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Many districts name an Opportunity Culture director to lead their effort to extend the reach of excellent teachers, principals, and their teams to all students, to support schools in implementing well. The Opportunity Culture director:
- serves as the Opportunity Culture content expert for the district and manages the Opportunity Culture design process for the district design team and school design teams, ensuring alignment
- collaborates closely with district leadership and all Opportunity Culture teams to organize and disseminate information about Opportunity Culture
- develops the leadership of Opportunity Culture principals, multi-classroom leaders, teaching teams, and multi-school leaders
- contributes and monitors data about the quality and outcomes of Opportunity Culture toward the district’s goals, using the School Excellence Portal
Tools & Resources for Opportunity Culture Directors
School Excellence Portal: Our online portal allows us to provide your district with a virtual planning and communications platform to support essential activities, give rapid, personalized feedback on implementation, ease the collection of data for analysis of outcomes, and provide educators with curated information and resources.
District Action Steps: This one-page tool provides an overview of responsibilities.
Talking Points for Superintendents and Implementation Leaders (also available in Spanish)
Introduction to an Opportunity Culture: For educators, policymakers, and anyone else interested in dramatic improvements in education, this short slide deck with brief speaker notes provides a useful overview of why students and educators need an Opportunity Culture, how it works, the research supporting it, what states and districts can do to support it, and a list of more resources.
Multi-School Leadership: Opportunity Culture multi-school leaders (MSLs) are excellent principals with a record of high-growth student learning who lead a small group of two to eight related or closely located schools for more pay, funded within the budgets of their schools.Our tools explain the model and aid districts’ design and implementation.
Communication Planner: The planner and related tools help districts and schools communicate consistently and effectively about the development and implementation of their Opportunity Culture plans.
School Design Map: This map helps schools choose advanced teaching roles and implement them in the right grades and subjects to achieve student and teacher success like high-growth Opportunity Culture schools.
School Plan Review: This checklist reviews each school’s plan for fidelity to the five Opportunity Culture Principles and other factors important to student learning and teacher satisfaction.
School Implementation Review: This checklist, a companion to the School Plan Review, provides a check-up on plan implementation, including more factors important to student learning and teacher satisfaction.
District Implementation Review: This rubric assesses the fidelity and strength of a district’s policies and actions important to teacher effectiveness and student learning in schools with advanced teaching roles.
Visiting or Hosting Visitors to an Opportunity Culture School: School leaders who agree to let visitors see their Opportunity Culture in action should use the to-do list in Hosting Visitors in an Opportunity Culture School to prepare for the visit. Visiting an Opportunity Culture School provides questions visitors should consider asking to learn as much as possible about Opportunity Culture planning and implementation.
Recruitment Toolkit: The four-step action planner and related tools take districts and schools through the major steps of a successful recruiting effort for Opportunity Culture schools. Opportunity Culture districts should begin recruiting each year ideally in November/December and no later than March, to attract a large pool of excellent candidates and capture their interest before they commit to other jobs.
Teacher and Staff Selection Toolkit: The four-step action planner and accompanying tools guide district, school, and charter management organization leaders in selecting teachers and staff members for Opportunity Culture roles, which require new behaviors and skills. The planner walks users through each step of selecting candidates, explaining the considerations for each and providing links to relevant tools and resources.
Training Sessions: Opportunity Culture roles are new territory for many teachers and principals, even ones who’ve excelled in traditional classrooms and schools. And every educator can use periodic refreshers on the elements of instructional excellence. Training can help. Here we provide our own free training tools, plus links to others’ materials, for Opportunity Culture teachers and staff and others in similar roles. Premium subject-specific trainings are available with the low-cost School Excellence Portal.
At-Home Learning Resources: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have developed materials to support teachers and students in the transition to at-home teaching and learning, including a slide deck, recommended district policies for remote learning, at-home schedule examples, and stories of educators teaching from home. We will continue to add resources throughout 2020.
For more detail about the district design process, please see How We Help Districts and Schools.
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