Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Human Restoration Project featuring Teacher Powered Schools Summit.
Speaker: My name is Chris McNutt.
Speaker: I'm the founder.
Speaker: What we do is we share progressive education thoughts with people.
Speaker: We host a podcast.
Speaker: We have resources, materials, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: And I'm joined by Amy Youngie, or Youngie, sorry, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, Liz Seiber and Taryn Snyder.
Speaker: I'll give you guys a second to introduce yourselves.
Speaker: Maybe if we want to start with you and then we'll kind of go around.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So I'm Amy Youngie and I was a middle school teacher and middle school assistant principal.
Speaker: And then about 10 years ago, I began working with Education Evolving and started as a research project on what happens when teachers control their work.
Speaker: And that has eventually led to the Teacher Powered Schools Initiative and, um,
Speaker: Taryn Snyder, M.D.: Our work nationwide helping teachers use collaborative leadership models for governance and really being able to take to use some autonomy and authority at their schools as a collective team.
Speaker: Taryn Snyder, M.D.: hi everyone, my name is terrence nider i'm a third grade teacher at the Boston teachers Union pilot school in Boston Massachusetts.
Speaker: Our school has been around for 11 years and I think we'll have some opportunities to talk a little bit about it tonight.
Speaker: And I have been there for nine or 10 of them at this point.
Speaker: And it's a pretty exciting place to be.
Speaker: So I'm excited to share it with you.
Speaker: And I am Liz Seibert, co-founder of Wildland Science Research School, which is a 7th through 12th grade project-based learning program.
Speaker: teacher powered school in Wisconsin.
Speaker: And we have been open since 2005.
Speaker: So 15 years, about 15 years.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: So thanks to all three of you for joining me.
Speaker: This is going to be really cool, a really cool conversation.
Speaker: I've been excited about this for like weeks because I'm both personally interested.
Speaker: I know this message will resonate with our audience.
Speaker: So just a few basic community norm stuff.
Speaker: If you could do us a huge favor, if you're not speaking at the time, if you could mute your mic, I'll be doing that here in a second after I guest start speaking.
Speaker: At the bottom of your screen, if you highlight over, you'll find like the call button in the bottom left where you can mute your mic just so we don't have random screaming or dogs, etc.
Speaker: on the recording, which leads to the second point, which is the conversation is recorded.
Speaker: So just keep that in mind that other people will hear this at some point.
Speaker: Other than that, if you do wish to speak, feel free to use the chat button in the upper right hand corner just to say like, hey, I want to say something.
Speaker: Just get our attention in some way and I'll invite you into the conversation.
Speaker: we'll go from there other than that we're really only working off of two questions today and everything else is q a just organic talking about teacher-powered schools what y'all do just talking about how cool this is so the questions relate to what teacher-powered schools are where you all are working and then how basically people can get involved in this movement and the rest is q a so let's get through that introductory stuff first and then we'll go from there i'm not sure
Speaker: Maybe Amy, I think, would probably be best directed at you.
Speaker: Do you just want to talk a little about what teacher powered schools are?
Speaker: And then we'll go from there.
Speaker: So teacher powered schools are schools where a team of teachers has the ability to make decisions that impact student success.
Speaker: And that's going to look different at every school because every school gets to decide for themselves what's the right amount of autonomy and what's the right decision making procedures and structures they want in place.
Speaker: As an organization, we look at 15 different areas of autonomy.
Speaker: So everything from like learning program to hiring to choosing leaders to setting school policy and schedule.
Speaker: And then we also look at ways the team has collectively gained this autonomy.
Speaker: So how do they have authority?
Speaker: And in some places, it's through charters.
Speaker: Sometimes it's written into their bylaws.
Speaker: Sometimes it's part of their charter agreement.
Speaker: In other places, it might be from, in Taryn's case in Boston, there's a pilot school system.
Speaker: And so teachers are able to have similar autonomies to charters, a little bit different, but similar.
Speaker: And it's written through there and kind of passed on through their governance boards.
Speaker: Los Angeles also has a pilot system.
Speaker: In other cases, it's what I kind of say we call leadership goodwill, but it's really that a leader or a principal or a superintendent has this very collaborative approach to leadership, and that naturally brings out other leaders at the school, and so it starts to become collaboratively run.
Speaker: And as that happens over years, that becomes the culture.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: In New York City, for example, there were there are lots of schools that have been functioned like this for a long time.
Speaker: And about maybe six years ago now, they had a new program called out called PROSE, where all these schools could then formalize what they really have been doing kind of under the radar.
Speaker: And that happens all over the country.
Speaker: And so really what teacher-powered schools does is we support these teams.
Speaker: So we support teams that are just brand new, like what is this?
Speaker: To we'd love to work in one or we want to convert our school to one.
Speaker: To we're already doing this and help –
Speaker: you know, it's new and it's exciting, but we're stuck here to really veteran schools that have been doing this for a long time, but it's never finalized, right?
Speaker: It's always, I always say it's in rough draft because every time you have a new group of students or a new staff member, the dynamics change and communities evolve and your students' needs evolve and our knowledge evolves.
Speaker: And that's really exciting to see how teams can adjust to that as a team.
Speaker: I will say one thing, a lot of teacher-powered schools have principals.
Speaker: So Liz's school does not, and Taryn's school does not actually, but many, about 50%, do have a kind of quote-unquote principal, director, someone in that more traditional administrative role.
Speaker: The difference is they don't
Speaker: do traditional things.
Speaker: Most of the principals at Teacher Powered Schools still teach, whether that's at a high school level as an advisor or maybe that's at an elementary level that they're, you know, in and out of classrooms taking over for teachers to do other collaborative work.
Speaker: And so really the principal's job shifts if a team decides that they're going to have a principal.
Speaker: And that's like a very quick overview, but happy to answer questions.
Speaker: And I would love to to introduce as well.
Speaker: Maybe Taryn next kind of talk about your situation at a teacher powered school and what that looks like for you.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So the Boston Teachers Union Pilot School, where I am, started 11 years ago, as I had mentioned.
Speaker: We were part of a negotiation between the school district and the Boston Teachers Union.
Speaker: They knew that they wanted to negotiate for pilot schools as a way to keep kids in the district when many kids were leaving for charter schools.
Speaker: So they came up with this idea of giving schools some more autonomy than what they had been given as traditional schools or more autonomy than traditional schools had been given in the past.
Speaker: So the union agreed to take on running a school as a pilot school within this negotiation.
Speaker: So that means that we had to put a team together.
Speaker: We had to hire teachers who have never had any experience in teacher powered schools and then start to create a roadmap.
Speaker: for ourselves and I'll include myself in that even though I was not one of the founding teachers I was observing as part of my graduate program at that time.
Speaker: We started pretty small.
Speaker: We had one class per grade from K1 which is pre-K through second grade and then two classes of sixth grade.
Speaker: The following year we added one third grade and two seventh grades and then one fourth grade and two eighth grades the year after that and finally a fifth grade to be a full K to eight school.
Speaker: And then we also since then have added an ABA strand for kids who are primarily on the autism spectrum for K0 and K1 is one class.
Speaker: And then K2 through second grade is the second class.
Speaker: And our school, if you walk in, might look somewhat traditional, I guess.
Speaker: Kids are in classrooms.
Speaker: They're learning.
Speaker: There's a lot of...
Speaker: like cross grade work happening.
Speaker: There are teachers meeting in teams all throughout the building all day long after school, before school, all the time.
Speaker: But the things that really separate us is we don't have a principal, as Amy said, we have two co-lead teachers who spend part of their time in the classroom and then part of their time doing administrative tasks.
Speaker: Our school is run by four committees that have ebbed and flowed over the years, but
Speaker: Right now, our instructional leadership committee, our school culture and climate committee, our shared leadership committee, and our anti-bias, anti-racist committee.
Speaker: And then as needs arise that don't fit into those committees, we create ad hoc teams.
Speaker: So that would be for hiring or budget or scheduling.
Speaker: So those tend to be more short-term commitments rather than a committee, which is a year-long commitment.
Speaker: We have an election to work agreement.
Speaker: That's something that separates pilot schools.
Speaker: So we follow the union contract, but we have a couple of additional things outlined in our election to work agreement, which is like an addendum to our contract based on just our school specifically.
Speaker: That includes all teachers being part of a committee.
Speaker: That includes our summer planning days.
Speaker: That includes our two hour faculty meetings that we have every week.
Speaker: So that's something we work on every year.
Speaker: We can revise that year to year.
Speaker: but that helps us to govern our school.
Speaker: I think that's a fairly quick overview, but there's so many facets of it that are ever-changing.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I look forward to learning more.
Speaker: This is really cool.
Speaker: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker: All right, and let's just turn over to Liz, and then we'll go from there.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So when Wildlands opened in 2005, we had three co-founders, two of which Paul Tweed and Jeff Hadwin had really put in a tremendous amount of legwork to kind of get this school up and running.
Speaker: And I was a fresh out of college graduate and very naive to what I was getting into, but loved the idea of having a job.
Speaker: So I was game for anything.
Speaker: And we didn't know what teacher powered was.
Speaker: We just had the trust from our superintendent to say, go for it.
Speaker: And when we started, we had a cohort of seventh and eighth grade students together.
Speaker: So 20 middle school students at seventh and eighth grade level.
Speaker: And then there were 20 high school students
Speaker: And at the time, you didn't have to have your students full time either.
Speaker: So they were 11th and 12th grade students and a good majority of them were part time in some way.
Speaker: So actually now that I think about there were more than 20 because at any given time we had 20 in the building, but we had some that were only morning and some that were only afternoon.
Speaker: And that was a really interesting dynamic.
Speaker: Within two years of opening though, that completely changed
Speaker: And we went from that split seven, eight grade and 11, 12 to a full 7, 12 school and stuck with the 40 students total.
Speaker: And they were under our roof all day long.
Speaker: We are project based.
Speaker: And so that's the vehicle that we use for students in terms of learning and curriculum.
Speaker: We have a lot of autonomy.
Speaker: We're actually off site so you know and Taryn talks about walking into her school and it looks very much like a school.
Speaker: You would have no idea our school is a school.
Speaker: We're located at a nature reserve.
Speaker: We are in the Citizen Science Center building.
Speaker: So it's just one building you walk in and there's a classroom on the left and a lab on the right.
Speaker: And that's where kids are located.
Speaker: Nothing like a school at all other than there are children there and lots of learning is taking place.
Speaker: And we have a bus parked out front too.
Speaker: So we're taking kids all kinds of places to go and learn and learn out in the field.
Speaker: Because we're located on a nature reserve, we utilize the outdoor for learning as much as possible.
Speaker: And that has been incredibly amazing for kids.
Speaker: One of our phrases is that students, you know, learning can take place anywhere.
Speaker: And so we're really making sure that students know and understand that.
Speaker: And given the current situation that we're in with our country, it's come in very handy so that they're used to learning anywhere and all the time.
Speaker: And then, I don't know, it's just, it's been an adventure over the years.
Speaker: And I think one of the other things to keep in mind, you know, as we talk about teacher powered schools and just schools in general is that
Speaker: we're still figuring it out even 15 years in.
Speaker: And I think that's really important for people to know and understand.
Speaker: And I see lots of heads shaking too, and that's awesome.
Speaker: But every year you get a different group of students and the student passion and interest is really what drives Wildlands.
Speaker: And because of that,
Speaker: We are ever changing in what is happening and what we are doing.
Speaker: And our staff is really adaptive to our clients or our students in our school.
Speaker: And that has been amazing to not have that scripted exact curriculum that needs to be followed on this specific day or by this specific time of the year that really we have the ability to work with our students to make learning so incredibly meaningful for them.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: I mean, that sounds amazing.
Speaker: Both of your schools sound amazing.
Speaker: It's really, really cool.
Speaker: And the organization that structures all this and kind of leads the way in a sense really offers a ton of resources.
Speaker: The website is
Speaker: absurdly packed full of materials.
Speaker: And as I give time for the chat or someone to start thinking about who's here, a question that they might have for themselves pertaining to teacher-powered schools, does one of you want to speak about basically how your schools utilize teacher-powered to stay in operation?
Speaker: Like what is the connection between your school and the organization teacher-powered schools?
Speaker: I can jump in and share a little bit.
Speaker: This is year 11 for us, so we're certainly not new to the game, but we're by no means experts at it.
Speaker: I find myself all of the time going to the website to search for one of the steps guides or other resources that are on the website.
Speaker: I reach out to Amy all the time to be like, this is what's going on in Boston.
Speaker: Do you know of another school here that's going through that kind of thing?
Speaker: Or can you help me connect to somebody else in Massachusetts who might also be doing something like this?
Speaker: I'm pretty familiar with the schools in and around Boston, but there are other schools.
Speaker: There's the Oliver Partnership, which is outside of the city.
Speaker: But relatively close and they're doing similar work to us so Amy always has the best connections to make and put together between these schools.
Speaker: I also find there's a group of us that meet together fairly frequently, who are ambassadors for this work and are
Speaker: open and willing to having teachers come and visit our schools.
Speaker: I'm happy to make connections between other schools with similar governance models or other schools that are run in a similar way.
Speaker: So I often find myself reaching out to the team of teachers that I've gotten to know, including Liz and many other teachers around the country to be like, this is what's happening at our school.
Speaker: Have you ever been through something like that?
Speaker: Can you give us advice on what to do with this situation?
Speaker: And that's been a huge resource for us too.
Speaker: Yeah, that key point of teacher collaboration is huge.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I prepped beforehand, Amy, and I watched your...
Speaker: conference, I think it was from like last year, we were talking about teacher collaboration over autonomy, the dangers of autonomy, which I really, I really resonated with that, because it's something that we struggle with as well.
Speaker: At this point, really, we are at chat sessions, we're just going right into it.
Speaker: I'm gonna start off with Paul's question.
Speaker: Paul just asked, is there a clearinghouse for info on schools doing the most progressive work?
Speaker: That is a good question.
Speaker: I would say that there are a handful of organizations, education organizations, nonprofits nationwide that do very innovative progressive work.
Speaker: There isn't one necessarily that houses everything.
Speaker: There's Education Reimagined, which is an organization that tries to bring together multiple other organizations.
Speaker: So that would be like the one that pops in that
Speaker: is really focused on bringing lots of organizations together.
Speaker: There's a progressive educators network that is both private and public schools, charter schools, a whole variety of schools that does really focus on what progressive education is.
Speaker: There's the innovative schools network that Liz does a lot of work with out of Wisconsin, but also does work in other regions.
Speaker: You know, one thing that
Speaker: I think sets teacher powered apart is teacher powered really focuses on governance structure versus learning program.
Speaker: Because we know that these schools and these teams already have really excellent resources in learning programs and that each school, a lot of our schools are project based and a lot of them aren't.
Speaker: And so it allows the school to choose whatever learning program is going to be
Speaker: best meet the needs of their students.
Speaker: But where Teacher Power tries to focus is on what kind of collaborative leadership practices and structures can we support teachers in making decisions?
Speaker: Because that is an area we found that teachers don't necessarily have a lot of training in is those kinds of leadership.
Speaker: Yeah, and
Speaker: Can I build off of that for a minute here, Chris?
Speaker: So the question before, you know, how does Wildlands utilize the teacher-powered schools network or teacher-powered in general?
Speaker: And Amy, you totally hit the nail on the head in that the teacher-powered network really gave us...
Speaker: the ability to communicate to people what that meant.
Speaker: So what those autonomies look like and what were those decision-making structures within our school and how they look different from a traditional school.
Speaker: You know, we didn't have the language when we first opened up really at our fingertips to be able to show someone or explain to someone, this is what it looks like in our school, because we were just like, well, no, we don't have a principal on site.
Speaker: And
Speaker: yes, we're making these decisions with our students sometimes on the fly or we're going all over the place, our calendar looks different.
Speaker: But now to be able to have that language and to be able to share with parents and community members and other organizations and whatnot has been a tremendous help as we're continuing to build our school as the years go on and communicate with people that are first learning about us.
Speaker: and or working with other schools that have seen us as inspiration over the years and want to try something on their own.
Speaker: I think that having that common language within a teacher powered school structure has been incredible.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: I think that just this, the concept of grassroots mobilization is going to lend itself to progressive ed, just because the schools are, at least in the beginning, always going to be smaller, which means that they're always going to be more human centered.
Speaker: And to address, Paul, your second question, Human Restoration Project has thought about potentially like listing like what are progressive organizations on our website.
Speaker: However, as of right now, PEN, which was brought up in the chat, Progressive Education Network, has that resource.
Speaker: If you go on their website, you can search for what progressive schools exist.
Speaker: They might not necessarily be teacher powered schools, but you can at least see kind of like that connection and how it
Speaker: relates.
Speaker: Moving into Keisha's question, she says, I realize that there are different points of entry.
Speaker: Is there a toolkit of resources to help schools who are looking at this direction?
Speaker: Probably any of us could answer.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Call for it.
Speaker: Real quick, and then maybe Taryn and Liz can tell how to use the resource, is we do have a steps guide.
Speaker: If you go to the website, we think of teacher-powered in five formal stages.
Speaker: I always include a sixth stage of, like, dreaming, like you kind of are exploring it.
Speaker: There's a forming stage where you are really learning about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: a storming stage where you're getting your team together.
Speaker: And all these are kind of places of entry for people and teams to join.
Speaker: So sometimes teams come to us and they figured out that they want to do this.
Speaker: And sometimes an individual comes to us and says, I want to work at a school like this, of which my response to them is always like, great, go find a team because you can't do it by yourself.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like this, the whole concept is team built.
Speaker: And then Normie, Normie,
Speaker: performing, transforming, as I go through those in my head, are for schools that are open, converting, kind of fine-tuning it.
Speaker: So I know that Taryn and Liz send people to those places, those resources a lot.
Speaker: I also send myself there a lot because I find that even when you're so many years into this work, there's always room to go back and really refine some of your practices.
Speaker: So for us,
Speaker: We started off really small, as I had mentioned, with just a small group of teachers and only a couple of grades.
Speaker: And then as we were growing, we were finding that all of the decisions that we were making and all of the policies we were putting into place in the first couple of years of our school, we had never documented them.
Speaker: So we knew because we were the same group of teachers.
Speaker: But as we were growing, we were finding that
Speaker: There was discrepancies between hiring processes.
Speaker: Like if one team was hiring for a music teacher and another team was hiring for a seventh grade math teacher, those processes might look different.
Speaker: So we had to do a lot of work as we were growing with really documenting our processes and refining them and deciding if those were the ones that we wanted to stick with and
Speaker: make true for us as we were moving forward.
Speaker: So I found myself really going back to the steps guides and like looking at previous stages that we had already accomplished that we needed to refine as we were growing.
Speaker: I also think another tremendous resource that Teacher Power has spent a lot of time putting together would be discussion guides and discussion starters and all the question guides.
Speaker: So if it's something that you're curious about, what are those questions that need to be asked and how do you have those conversations
Speaker: with your team, what does that look like from an administrator perspective?
Speaker: Or if you're going to visit a school that is teacher powered, what kind of things should you be looking for or questions to be asking that team?
Speaker: And so the resources that are there and available, I think have been incredibly thoughtful in terms of helping people ask the right questions that would help them guide a school that they would be interested in either creating
Speaker: or transforming what they have into something different.
Speaker: I also want to say, I was just going to say that Skyler's on the call and he is at an amazing teacher powered school too.
Speaker: And it's definitely an expert that could answer some of these questions.
Speaker: So I just wanted to say, encourage you Skyler that you're welcome to answer these.
Speaker: Cause I know that you've been involved with teacher powered for a long time.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I guess I could just quick introduce myself that, uh,
Speaker: So I'm Skylar Prim.
Speaker: I actually was at one of the schools that was part of the initial research that Aene referenced, Tagos Leadership Academy in Janesville, which is still going strong.
Speaker: Before I moved to my current school, Highmark Environmental Charter School, which is in its 10th year, and it's a 90th year for me.
Speaker: And we're a teacher-powered school.
Speaker: We do have a principal who's actually the principal for the middle and high school
Speaker: in the traditional part of the building.
Speaker: But she really lets us do her own thing and is there to do like evaluations.
Speaker: And if there's ever like, she's there to like be the heavy for like, I don't know, attendance things or like other like legal things.
Speaker: But for the most part, she lets us make decisions on, you know, we make pretty much every other decision.
Speaker: You know, I do the budgeting.
Speaker: We're,
Speaker: about to hire a new teacher because my co-teacher is becoming the reading specialist.
Speaker: So, you know, we'll be taking the lead on that, although she'll be involved, of course.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So, it's very, very cool.
Speaker: Skylar is also one of our best buds here at Human Estoration Project.
Speaker: He's our treasurer.
Speaker: Make sure that we have some money.
Speaker: So diving, there's a ton of questions.
Speaker: I was going to throw it out there.
Speaker: Maybe you can answer this in a further question to your cohorts that you're hosting as well.
Speaker: I think it was a cool way for people to get together and talk about these things.
Speaker: But just to start, there's a lot, which is good.
Speaker: Let's start with Paul.
Speaker: Paul asks, from the people that are really doing the work, what's kind of the passion?
Speaker: Why should schools become teacher-powered?
Speaker: Okay, I'll take it.
Speaker: I think one of the driving reasons that I enjoy being at my teacher-powered school is the sense of ownership.
Speaker: When you are, when your voice is heard and you have the ability to make collective decisions and collaborate with your staff and make the decisions that are very intricate and thoughtful when it comes to the students that you have,
Speaker: at your school, I think it makes all the difference.
Speaker: Instead of being told what to do and when to do it, you get to be the one to make those decisions.
Speaker: And I just, I can't imagine being a professional, but being told what to do all the time.
Speaker: And so the trust and the empowerment that comes
Speaker: with being a teacher powered school from everyone, from your superintendent, your district, the school board, your governance board, the parents, even the students that you're working with on a daily basis.
Speaker: I just can't imagine being anywhere else.
Speaker: In fact, there was a point in time where my husband
Speaker: had made a little bit of a career change and he was driving two hours one way to go to work because I refused to leave my school.
Speaker: I was not working anywhere else.
Speaker: And so just that sense of ownership and pride and making sure that
Speaker: You know, you it's like owning a business in a way because you have so much invested in it.
Speaker: And as teachers, that's our nature.
Speaker: We love to pour ourselves into our kids.
Speaker: And it just makes sense to me that you also get to be making the decisions that affect those kids.
Speaker: I would agree with that.
Speaker: I I had observed at my school and then I had done a full year of student teaching at my school as part of my master's program before.
Speaker: getting my first job, which was actually at a charter school also in Boston.
Speaker: And then finally, I was able after a year to move back to my school and have been there ever since.
Speaker: But in my year at the charter school, I was teaching in a third grade inclusion class and we were one out of seven third grade classes there.
Speaker: And we were held to the same pacing guide as every other class.
Speaker: And
Speaker: it was administrators who were three or four levels out of the classroom who were telling us, no, you have to be on that, that lesson at that day.
Speaker: And it doesn't matter if your kids don't get it, just keep moving.
Speaker: And it felt so unnatural to me to have somebody who didn't know my kids and who had maybe spent all of a half an hour on my classroom total for the whole year, telling me what I should be doing with them when I was spending every single day with them, pushing them and really getting so much growth out of them.
Speaker: It just didn't feel like,
Speaker: Right to have somebody who didn't really know them make those decisions.
Speaker: So being in a teacher powered school, you're the one who's working with the kids.
Speaker: You're the one who is making the decisions for what's going to work for them and for the school.
Speaker: And that's been huge.
Speaker: And one example I can think of in my time at the BTU school.
Speaker: The math curriculum that we had started the school with just wasn't the best one for us and for our kids.
Speaker: And our lower school teachers came together during one of our Thursday faculty meetings.
Speaker: And we were like, this is what it looks like in third grade.
Speaker: And this is what it looks like in fifth grade and in first grade.
Speaker: And it just doesn't really seem to make sense.
Speaker: And the kids aren't connecting the concepts together.
Speaker: from the curriculum with the work that they actually need to be doing.
Speaker: And just as a lower school, we were like, we're not going to use this anymore.
Speaker: We're going to start using this different curriculum that we think will better suit our kids.
Speaker: So in a traditional school, my guess is that you would probably have to go through several layers of administration to have that kind of decision be made.
Speaker: And in ours, it was just a conversation during one meeting, and we all chose the newer curriculum that we wanted to use.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: I think just alone, the elimination or at least reducing bureaucracy is a huge part of this because you directly write to what you need to do.
Speaker: Amy, did you have something?
Speaker: I was just going to say that I think that
Speaker: you do lose some of the bureaucracy, which is helpful, but you gain a much better sense of accountability because the teachers are actually making the decisions.
Speaker: And so they own those decisions instead of this kind of
Speaker: Some principals or leaders like to force this quote unquote buy-in, but it doesn't feel authentic.
Speaker: But when teacher teams are treated as professionals and make decisions and, you know, have that sense of autonomy and authority, they absolutely own the decisions that they make.
Speaker: And I know Skylar, I think I just saw you wanted to jump in on that too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, one thing I was going to say is exactly what you just said, Amy, is that, yeah, it's, there's accountability and,
Speaker: I think it makes it more easier to like fish or cut bait, you know, like you're, you know, if something's working great, if something's not working, it's there's because there's fewer layers and because you have more autonomy and control you're able to say, okay, this isn't working.
Speaker: Let's put our heads together and find something that's going to work and move from there.
Speaker: And I also just think that just to echo
Speaker: what the others have said that, you know, by being teacher powered, it's not that the, and I think Liz said this in the podcast episode that it's not, it doesn't mean that like you're ignoring kids.
Speaker: In fact, it's, you know, you're, you're the one who's closest to the kids.
Speaker: And so you're best able to, I think, serve their interests.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's, let's talk a little bit then about the structural side of things.
Speaker: We got a few questions here from Tracy, which I think are really good.
Speaker: Um, the first one being, uh, if you're trying to do this, the biggest hurdle and I agree is probably funding.
Speaker: Um, I mean, I guess the first hurdle is going to be finding a group of people that have a very similar, uh, pedagogical understanding to you that actually want to commit to it.
Speaker: But the big hurdle, once the school gets up and running is like, how do you build it?
Speaker: So what's like, where do you even start when it comes to funding, when it comes to this connection?
Speaker: So I think that, um,
Speaker: Teacher power doesn't cost any more than a traditional school costs.
Speaker: So if, for example, people are looking to start a new school and they're going to go the charter route, you would use the same type of funding that is available to other charter schools.
Speaker: So there's a federal charter program and then there's state charter programs.
Speaker: And because education codes go by state, it varies a lot by state.
Speaker: So what is available in Wisconsin might not, I live in California, might not be available in California.
Speaker: And but for states that have the charter opportunity, that would be the first place to look for funding is through the local charter organizations.
Speaker: If a group of teachers is looking to do it through a district model.
Speaker: Now, we certainly support independent private schools like.
Speaker: They're welcome to use our resources, they're welcome to be part of things, but our main focus has always been on public schools, whether they're in the public charter sector or in the district sector.
Speaker: Typically either in a charter or in a district sector, there might be a conversion process.
Speaker: So there's already a school, it might not be doing very well, or there needs to be a leadership change, or the school just is really looking to reimagine what their school can be.
Speaker: In that case, you already have a school that has district funding that has like the regular
Speaker: per pupil amount that they're going to be getting.
Speaker: And so it's a matter of switching resources, but it's not a matter of raising extra money for this.
Speaker: We have over several years offered what we call ignition or booster grants, small $3,000 to $5,000, but that is just used for kind of like team collaboration money to cover subs or
Speaker: cover child care for teachers or you know gives teacher space to do retreats it's not about actually running the school there are some times like in the pilot schools where
Speaker: districts create these opportunities for innovative schools.
Speaker: They're called like innovation zones in some states, some districts do it that way, alternative schools.
Speaker: And so teams can submit proposals.
Speaker: And that is another way that teacher teams have kind of been able to start schools.
Speaker: But in that case as well, the funding is really already there through the district or the state.
Speaker: Teacher teams aren't create or like fundraising in that sense.
Speaker: That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: And I appreciate the commitment to the public education as well, making sure that we, I think as many kids as possible can get a free, strong public education.
Speaker: And Tracy also had another really good question pertaining to special education, particularly she's talking about ABA therapists being allowed in the classroom to like teach the teachers about interventions, but more broadly too, how does that work?
Speaker: Because I,
Speaker: At least where I work and many teachers that I would know, the administration is the one that typically takes care of special education and compliance and all the different things that go in with that.
Speaker: How do you ensure that every single student has access to those resources?
Speaker: Sure, I think the question was maybe asked in relation to the ABA classrooms that we started just a couple of years ago, but the resources for that classroom are primarily funded by the district and provided by Boston Public Schools.
Speaker: We do have an ABA with us three days a week, I believe.
Speaker: And then those classrooms have a tremendous amount of day-to-day support as well.
Speaker: So there's a classroom teacher.
Speaker: There are two full-time paras in each of those classrooms.
Speaker: um there I think our cap on that on those classrooms is 12 kids and they're usually at 10 or 12 um roughly um our speech and language pathologists our physical therapist is in there a lot but those are all our occupational therapists is in there a ton but all of those resources are provided by the district so it's not people that we have
Speaker: Well, some of them we have full time at our school, but others are just with us two or three days and then balance their workload with other schools in the district as well.
Speaker: I will say from my experience with other schools is the schools that have budget autonomy are then able to make decisions about our students need an ABA therapist.
Speaker: So we're going to spend our money on an ABA therapist versus
Speaker: a technology person, like maybe that's the trade off they're making there, or we need a social worker at our school.
Speaker: We don't need extra librarian hours.
Speaker: And it is always a trade off.
Speaker: It's not that one, it's whatever that school needs for that school year based on those students.
Speaker: And so I think that that has allowed many, many of our schools have higher than average special education enrollments.
Speaker: And that's often because
Speaker: They are getting a more student centered learning experience at their site because the teachers are able to make those decisions without kind of all these layers.
Speaker: I think Boston is in a unique position as well, just due to the number of teachers who are available and looking for jobs and wanting to work in Boston public schools that mostly they're hiring teachers who
Speaker: Well, all teachers have to have a master's, but then they also ensure that you have your gen ed license, your special education license and your ESL license.
Speaker: So they very rarely will hire teachers who don't have all of those licenses to teach.
Speaker: That's really impressive.
Speaker: That's a really stringent comparison to hear.
Speaker: It's good, though.
Speaker: It's a very good thing.
Speaker: And I like the fact that because teachers are the ones making these bureaucratic decisions, it's not really bureaucratic, but these important decisions.
Speaker: we know best what students need the most help and where to best allocate those resources as opposed to someone just looking at data on a page, which might tell like faux stories.
Speaker: Let me just double check here.
Speaker: Make sure I would go ahead.
Speaker: I would just supplement what you said there, Chris, with that.
Speaker: Also, we know we we see when that need changes as our kids change and recognize when the need is to reallocate or to shift
Speaker: resources instead of just continuing to go with the status quo, because that's what the system says to do.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: I think that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: And while I wait, we have about 15 more minutes here for questions or so.
Speaker: So feel free to type in some questions.
Speaker: Amy, do you want to talk about the cohort side of things, like how people can dive deeper into teacher power that are interested in?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So we have recently started before the pandemic, but well, we had the idea before the pandemic, but then it has turned out to be very timely that we have started these virtual learning collaborative cohorts.
Speaker: And the idea really is that small groups, six to eight, nine people will get together on a monthly basis led by one of our ambassadors and have a chance to
Speaker: Dive into one topic per month based off the teacher powered practices.
Speaker: So we look at teacher powered practice.
Speaker: We look at nine teacher powered practices.
Speaker: Skylar's in a group as well.
Speaker: So maybe he can tell you about your experience this month, but April kicked us off.
Speaker: People can still join.
Speaker: It's not registration isn't closed.
Speaker: It's going to be like available on an ongoing basis.
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: People can choose or their preference.
Speaker: Do you want to be with others in the same geographic region?
Speaker: Would you like to be with others at the same grade level?
Speaker: Would you like to be with others at the same type of school?
Speaker: And we can't guarantee everything, but we do our very best to kind of create balanced groups.
Speaker: And so this month they talked about keeping students at the center of decision making and how other teacher powered schools do this.
Speaker: What are some of the challenges?
Speaker: What are some suggestions they're getting from others?
Speaker: I don't know Skylar you want to share about your group I haven't I mean I've heard from your leader but I haven't heard from yeah yeah so our first meeting was last week um and I signed up for it originally because I thought it would just be a good experience to kind of have uh thought partners from around the country um but then yeah with the pandemic it became even more helpful and then with knowing that I'm uh
Speaker: going to be hiring a new, we're a two teacher school.
Speaker: I should have said that earlier.
Speaker: So hiring a new teacher is a like really big deal.
Speaker: So knowing that I'm going to have this group to kind of process some of that with over the course of this calendar year is also really helpful.
Speaker: My group is grade, I think grade level was how I chose.
Speaker: We're spread all over the country.
Speaker: And that was really, that was really cool.
Speaker: We all had very similar values, but very different schools.
Speaker: I think I knew one or two people in the group already just from the teacher powered movement, but the rest were new.
Speaker: And one person is like interested in, or is just starting on the journey and others are farther along.
Speaker: And so it's just a very, it was a nice diverse group.
Speaker: to talk to.
Speaker: And it was, I don't know, it was a really great conversation last week.
Speaker: I was, you know, these days of teaching remotely are exhausting.
Speaker: I'm sure that I speak for the other educators that, you know, staring at a screen, being on a video conference all day long pretty much is exhausting.
Speaker: And I was, part of me was like, another one of those.
Speaker: But it was really, it was very worthwhile.
Speaker: I would highly recommend signing up.
Speaker: Yes, it is.
Speaker: Zoom fatigue is definitely real.
Speaker: And we really didn't know what we were going to get, right?
Speaker: Like, you don't know who's going to sign up when you open these opportunities.
Speaker: And one thing that I love about the cohorts is how diverse they are.
Speaker: And we intentionally try in everything we do to highlight the diversity among teacher-powered schools and that there isn't one way to do this.
Speaker: And it looks different for every team.
Speaker: We have teachers and teams in the middle of Los Angeles and New York and Boston, and then we have rural teams and they seem to connect just as much to each other because they do have these shared values and this love for their communities and their students.
Speaker: And that's exciting.
Speaker: And I think that people value that.
Speaker: I also think it's important to know that you're not in this alone, and so having that group of people to connect with that maybe you wouldn't normally connect with because of where you're located geographically or whatever, you know, like Skylar, you said you maybe knew a couple of people, but you're also meeting more.
Speaker: It really is like strength in numbers when it comes to getting involved and participating in things.
Speaker: So I think they're amazing.
Speaker: The idea is amazing and they're going to continue to be amazing.
Speaker: And Skylar, thank you so much for signing up and encouraging people to do so.
Speaker: And we hope that more people will.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Let's get into another question from Tracy, which is,
Speaker: how do you get parents to then buy into the concept of a teacher powered school?
Speaker: Um, or even like to expand upon that question further, how do you get the students?
Speaker: Like, so you got the funding, you're starting the school with just teachers.
Speaker: How do you like even get enough kids to join the school in the first place so that you have a class?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Um, I'll start with this one because I, I don't know.
Speaker: I think, um,
Speaker: When I think about this, Tracy, the fact of being teacher-powered really is a big deal.
Speaker: But the second half of the teacher-powered motto is student-centered.
Speaker: And that's the bigger deal.
Speaker: And it doesn't take much to get parents to buy into the fact that their kids are at the center of the school and they're at the center of the decisions that you make.
Speaker: So like Skylar just talked about the very first cohort meeting was talking about keeping students at the center of the decision making process.
Speaker: That's always in your mind when you're a teacher powered school.
Speaker: And so having the students have voice and choice in terms of what's happening and then having all of the staff members being heard and parents also being an incredible integral part of that journey, that connection, that learning that's happening, it's not hard to get them to see and understand what's going on.
Speaker: I think the phrase teacher powered maybe could come across as like, oh, we're like really powerful.
Speaker: But when you put it with student centered learning, it softens it so much and in just the right way that it's easy for people to understand what's happening.
Speaker: When we first started, we had so many teachers register their kids or rank our school for their kids in the BPS lottery.
Speaker: And it still tends to be that way.
Speaker: We have a lot of families who are educators.
Speaker: And I think it's really because they're fascinated by the whole teacher powered piece and they believe in the expertise of excellent teachers.
Speaker: That's a really big draw for them.
Speaker: And then I think,
Speaker: Because our staff has turned over so little, they know exactly what to expect from each grade.
Speaker: And there's already a level of trust with those teachers.
Speaker: And I think the thing that keeps teachers and families there is that together we've created this community that really is the very best community for kids.
Speaker: I think that really keeps people wanting to stay there and bring their kids there.
Speaker: I mean, I imagine as long as the message is communicated clearly, I mean,
Speaker: In comparison to school as usual, this has to be an amazing opportunity for so many students.
Speaker: Go ahead, Amy.
Speaker: I was gonna say, I think it's a shift for students, parents, and teachers that all of us, you know, I won't say all, but most of us grew up in these very traditional schools and structures.
Speaker: And so, and teacher prep programs don't teach anything about this kind of collaborative governance.
Speaker: And so we all go in having to unlearn some,
Speaker: traditional things and traditional mindsets.
Speaker: And it's, it really is a growth opportunity for all of us because it's everything from a student is having some behavior troubles.
Speaker: Who do you send them to?
Speaker: Well, you, you have that power and that authority and that autonomy, and there isn't necessarily a principle to, to deal with that.
Speaker: Or it's who's ordering the toner for the copier.
Speaker: You know, it's like these, these things that,
Speaker: that everyone is in this and.
Speaker: It's a learning it's a learning curve for everyone and it's constant.
Speaker: Yeah, I see almost like an adventure side of this, which seems really fun.
Speaker: In addition to obviously impacting students and doing cool things, from a teacher's point of view, it kind of mixes things up.
Speaker: It's something cool to go down a road of that you've never done before.
Speaker: And it gives you a lot of new opportunities for networking.
Speaker: There's just so many other side things that also happen.
Speaker: Do you see a potential with
Speaker: kind of taking the light side of COVID-19, of being able to reach out and try new things with your organization now that schools are really going to have to change?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So I think COVID-19 has brought to light a lot of inequities in our system and a lot of challenges and spotlights, a lot of
Speaker: maybe what's not working, but it also spotlights teams that are working well.
Speaker: And there have been some excellent schools and excellent teacher teams, and even some systems that have responded in very powerful ways that have benefited communities and families.
Speaker: And so one thing we really strongly believe in is this positive,
Speaker: highlighting the positive, right?
Speaker: Highlighting who is doing this well and what can we learn from each other?
Speaker: And not necessarily in the sense of that program worked well, let's take it and make it art.
Speaker: Like you need to take it, imagine it for your community and make adjustments.
Speaker: Nothing is like this one size fits all.
Speaker: And I think that that's been super clear through the pandemic.
Speaker: both in terms of individual students, how are individual students learning?
Speaker: Some are learning really well on a distance learning model, maybe shining in a way they didn't in a classroom.
Speaker: And some who might have done really well in the classroom are struggling.
Speaker: And sometimes that's about access to technology or what's going on at home or, you know, a variety of support issues.
Speaker: And sometimes that's about learning style.
Speaker: And so I think that schools, as they...
Speaker: are really rethinking what is learning and how do we really move kids forward still we'll have to tackle some of these questions and really we're not going to get there without
Speaker: looking to the teachers, the teachers know the students best, the teachers know how to teach, they know what, you know, what's going on, they're going to have to be part of those conversations, or it's not going to work.
Speaker: And so hopefully, this will be an opportunity to really value teachers as professionals and their experience.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: This is such a cool opportunity.
Speaker: And for those that are listening in that kind of want to take something away from this, they're ready to go, they want to hit the starting line.
Speaker: We've got about five minutes left here.
Speaker: You say that the first step is really forming that team.
Speaker: What suggestions do you have for teachers that want to form this team in addition to, obviously, the resources that you have and cohorts?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: for teachers that maybe find themselves stuck at traditional school, maybe they're like the only teacher doing like weird stuff in their geographic area that they know of.
Speaker: Where do they find like minded folks?
Speaker: So I'll let Liz and Taryn jump in in a second.
Speaker: I will say that one of the first things I suggest
Speaker: is that they if you're starting really small like start with a book club choose progressive education book and invite people to be part of it that teacher powered is a spectrum and some schools you know have all 15 autonomies and they're you know they're totally a flat
Speaker: leadership structure, and some have two or three or four autonomies, and they start there.
Speaker: And that's what works for their team.
Speaker: And one isn't better or worse.
Speaker: It's just what works for their team.
Speaker: And so you don't have to take all of it on at once.
Speaker: Some teams want to, and great, we are here to support that.
Speaker: And some teams need to start with
Speaker: learning program or setting the schedule or slowly building that in.
Speaker: I will also say that what has worked for lots of teams is to take a year of exploration is often what we call it, where they formally say, we are going to explore what this would look like.
Speaker: But in the meantime, we are keeping our
Speaker: traditional structure.
Speaker: And so then that gives people space to experience that, visit other teacher powered schools, connect with people.
Speaker: That'd be where I'd start.
Speaker: But I know Liz and Taryn have good suggestions as well.
Speaker: I was going to say similar things, but we have regional networks as well.
Speaker: So I am very well connected with a lot of the New England
Speaker: people who are in similar positions to wanting to start something.
Speaker: We host school visits all the time.
Speaker: We just shortly before things closed down, we had a team of teachers from Providence coming to visit
Speaker: Um, so I would say, look on the website and see which schools are relatively close to you geographically.
Speaker: I know all of the people I've connected with through teacher powered work have been incredibly welcoming for having people come to visit.
Speaker: And I would really try to visit some of them because it's super inspiring to see how different they all are.
Speaker: Um, and then to pick the pieces that would work for you and your team and the things that you want to really be thoughtful of and,
Speaker: consider for your own model as you create it.
Speaker: Yeah, I'll echo that in 100%.
Speaker: Tracy, I think you had asked earlier if Wildland School has visitors.
Speaker: We do, and we love visitors, and we love them all the time.
Speaker: And so I highly encourage you to go and visit schools and not only talk to the teachers,
Speaker: But I think especially if you can talk with the students, kindergarten through 12th grade, the way in which kids are able to articulate what is happening in school is incredible because they see their involvement in what's going on and how the decisions are made and how that affects them as a learner.
Speaker: And Skylar can probably speak to this too with the size of your school and how involved your kids are and what's happening daily.
Speaker: It's just incredible.
Speaker: And the more schools you can visit, the more opportunities that you can pull from.
Speaker: You don't know what you don't know.
Speaker: And so taking that year of exploration or more is incredible.
Speaker: to gather all of that information and as a team continue to have those hard conversations about what would this look like?
Speaker: What does it need to look like for our kids?
Speaker: And then also be open to change every year because you have maybe a cohort of students that will stick with you.
Speaker: You know, we've got seventh through 12th grade, 95% of them end up staying from year to year.
Speaker: but you still get those new kids that are coming in or things change or personalities change or whatever it is.
Speaker: And so it can't be a rigid program.
Speaker: You have to build the framework, build the structure, but be willing to redecorate every year with the kids that you have.
Speaker: I really like the way you put that.
Speaker: And that's, that's one reason why I'm super excited.
Speaker: You know, I'm,
Speaker: disappointed, well, not disappointed isn't the right word, but it's going to be hard to go into a new school year with a brand new co-teacher after eight years of teaching with Amanda.
Speaker: But I am really legitimately excited about what it's going to mean for the school to bring in a new personality with new ideas.
Speaker: And we specifically made the job description so that it wasn't just a description of Amanda.
Speaker: You know, it was plenty of freedom for that person to make this role their own.
Speaker: and to help our school grow and change to fit their ideas.
Speaker: And I think that's really exciting.
Speaker: And that just makes coming to work every day, you know, worth doing, even when I'm not actually going to work, I guess.
Speaker: The opportunity is immense.
Speaker: And as Keisha just wrote in chat concerning high turnover schools, Amy, you had written just for the podcast, that overall teacher-powered schools have lower teacher turnover, which is the key is finding the right people.
Speaker: And I think, too, a lot of places that have high turnover see a lot of fault with administration or the way the school is operated, not necessarily with the kids.
Speaker: in which case they probably shouldn't have been there anyway.
Speaker: So it kind of works out.
Speaker: So again, thank you so much, Amy, Liz, Taryn.
Speaker: This is really cool.
Speaker: There's a lot of great questions.
Speaker: I can't wait to share this with even more people.
Speaker: Audience was great.
Speaker: Loved all the questions.
Speaker: If you want to learn more, you can visit them at teacherpowered.org.
Speaker: You can visit us at humanrestorationproject.org.
Speaker: And again, thanks.
Speaker: Thanks for checking that out.
Speaker: Remember to like this video and subscribe to our channel where you can find videos of our past summits, podcasts, and other resources as we try to restore humanity together.
