From Education Dive, September 28, 2020, by Kara Arundel

Overnight, it seemed, some teachers’ roles changed from being leaders in their classrooms to including broader responsibilities as mentors and coaches to other teachers, curriculum designers, technology facilitators, data coaches and assessment designers. What if that were the norm, asks the AIR paper.

The differentiated school staffing approach is gaining attention as the pandemic continues to disrupt traditional education approaches and structures and as concerns about educator shortages intensify.

One approach suggested by AIR, and developed by consulting group Public Impact, is the Opportunity Culture initiative. In this structure, an experienced and effective teacher leads a small, collaborative team of teachers in the same grade or subject. The multi-classroom leaders use student data to help the team of teachers prepare for instruction, evaluate each student’s educational progress and make adjustments where needed. Read the article…