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Opportunity Culture News & Views

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Opportunity Culture 2020-21 Dashboard Results, Tools, MCL Column: May Opportunity Culture Newsletter

By Public Impact, May 25, 2021

In 2020–21, Opportunity Culture roles continued to provide a model of support that kept spreading, even in an exceptionally challenging year for educators, students, and families.

Each year, Public Impact analyzes the Opportunity Culture dashboard data to improve its materials and its work with schools and districts. With the overarching goal of reaching all students with high-growth learning, Public Impact has expanded the initiative’s participating schools by 50 percent each year, on average—helping schools and districts make changes that educators love, with increased career opportunities and support.

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Personalize learning for educators, not just students

By Casey Jackson, first published by EdNC, May 18, 2021

“Can you please be my coach?”

With tears rolling down her cheeks, this was what a young, second-year teacher asked me in the middle of a professional development session in 2018.

I was sitting at a table with new faces, in a new state, in a new role as a multi-classroom leader (MCL) in Vance County, North Carolina. The session presenter had asked us to role-play a guided-reading lesson, and this young woman had bravely volunteered to play the role of teacher. As the others played the students, I played the teacher’s coach. Although I had some administrative experience helping teachers, I had not yet gone through MCL training to learn how to appropriately coach the teaching team I would lead. Read more…

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Annual Opportunity Culture Dashboard Update Highlights Growth, Educator Support in 2020–21

By Public Impact, May 13, 2021

In 2020–21, Opportunity Culture roles continued to provide a model of support that kept spreading, even in an exceptionally challenging year for educators, students, and families.

As the Opportunity Culture Dashboard shows in its 2020–21 update, 13 more districts joined the Opportunity Culture initiative, founded and led by Public Impact. Nationally, Opportunity Culture sites now reach over 83,000 students with excellent teaching and over 3,400 teachers with advanced roles or on-the-job support and development on teaching teams. Read more…

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The Support Baltimore Teachers Deserve—Now and Post-Pandemic

By Sidney Thomas, first published by The Baltimore Times, April 30, 2021

A tweet I saw asking teachers to share one book they would recommend for new teachers jolted me back to my first year of teaching in 2008. My school gave me a copy of The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher by Harry and Rosemary Wong, told me to read it, and then released me into the classroom to figure out how to be an effective teacher.

The book was my only “support” that year. Whenever I asked for additional help to become a better teacher, I was told to go back to that book. Yet, even after rereading it, I still struggled. Read more…

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Upcoming Webinar: Opportunity Culture in North Carolina

By Public Impact, April 30, 2021

Tuesday, May 11, at 4:30 p.m. ET, Public Impact will host an online session featuring three Opportunity Culture educators to share information about Opportunity Culture roles and positions available in N.C. districts for 2021–22. Thanks to MCL Yolande Dixon of Vance County Schools, Principal Paul Travers of Guilford County Schools, and former Reach Associate—now teacher— Delmonika Vick of Edgecombe County Public Schools for sharing their stories in this session. Register here! (The session will also be recorded to view later at OpportunityCulture.org.)

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Resources, Videos, News: March Opportunity Culture Newsletter

By Public Impact, March 30, 2021

The March newsletter includes resources for recruiting and hiring for Opportunity Culture roles, a blog about one Texas teacher’s experience as an Opportunity Culture resident, Public Impact’s brief about federal policy recommendations, video playlists, and more. Read the full March 2021 newsletter here.

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Quick Take: Why One Texas Teacher Loved Her Opportunity Culture Residency

By Sharon Kebschull Barrett, March 29, 2021

Coming into her final semester of college as a student at the University of Texas Permian Basin in fall 2020, Chelsea McMahan decided to forgo a traditional student teaching post, applying instead for a full-time, paid, Opportunity Culture teacher residency in a fourth-grade class in the Midland, Texas, independent school district (ISD).

Six months later, McMahan found herself—as a newly minted, full-time sixth-grade teacher at another Midland school—standing before the district’s school board extolling the benefits of her residency. Read more…

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Federal Policy for Opportunity Anew

By Public Impact, March 11, 2021

In the wake of Covid-19, the U.S. pre-K–12 education system needs more than a refresh. We need to think anew. In a new Public Impact brief, we recommend the means through federal policy to bring critical, effective instructional and emotional supports to millions of teachers and their students—for a price tag the country can not only afford, but sustain long-term.

We base our recommendations on lessons learned through our national Opportunity Culture initiative, in dozens of districts, with thousands of educators, for nearly 85,000 students this year alone. Read more…

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Quick Take: Two MCLs’ Pandemic Tools to Monitor Student Understanding

By Sharon Kebschull Barrett, February 23, 2021

Although Nikki Glenn, a first-year MCL, and her team of four fifth-grade teachers at Falkener Elementary got to rejoin their students in the classroom for in-person learning in January (with one teaching children who chose to remain virtual), the tools they relied on last semester continue to prove their value.

Glenn’s team worked hard throughout the fall to determine how to effectively monitor students’ understanding and progress from a distance—useful still in socially distanced classrooms. Read more…

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