them.
Bertrand loves his job–and he wants the world to know, so other teachers can have similar, highly paid opportunities that let them advance while staying in the classroom, reaching more students with great teaching. For more about him, Multi-Classroom Leadership, and the Opportunity Culture schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, see:
Leadership Keys: How to Get Great Principals, Use Teacher-Leaders
Lacking Leaders: The Challenges of Principal Recruitment, Selection, and Placement, which Public Impact’s Daniela Doyle and Gillian Locke wrote for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, put a needed focus on the importance of finding the best principal for each school. By getting an inside look at the hiring processes of five urban districts around the country, Doyle and Locke highlighted how far short those processes fall, even in districts they deem “ahead of the curve.”
In response, the authors offer six recommendations for district leaders seeking to improve their recruitment, selection, and placement of school principals:
- Make the job more appealing—and manageable. Give principals the power to lead, including authority over key staffing decisions, operations, and resources. And give them a cadre of teacher-leaders to share the load today—and fill the pipeline for tomorrow (more on that below).
- Pay great leaders what they’re worth. Compensation must be commensurate with the demands, responsibilities, and risks of the job. Principals should earn considerably more than other school staff with less responsibility and should be duly compensated for producing success.
- Take an active approach to recruitment. Develop criteria to identify promising candidates inside and outside of the district. Actively seek out those individuals. Woo them when necessary. Identify and prepare internal candidates systematically—and early—and eliminate barriers that discourage high-potential candidates.
- Evaluate candidates against the competencies and skills that research shows successful principals demonstrate. Then create rubrics for judging candidates against those competencies. Train raters to use the rubrics effectively.
- Design the placement process to match particular schools’ needs with particular candidates’ strengths. Assess schools’ priorities and leadership needs, and develop criteria to assess a candidate’s fit.
- Continually evaluate hiring efforts. Develop metrics to assess each stage of the process, particularly in relation to the school results that follow.
(See Education Week‘s look at the report here.)
Public Impact has long focused on the importance of school leadership, especially when districts attempt to turn around failing schools—check our list of resources below.
And we see real promise for bettering the conditions for principals—making the role more appealing and strengthening the much-discussed, truly important pipeline of future leaders—through our Opportunity Culture work. Opportunity Culture schools extend the reach of excellent teachers to more students, for more pay, within budget. One way to do this is by creating the multi-classroom leader (MCL) role—in which an excellent teacher continues to teach while leading a team of teachers, with plenty of school-day time for planning, collaboration, and providing daily on-the-job professional learning to the team.
MCLs can help principals tremendously. These teacher-leaders mean principals no longer bear sole responsibility for the leadership and evaluation of all teachers in the building. And while most MCLs take the job because they want to continue teaching, some will find the principal role appealing, creating a pipeline of future principals experienced as instructional leaders.
We all know how much school leaders matter. Let’s put some remedies into action—starting with these.
See more about Multi-Classroom Leaders:
In the News: Multi-Classroom Leadership
The Opportunity Culture website is chock-full of materials to explain how our school models–such as Multi-Classroom Leadership and Time-Technology Swap–work. You can read the detailed models themselves, financial details about the models, broader overviews such as An Opportunity Culture for All or materials specifically for teachers–or you can just work your way through everything listed on the Tools for School Design Teams page to get the whole Opportunity Culture shebang.
And our case studies show how schools are just beginning to implement this work. We’ll have many more coming that get into the nitty-gritty as schools gain some experience with their new models, which design teams of teachers and administrators adapt to fit each school’s needs.
Meanwhile, though, Christina Quattrocchi at EdSurge fills in one piece of that nitty-gritty this week, in How to Teach 800 Middle Schoolers. She walks readers through the workweek of Romain Bertrand, a multi-classroom leader at Ranson middle school in Charlotte who incorporates blended learning into his math team, to help understand how Bertrand extends his reach to many, many more students than the one-teacher-one-classroom mode.
You can also read one of Bertrand’s blog posts on EdSurge, Reaching 800 Students with a Stylus and an iPad, to hear his thoughts on how thoughtful use of tech tools in the classroom can make a difference in many ways. Check out his entire blog to learn more about first-year implementation joys and challenges in his team.
Multi-Classroom Leader: Why I Love This Teaching/Leading Model
Romain Bertrand, a multi-classroom leader (MCL) at Ranson IB Middle School in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, wants to spread the word: Keep great teachers in the classroom, splitting their time between teaching and leading other teachers–for more pay. In “To be or not to be in the classroom, that is the question…“, Bertrand blogs about the sadness of teachers feeling forced out of the classroom in order to progress in their careers–and why using the MCL model should be the way forward for schools.
“For years, a sad reality has been hurting our educational system, at least here in North Carolina: If you are good at teaching and you truly enjoy it, the only way for you to expand your impact and advance in your career is to … leave the very same classroom where you currently excel,” Bertrand writes.
“This paradox has become a dirty little secret that we all whisper: At one point, I am going to have to leave the classroom. It can be to make a decent living (extremely sad but understandable point) but it can also be to find a way to reach more students through instructional coaching and school leadership. Often, it can be to try [to] combine both goals. Couldn’t there be another way?”
The Original Personalization App—Great Teachers
By Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan Hassel; first published in Education Next With all the buzz about the District Race to the Top and jockeying to fit it into differing agendas, you might miss its simple premise: “There are great teachers … who have figured out how to personalize education and we are asking our districts to […]