Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Bonus: Summit: Teacher Powered Schools w/ Amy Junge, Liz Seubert, and Taryn Synder
13 Plays5 years ago
Interested in using this opportunity for professional development credit? See our template for administrators. Consider running this event past your administrative team prior to completing.
In this interactive professional development session, we will talk about how teachers can create their own public, private, and charter schools through the Teacher Powered Schools organizational structure. We are joined by three amazing guests:
Amy Junge, Director of the Teacher Powered Schools initiative, co-author and researcher of Trusting Teachers with School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots with Kim Farris-Berg and Ed Dirkswager.
Liz Seubert, a co-founding teacher at Wildlands School, a public tuition-free, PBL-based charter high/middle school in Wisconsin, 2016 Teacher Ambassador for Teacher Powered Schools, and co-author of An Improbable School: Transforming How Teachers Teacher & Students Learn.
Taryn Snyder, a 3rd grade teacher at Boston Teacher Union Pilot School, a public tuition-free K-8 school in Massachusetts, founded as a partnership between the Boston teacher’s union and local schools.
This discussion will span across K-12, directing educators on the Teacher Powered Schools movement, how to get involved, and clarifying questions to start teachers on their journey to potentially envision their own schools!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introductions
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the Human Restoration Project featuring Teacher Powered Schools Summit.
00:00:09
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt.
00:00:11
Speaker
I'm the founder.
00:00:12
Speaker
What we do is we share progressive education thoughts with people.
00:00:15
Speaker
We host a podcast.
00:00:15
Speaker
We have resources, materials, all that kind of stuff.
00:00:19
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.
00:00:28
Speaker
I'll give you guys a second to introduce yourselves.
00:00:32
Speaker
Maybe if we want to start with you and then we'll kind of go around.
00:00:34
Speaker
Sure.
Backgrounds of Guests
00:00:35
Speaker
So I'm Amy Youngie and I was a middle school teacher and middle school assistant principal.
00:00:42
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.
00:00:50
Speaker
And that has eventually led to the Teacher Powered Schools Initiative and, um,
00:00:57
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.
00:01:10
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.
00:01:19
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.
00:01:24
Speaker
And I have been there for nine or 10 of them at this point.
00:01:27
Speaker
And it's a pretty exciting place to be.
00:01:29
Speaker
So I'm excited to share it with you.
00:01:32
Speaker
And I am Liz Seibert, co-founder of Wildland Science Research School, which is a 7th through 12th grade project-based learning program.
00:01:42
Speaker
teacher powered school in Wisconsin.
00:01:46
Speaker
And we have been open since 2005.
00:01:47
Speaker
So 15 years, about 15 years.
00:01:53
Speaker
Awesome.
00:01:53
Speaker
So thanks to all three of you for joining me.
Community Norms and Teacher-Powered Schools
00:01:55
Speaker
This is going to be really cool, a really cool conversation.
00:01:57
Speaker
I've been excited about this for like weeks because I'm both personally interested.
00:02:01
Speaker
I know this message will resonate with our audience.
00:02:04
Speaker
So just a few basic community norm stuff.
00:02:07
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.
00:02:14
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.
00:02:23
Speaker
on the recording, which leads to the second point, which is the conversation is recorded.
00:02:28
Speaker
So just keep that in mind that other people will hear this at some point.
00:02:33
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.
00:02:41
Speaker
Just get our attention in some way and I'll invite you into the conversation.
00:02:45
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
00:03:15
Speaker
Maybe Amy, I think, would probably be best directed at you.
00:03:18
Speaker
Do you just want to talk a little about what teacher powered schools are?
00:03:21
Speaker
And then we'll go from there.
Structures of Autonomy in Schools
00:03:23
Speaker
So teacher powered schools are schools where a team of teachers has the ability to make decisions that impact student success.
00:03:33
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.
00:03:48
Speaker
As an organization, we look at 15 different areas of autonomy.
00:03:53
Speaker
So everything from like learning program to hiring to choosing leaders to setting school policy and schedule.
00:04:01
Speaker
And then we also look at ways the team has collectively gained this autonomy.
00:04:07
Speaker
So how do they have authority?
00:04:09
Speaker
And in some places, it's through charters.
00:04:12
Speaker
Sometimes it's written into their bylaws.
00:04:14
Speaker
Sometimes it's part of their charter agreement.
00:04:19
Speaker
In other places, it might be from, in Taryn's case in Boston, there's a pilot school system.
00:04:25
Speaker
And so teachers are able to have similar autonomies to charters, a little bit different, but similar.
00:04:33
Speaker
And it's written through there and kind of passed on through their governance boards.
00:04:37
Speaker
Los Angeles also has a pilot system.
00:04:39
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.
00:05:01
Speaker
And as that happens over years, that becomes the culture.
00:05:04
Speaker
And so...
00:05:06
Speaker
In New York City, for example, there were there are lots of schools that have been functioned like this for a long time.
00:05:11
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.
00:05:22
Speaker
And that happens all over the country.
00:05:26
Speaker
And so really what teacher-powered schools does is we support these teams.
00:05:32
Speaker
So we support teams that are just brand new, like what is this?
00:05:37
Speaker
To we'd love to work in one or we want to convert our school to one.
00:05:40
Speaker
To we're already doing this and help –
00:05:44
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?
00:05:54
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.
00:06:08
Speaker
And that's really exciting to see how teams can adjust to that as a team.
00:06:13
Speaker
I will say one thing, a lot of teacher-powered schools have principals.
00:06:18
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.
00:06:31
Speaker
The difference is they don't
00:06:33
Speaker
do traditional things.
00:06:34
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.
00:06:52
Speaker
And so really the principal's job shifts if a team decides that they're going to have a principal.
00:06:58
Speaker
And that's like a very quick overview, but happy to answer questions.
00:07:05
Speaker
And I would love to to introduce as well.
00:07:08
Speaker
Maybe Taryn next kind of talk about your situation at a teacher powered school and what that looks like for you.
00:07:16
Speaker
Sure.
00:07:16
Speaker
So the Boston Teachers Union Pilot School, where I am, started 11 years ago, as I had mentioned.
00:07:22
Speaker
We were part of a negotiation between the school district and the Boston Teachers Union.
00:07:29
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.
00:07:37
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.
00:07:49
Speaker
So the union agreed to take on running a school as a pilot school within this negotiation.
00:07:56
Speaker
So that means that we had to put a team together.
00:08:00
Speaker
We had to hire teachers who have never had any experience in teacher powered schools and then start to create a roadmap.
00:08:08
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.
00:08:16
Speaker
We started pretty small.
00:08:18
Speaker
We had one class per grade from K1 which is pre-K through second grade and then two classes of sixth grade.
00:08:25
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.
00:08:35
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.
00:08:44
Speaker
And then K2 through second grade is the second class.
00:08:48
Speaker
And our school, if you walk in, might look somewhat traditional, I guess.
00:08:53
Speaker
Kids are in classrooms.
00:08:54
Speaker
They're learning.
00:08:55
Speaker
There's a lot of...
00:08:57
Speaker
like cross grade work happening.
00:08:58
Speaker
There are teachers meeting in teams all throughout the building all day long after school, before school, all the time.
00:09:06
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.
00:09:18
Speaker
Our school is run by four committees that have ebbed and flowed over the years, but
00:09:24
Speaker
Right now, our instructional leadership committee, our school culture and climate committee, our shared leadership committee, and our anti-bias, anti-racist committee.
00:09:33
Speaker
And then as needs arise that don't fit into those committees, we create ad hoc teams.
00:09:38
Speaker
So that would be for hiring or budget or scheduling.
00:09:43
Speaker
So those tend to be more short-term commitments rather than a committee, which is a year-long commitment.
00:09:51
Speaker
We have an election to work agreement.
00:09:53
Speaker
That's something that separates pilot schools.
00:09:55
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.
00:10:07
Speaker
That includes all teachers being part of a committee.
00:10:11
Speaker
That includes our summer planning days.
00:10:14
Speaker
That includes our two hour faculty meetings that we have every week.
00:10:18
Speaker
So that's something we work on every year.
00:10:20
Speaker
We can revise that year to year.
00:10:22
Speaker
but that helps us to govern our school.
00:10:24
Speaker
I think that's a fairly quick overview, but there's so many facets of it that are ever-changing.
00:10:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I look forward to learning more.
00:10:32
Speaker
This is really cool.
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah, thank you.
00:10:33
Speaker
All right, and let's just turn over to Liz, and then we'll go from there.
Project-Based Learning and Governance Models
00:10:38
Speaker
Sure.
00:10:38
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.
00:10:54
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.
00:11:02
Speaker
So I was game for anything.
00:11:06
Speaker
And we didn't know what teacher powered was.
00:11:10
Speaker
We just had the trust from our superintendent to say, go for it.
00:11:15
Speaker
And when we started, we had a cohort of seventh and eighth grade students together.
00:11:20
Speaker
So 20 middle school students at seventh and eighth grade level.
00:11:24
Speaker
And then there were 20 high school students
00:11:28
Speaker
And at the time, you didn't have to have your students full time either.
00:11:32
Speaker
So they were 11th and 12th grade students and a good majority of them were part time in some way.
00:11:40
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.
00:11:50
Speaker
And that was a really interesting dynamic.
00:11:52
Speaker
Within two years of opening though, that completely changed
00:11:56
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.
00:12:09
Speaker
And they were under our roof all day long.
00:12:13
Speaker
We are project based.
00:12:15
Speaker
And so that's the vehicle that we use for students in terms of learning and curriculum.
00:12:20
Speaker
We have a lot of autonomy.
00:12:22
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.
00:12:29
Speaker
You would have no idea our school is a school.
00:12:32
Speaker
We're located at a nature reserve.
00:12:34
Speaker
We are in the Citizen Science Center building.
00:12:38
Speaker
So it's just one building you walk in and there's a classroom on the left and a lab on the right.
00:12:43
Speaker
And that's where kids are located.
00:12:47
Speaker
Nothing like a school at all other than there are children there and lots of learning is taking place.
00:12:55
Speaker
And we have a bus parked out front too.
00:12:57
Speaker
So we're taking kids all kinds of places to go and learn and learn out in the field.
00:13:02
Speaker
Because we're located on a nature reserve, we utilize the outdoor for learning as much as possible.
00:13:10
Speaker
And that has been incredibly amazing for kids.
00:13:13
Speaker
One of our phrases is that students, you know, learning can take place anywhere.
00:13:17
Speaker
And so we're really making sure that students know and understand that.
00:13:22
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.
00:13:32
Speaker
And then, I don't know, it's just, it's been an adventure over the years.
00:13:39
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
00:13:49
Speaker
we're still figuring it out even 15 years in.
00:13:52
Speaker
And I think that's really important for people to know and understand.
00:13:56
Speaker
And I see lots of heads shaking too, and that's awesome.
00:13:59
Speaker
But every year you get a different group of students and the student passion and interest is really what drives Wildlands.
00:14:09
Speaker
And because of that,
00:14:11
Speaker
We are ever changing in what is happening and what we are doing.
00:14:14
Speaker
And our staff is really adaptive to our clients or our students in our school.
00:14:20
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.
00:14:41
Speaker
For sure.
00:14:41
Speaker
I mean, that sounds amazing.
00:14:43
Speaker
Both of your schools sound amazing.
00:14:44
Speaker
It's really, really cool.
00:14:45
Speaker
And the organization that structures all this and kind of leads the way in a sense really offers a ton of resources.
00:14:53
Speaker
The website is
00:14:55
Speaker
absurdly packed full of materials.
00:14:58
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?
00:15:15
Speaker
Like what is the connection between your school and the organization teacher-powered schools?
00:15:24
Speaker
I can jump in and share a little bit.
00:15:27
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.
00:15:33
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.
00:15:42
Speaker
I reach out to Amy all the time to be like, this is what's going on in Boston.
00:15:46
Speaker
Do you know of another school here that's going through that kind of thing?
00:15:49
Speaker
Or can you help me connect to somebody else in Massachusetts who might also be doing something like this?
00:15:56
Speaker
I'm pretty familiar with the schools in and around Boston, but there are other schools.
00:16:01
Speaker
There's the Oliver Partnership, which is outside of the city.
00:16:04
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.
00:16:13
Speaker
I also find there's a group of us that meet together fairly frequently, who are ambassadors for this work and are
00:16:21
Speaker
open and willing to having teachers come and visit our schools.
00:16:25
Speaker
I'm happy to make connections between other schools with similar governance models or other schools that are run in a similar way.
00:16:32
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.
00:16:41
Speaker
Have you ever been through something like that?
00:16:43
Speaker
Can you give us advice on what to do with this situation?
00:16:46
Speaker
And that's been a huge resource for us too.
00:16:52
Speaker
Yeah, that key point of teacher collaboration is huge.
00:16:56
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:16:58
Speaker
I prepped beforehand, Amy, and I watched your...
00:17:00
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.
00:17:13
Speaker
At this point, really, we are at chat sessions, we're just going right into it.
00:17:18
Speaker
I'm gonna start off with Paul's question.
00:17:20
Speaker
Paul just asked, is there a clearinghouse for info on schools doing the most progressive work?
00:17:28
Speaker
That is a good question.
00:17:29
Speaker
I would say that there are a handful of organizations, education organizations, nonprofits nationwide that do very innovative progressive work.
00:17:42
Speaker
There isn't one necessarily that houses everything.
00:17:45
Speaker
There's Education Reimagined, which is an organization that tries to bring together multiple other
Support and Resources for Progressive Education
00:17:52
Speaker
organizations.
00:17:52
Speaker
So that would be like the one that pops in that
00:17:56
Speaker
is really focused on bringing lots of organizations together.
00:18:00
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.
00:18:12
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.
00:18:20
Speaker
You know, one thing that
00:18:22
Speaker
I think sets teacher powered apart is teacher powered really focuses on governance structure versus learning program.
00:18:29
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.
00:18:43
Speaker
And so it allows the school to choose whatever learning program is going to be
00:18:50
Speaker
best meet the needs of their students.
00:18:52
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?
00:19:02
Speaker
Because that is an area we found that teachers don't necessarily have a lot of training in is those kinds of leadership.
00:19:11
Speaker
Yeah, and
00:19:13
Speaker
Can I build off of that for a minute here, Chris?
00:19:16
Speaker
So the question before, you know, how does Wildlands utilize the teacher-powered schools network or teacher-powered in general?
00:19:22
Speaker
And Amy, you totally hit the nail on the head in that the teacher-powered network really gave us...
00:19:29
Speaker
the ability to communicate to people what that meant.
00:19:33
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.
00:19:42
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.
00:19:57
Speaker
And
00:19:57
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.
00:20:05
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.
00:20:23
Speaker
and or working with other schools that have seen us as inspiration over the years and want to try something on their own.
00:20:31
Speaker
I think that having that common language within a teacher powered school structure has been incredible.
00:20:40
Speaker
For sure.
00:20:41
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.
00:20:53
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.
00:21:04
Speaker
However, as of right now, PEN, which was brought up in the chat, Progressive Education Network, has that resource.
00:21:10
Speaker
If you go on their website, you can search for what progressive schools exist.
00:21:14
Speaker
They might not necessarily be teacher powered schools, but you can at least see kind of like that connection and how it
00:21:20
Speaker
relates.
00:21:22
Speaker
Moving into Keisha's question, she says, I realize that there are different points of entry.
00:21:27
Speaker
Is there a toolkit of resources to help schools who are looking at this direction?
00:21:35
Speaker
Probably any of us could answer.
00:21:37
Speaker
Yep.
00:21:39
Speaker
Call for it.
00:21:43
Speaker
Real quick, and then maybe Taryn and Liz can tell how to use the resource, is we do have a steps guide.
00:21:49
Speaker
If you go to the website, we think of teacher-powered in five formal stages.
00:21:55
Speaker
I always include a sixth stage of, like, dreaming, like you kind of are exploring it.
00:22:00
Speaker
There's a forming stage where you are really learning about it.
00:22:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:05
Speaker
a storming stage where you're getting your team together.
00:22:08
Speaker
And all these are kind of places of entry for people and teams to join.
00:22:12
Speaker
So sometimes teams come to us and they figured out that they want to do this.
00:22:15
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.
00:22:25
Speaker
Right.
00:22:25
Speaker
Like this, the whole concept is team built.
00:22:28
Speaker
And then Normie, Normie,
00:22:33
Speaker
performing, transforming, as I go through those in my head, are for schools that are open, converting, kind of fine-tuning it.
00:22:40
Speaker
So I know that Taryn and Liz send people to those places, those resources a lot.
00:22:46
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.
00:22:56
Speaker
So for us,
00:22:57
Speaker
We started off really small, as I had mentioned, with just a small group of teachers and only a couple of grades.
00:23:03
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.
00:23:14
Speaker
So we knew because we were the same group of teachers.
00:23:17
Speaker
But as we were growing, we were finding that
00:23:19
Speaker
There was discrepancies between hiring processes.
00:23:22
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.
00:23:31
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
00:23:41
Speaker
make true for us as we were moving forward.
00:23:43
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.
00:23:55
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.
00:24:06
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
00:24:15
Speaker
with your team, what does that look like from an administrator perspective?
00:24:19
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?
00:24:28
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
00:24:43
Speaker
or transforming what they have into something different.
00:24:48
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.
00:24:55
Speaker
And it's definitely an expert that could answer some of these questions.
00:24:58
Speaker
So I just wanted to say, encourage you Skyler that you're welcome to answer these.
00:25:04
Speaker
Cause I know that you've been involved with teacher powered for a long time.
00:25:07
Speaker
So.
00:25:10
Speaker
Sure.
00:25:10
Speaker
I guess I could just quick introduce myself that, uh,
00:25:13
Speaker
So I'm Skylar Prim.
00:25:14
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.
00:25:26
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.
00:25:34
Speaker
And we're a teacher-powered school.
00:25:37
Speaker
We do have a principal who's actually the principal for the middle and high school
00:25:42
Speaker
in the traditional part of the building.
00:25:45
Speaker
But she really lets us do her own thing and is there to do like evaluations.
00:25:52
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.
00:26:03
Speaker
But for the most part, she lets us make decisions on, you know, we make pretty much every other decision.
00:26:08
Speaker
You know, I do the budgeting.
00:26:10
Speaker
We're,
00:26:11
Speaker
about to hire a new teacher because my co-teacher is becoming the reading specialist.
00:26:14
Speaker
So, you know, we'll be taking the lead on that, although she'll be involved, of course.
00:26:20
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:26:25
Speaker
So, it's very, very cool.
00:26:27
Speaker
Skylar is also one of our best buds here at Human Estoration Project.
00:26:30
Speaker
He's our treasurer.
00:26:31
Speaker
Make sure that we have some money.
00:26:34
Speaker
So diving, there's a ton of questions.
00:26:36
Speaker
I was going to throw it out there.
00:26:38
Speaker
Maybe you can answer this in a further question to your cohorts that you're hosting as well.
00:26:42
Speaker
I think it was a cool way for people to get together and talk about these things.
00:26:47
Speaker
But just to start, there's a lot, which is good.
00:26:49
Speaker
Let's start with Paul.
00:26:50
Speaker
Paul asks, from the people that are really doing the work, what's kind of the passion?
00:26:57
Speaker
Why should schools become teacher-powered?
00:27:05
Speaker
Okay, I'll take it.
00:27:07
Speaker
I think one of the driving reasons that I enjoy being at my teacher-powered school is the sense of ownership.
00:27:16
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,
00:27:32
Speaker
at your school, I think it makes all the difference.
00:27:35
Speaker
Instead of being told what to do and when to do it, you get to be the one to make those decisions.
00:27:42
Speaker
And I just, I can't imagine being a professional, but being told what to do all the time.
00:27:49
Speaker
And so the trust and the empowerment that comes
00:27:53
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.
00:28:04
Speaker
I just can't imagine being anywhere else.
00:28:08
Speaker
In fact, there was a point in time where my husband
00:28:11
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.
00:28:19
Speaker
I was not working anywhere else.
00:28:21
Speaker
And so just that sense of ownership and pride and making sure that
00:28:27
Speaker
You know, you it's like owning a business in a way because you have so much invested in it.
00:28:33
Speaker
And as teachers, that's our nature.
00:28:34
Speaker
We love to pour ourselves into our kids.
00:28:37
Speaker
And it just makes sense to me that you also get to be making the decisions that affect those kids.
00:28:45
Speaker
I would agree with that.
00:28:46
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.
00:28:56
Speaker
getting my first job, which was actually at a charter school also in Boston.
00:29:00
Speaker
And then finally, I was able after a year to move back to my school and have been there ever since.
00:29:05
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.
00:29:13
Speaker
And we were held to the same pacing guide as every other class.
00:29:18
Speaker
And
00:29:18
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.
00:29:26
Speaker
And it doesn't matter if your kids don't get it, just keep moving.
00:29:29
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.
00:29:47
Speaker
It just didn't feel like,
00:29:48
Speaker
Right to have somebody who didn't really know them make those decisions.
00:29:52
Speaker
So being in a teacher powered school, you're the one who's working with the kids.
00:29:56
Speaker
You're the one who is making the decisions for what's going to work for them and for the school.
00:30:00
Speaker
And that's been huge.
00:30:01
Speaker
And one example I can think of in my time at the BTU school.
00:30:07
Speaker
The math curriculum that we had started the school with just wasn't the best one for us and for our kids.
00:30:14
Speaker
And our lower school teachers came together during one of our Thursday faculty meetings.
00:30:18
Speaker
And we were like, this is what it looks like in third grade.
00:30:20
Speaker
And this is what it looks like in fifth grade and in first grade.
00:30:22
Speaker
And it just doesn't really seem to make sense.
00:30:24
Speaker
And the kids aren't connecting the concepts together.
00:30:28
Speaker
from the curriculum with the work that they actually need to be doing.
00:30:31
Speaker
And just as a lower school, we were like, we're not going to use this anymore.
00:30:34
Speaker
We're going to start using this different curriculum that we think will better suit our kids.
00:30:38
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.
00:30:48
Speaker
And in ours, it was just a conversation during one meeting, and we all chose the newer curriculum that we wanted to use.
00:30:56
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:30:57
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.
00:31:07
Speaker
Amy, did you have something?
00:31:09
Speaker
I was just going to say that I think that
00:31:12
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.
00:31:21
Speaker
And so they own those decisions instead of this kind of
00:31:27
Speaker
Some principals or leaders like to force this quote unquote buy-in, but it doesn't feel authentic.
00:31:33
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.
00:31:45
Speaker
And I know Skylar, I think I just saw you wanted to jump in on that too.
00:31:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:49
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,
00:31:57
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.
00:32:17
Speaker
Let's put our heads together and find something that's going to work and move from there.
00:32:22
Speaker
And I also just think that just to echo
00:32:26
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.
00:32:38
Speaker
In fact, it's, you know, you're, you're the one who's closest to the kids.
00:32:41
Speaker
And so you're best able to, I think, serve their interests.
00:32:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:48
Speaker
Let's, let's talk a little bit then about the structural side of things.
00:32:52
Speaker
We got a few questions here from Tracy, which I think are really good.
00:32:56
Speaker
Um, the first one being, uh, if you're trying to do this, the biggest hurdle and I agree is probably funding.
00:33:03
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.
00:33:12
Speaker
But the big hurdle, once the school gets up and running is like, how do you build it?
00:33:15
Speaker
So what's like, where do you even start when it comes to funding, when it comes to this connection?
Funding and Budget Decisions
00:33:21
Speaker
So I think that, um,
00:33:25
Speaker
Teacher power doesn't cost any more than a traditional school costs.
00:33:31
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.
00:33:43
Speaker
So there's a federal charter program and then there's state charter programs.
00:33:47
Speaker
And because education codes go by state, it varies a lot by state.
00:33:52
Speaker
So what is available in Wisconsin might not, I live in California, might not be available in California.
00:33:59
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.
00:34:11
Speaker
If a group of teachers is looking to do it through a district model.
00:34:16
Speaker
Now, we certainly support independent private schools like.
00:34:20
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.
00:34:30
Speaker
Typically either in a charter or in a district sector, there might be a conversion process.
00:34:35
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.
00:34:47
Speaker
In that case, you already have a school that has district funding that has like the regular
00:34:53
Speaker
per pupil amount that they're going to be getting.
00:34:56
Speaker
And so it's a matter of switching resources, but it's not a matter of raising extra money for this.
00:35:06
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
00:35:18
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
00:35:32
Speaker
districts create these opportunities for innovative schools.
00:35:36
Speaker
They're called like innovation zones in some states, some districts do it that way, alternative schools.
00:35:40
Speaker
And so teams can submit proposals.
00:35:44
Speaker
And that is another way that teacher teams have kind of been able to start schools.
00:35:48
Speaker
But in that case as well, the funding is really already there through the district or the state.
00:35:54
Speaker
Teacher teams aren't create or like fundraising in that sense.
00:36:01
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense.
00:36:02
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.
00:36:12
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?
00:36:27
Speaker
Because I,
00:36:28
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.
00:36:38
Speaker
How do you ensure that every single student has access to those resources?
00:36:43
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.
00:36:59
Speaker
We do have an ABA with us three days a week, I believe.
00:37:04
Speaker
And then those classrooms have a tremendous amount of day-to-day support as well.
00:37:07
Speaker
So there's a classroom teacher.
00:37:09
Speaker
There are two full-time paras in each of those classrooms.
00:37:13
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
00:37:39
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.
00:37:49
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.
00:37:59
Speaker
So we're going to spend our money on an ABA therapist versus
00:38:03
Speaker
a technology person, like maybe that's the trade off they're making there, or we need a social worker at our school.
00:38:09
Speaker
We don't need extra librarian hours.
00:38:11
Speaker
And it is always a trade off.
00:38:12
Speaker
It's not that one, it's whatever that school needs for that school year based on those students.
00:38:20
Speaker
And so I think that that has allowed many, many of our schools have higher than average special education enrollments.
00:38:29
Speaker
And that's often because
00:38:31
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.
00:38:44
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
00:38:56
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.
00:39:03
Speaker
So they very rarely will hire teachers who don't have all of those licenses to teach.
00:39:11
Speaker
That's really impressive.
00:39:13
Speaker
That's a really stringent comparison to hear.
00:39:16
Speaker
It's good, though.
00:39:16
Speaker
It's a very good thing.
00:39:17
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.
00:39:27
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.
00:39:40
Speaker
Let me just double check here.
00:39:41
Speaker
Make sure I would go ahead.
00:39:42
Speaker
I would just supplement what you said there, Chris, with that.
00:39:45
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
00:39:56
Speaker
resources instead of just continuing to go with the status quo, because that's what the system says to do.
00:40:06
Speaker
For sure.
00:40:06
Speaker
For sure.
00:40:07
Speaker
I think that makes a lot of sense.
00:40:09
Speaker
And while I wait, we have about 15 more minutes here for questions or so.
00:40:14
Speaker
So feel free to type in some questions.
00:40:16
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?
00:40:23
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:40:23
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.
00:40:35
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
00:40:49
Speaker
Dive into one topic per month based off the teacher powered practices.
00:40:54
Speaker
So we look at teacher powered practice.
00:40:56
Speaker
We look at nine teacher powered practices.
00:40:59
Speaker
Skylar's in a group as well.
00:41:00
Speaker
So maybe he can tell you about your experience this month, but April kicked us off.
00:41:04
Speaker
People can still join.
00:41:05
Speaker
It's not registration isn't closed.
00:41:07
Speaker
It's going to be like available on an ongoing basis.
00:41:11
Speaker
And yeah,
00:41:13
Speaker
People can choose or their preference.
00:41:14
Speaker
Do you want to be with others in the same geographic region?
00:41:18
Speaker
Would you like to be with others at the same grade level?
00:41:20
Speaker
Would you like to be with others at the same type of school?
00:41:23
Speaker
And we can't guarantee everything, but we do our very best to kind of create balanced groups.
00:41:29
Speaker
And so this month they talked about keeping students at the center of decision making and how other teacher powered schools do this.
00:41:37
Speaker
What are some of the challenges?
00:41:39
Speaker
What are some suggestions they're getting from others?
00:41:42
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
00:42:07
Speaker
going to be hiring a new, we're a two teacher school.
00:42:10
Speaker
I should have said that earlier.
00:42:11
Speaker
So hiring a new teacher is a like really big deal.
00:42:16
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.
00:42:26
Speaker
My group is grade, I think grade level was how I chose.
00:42:33
Speaker
We're spread all over the country.
00:42:36
Speaker
And that was really, that was really cool.
00:42:39
Speaker
We all had very similar values, but very different schools.
00:42:44
Speaker
I think I knew one or two people in the group already just from the teacher powered movement, but the rest were new.
00:42:53
Speaker
And one person is like interested in, or is just starting on the journey and others are farther along.
00:42:59
Speaker
And so it's just a very, it was a nice diverse group.
00:43:02
Speaker
to talk to.
00:43:03
Speaker
And it was, I don't know, it was a really great conversation last week.
00:43:06
Speaker
I was, you know, these days of teaching remotely are exhausting.
00:43:10
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.
00:43:21
Speaker
And I was, part of me was like, another one of those.
00:43:24
Speaker
But it was really, it was very worthwhile.
00:43:27
Speaker
I would highly recommend signing up.
00:43:33
Speaker
Yes, it is.
00:43:33
Speaker
Zoom fatigue is definitely real.
00:43:35
Speaker
And we really didn't know what we were going to get, right?
00:43:38
Speaker
Like, you don't know who's going to sign up when you open these opportunities.
00:43:42
Speaker
And one thing that I love about the cohorts is how diverse they are.
00:43:46
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.
00:43:57
Speaker
And it looks different for every team.
00:44:03
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.
00:44:19
Speaker
And that's exciting.
00:44:22
Speaker
And I think that people value that.
00:44:26
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.
00:44:43
Speaker
It really is like strength in numbers when it comes to getting involved and participating in things.
00:44:50
Speaker
So I think they're amazing.
00:44:53
Speaker
The idea is amazing and they're going to continue to be amazing.
00:44:56
Speaker
And Skylar, thank you so much for signing up and encouraging people to do so.
00:45:02
Speaker
And we hope that more people will.
00:45:03
Speaker
Awesome.
00:45:08
Speaker
Awesome.
00:45:10
Speaker
Let's get into another question from Tracy, which is,
00:45:14
Speaker
how do you get parents to then buy into the concept of a teacher powered school?
00:45:20
Speaker
Um, or even like to expand upon that question further, how do you get the students?
00:45:27
Speaker
Like, so you got the funding, you're starting the school with just teachers.
00:45:31
Speaker
How do you like even get enough kids to join the school in the first place so that you have a class?
00:45:38
Speaker
Sure.
00:45:39
Speaker
Um, I'll start with this one because I, I don't know.
00:45:43
Speaker
I think, um,
00:45:44
Speaker
When I think about this, Tracy, the fact of being teacher-powered really is a big deal.
00:45:51
Speaker
But the second half of the teacher-powered motto is student-centered.
00:45:56
Speaker
And that's the bigger deal.
00:45:57
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.
00:46:06
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.
00:46:15
Speaker
That's always in your mind when you're a teacher powered school.
00:46:19
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.
00:46:39
Speaker
I think the phrase teacher powered maybe could come across as like, oh, we're like really powerful.
00:46:47
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.
00:46:58
Speaker
When we first started, we had so many teachers register their kids or rank our school for their kids in the BPS lottery.
00:47:06
Speaker
And it still tends to be that way.
00:47:09
Speaker
We have a lot of families who are educators.
00:47:11
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.
00:47:20
Speaker
That's a really big draw for them.
00:47:21
Speaker
And then I think,
00:47:25
Speaker
Because our staff has turned over so little, they know exactly what to expect from each grade.
00:47:30
Speaker
And there's already a level of trust with those teachers.
00:47:32
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.
00:47:43
Speaker
I think that really keeps people wanting to stay there and bring their kids there.
00:47:49
Speaker
I mean, I imagine as long as the message is communicated clearly, I mean,
00:47:54
Speaker
In comparison to school as usual, this has to be an amazing opportunity for so many students.
00:48:01
Speaker
Go ahead, Amy.
00:48:02
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.
00:48:14
Speaker
And so, and teacher prep programs don't teach anything about this kind of collaborative governance.
00:48:20
Speaker
And so we all go in having to unlearn some,
00:48:26
Speaker
traditional things and traditional mindsets.
00:48:28
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.
00:48:37
Speaker
Who do you send them to?
00:48:38
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.
00:48:48
Speaker
Or it's who's ordering the toner for the copier.
00:48:51
Speaker
You know, it's like these, these things that,
00:48:55
Speaker
that everyone is in this and.
00:49:00
Speaker
It's a learning it's a learning curve for everyone and it's constant.
00:49:06
Speaker
Yeah, I see almost like an adventure side of this, which seems really fun.
00:49:12
Speaker
In addition to obviously impacting students and doing cool things, from a teacher's point of view, it kind of mixes things up.
00:49:20
Speaker
It's something cool to go down a road of that you've never done before.
00:49:23
Speaker
And it gives you a lot of new opportunities for networking.
00:49:25
Speaker
There's just so many other side things that also happen.
00:49:29
Speaker
Do you see a potential with
00:49:33
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?
Impact of COVID-19 and Starting Points for Change
00:49:46
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:49:47
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
00:50:02
Speaker
maybe what's not working, but it also spotlights teams that are working well.
00:50:06
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.
00:50:19
Speaker
And so one thing we really strongly believe in is this positive,
00:50:26
Speaker
highlighting the positive, right?
00:50:27
Speaker
Highlighting who is doing this well and what can we learn from each other?
00:50:32
Speaker
And not necessarily in the sense of that program worked well, let's take it and make it art.
00:50:38
Speaker
Like you need to take it, imagine it for your community and make adjustments.
00:50:44
Speaker
Nothing is like this one size fits all.
00:50:46
Speaker
And I think that that's been super clear through the pandemic.
00:50:50
Speaker
both in terms of individual students, how are individual students learning?
00:50:54
Speaker
Some are learning really well on a distance learning model, maybe shining in a way they didn't in a classroom.
00:51:01
Speaker
And some who might have done really well in the classroom are struggling.
00:51:05
Speaker
And sometimes that's about access to technology or what's going on at home or, you know, a variety of support issues.
00:51:14
Speaker
And sometimes that's about learning style.
00:51:16
Speaker
And so I think that schools, as they...
00:51:19
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
00:51:33
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.
00:51:44
Speaker
And so hopefully, this will be an opportunity to really value teachers as professionals and their experience.
00:51:53
Speaker
Amazing.
00:51:54
Speaker
This is such a cool opportunity.
00:51:56
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.
00:52:02
Speaker
We've got about five minutes left here.
00:52:04
Speaker
You say that the first step is really forming that team.
00:52:08
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?
00:52:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:17
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.
00:52:25
Speaker
Where do they find like minded folks?
00:52:29
Speaker
So I'll let Liz and Taryn jump in in a second.
00:52:30
Speaker
I will say that one of the first things I suggest
00:52:34
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
00:52:51
Speaker
leadership structure, and some have two or three or four autonomies, and they start there.
00:52:56
Speaker
And that's what works for their team.
00:52:58
Speaker
And one isn't better or worse.
00:52:59
Speaker
It's just what works for their team.
00:53:01
Speaker
And so you don't have to take all of it on at once.
00:53:06
Speaker
Some teams want to, and great, we are here to support that.
00:53:09
Speaker
And some teams need to start with
00:53:12
Speaker
learning program or setting the schedule or slowly building that in.
00:53:17
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.
00:53:28
Speaker
But in the meantime, we are keeping our
00:53:31
Speaker
traditional structure.
00:53:32
Speaker
And so then that gives people space to experience that, visit other teacher powered schools, connect with people.
00:53:40
Speaker
That'd be where I'd start.
00:53:41
Speaker
But I know Liz and Taryn have good suggestions as well.
00:53:45
Speaker
I was going to say similar things, but we have regional networks as well.
00:53:50
Speaker
So I am very well connected with a lot of the New England
00:53:55
Speaker
people who are in similar positions to wanting to start something.
00:53:58
Speaker
We host school visits all the time.
00:54:00
Speaker
We just shortly before things closed down, we had a team of teachers from Providence coming to visit
00:54:06
Speaker
Um, so I would say, look on the website and see which schools are relatively close to you geographically.
00:54:14
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.
00:54:22
Speaker
And I would really try to visit some of them because it's super inspiring to see how different they all are.
00:54:29
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,
00:54:36
Speaker
consider for your own model as you create it.
00:54:40
Speaker
Yeah, I'll echo that in 100%.
00:54:43
Speaker
Tracy, I think you had asked earlier if Wildland School has visitors.
00:54:47
Speaker
We do, and we love visitors, and we love them all the time.
00:54:51
Speaker
And so I highly encourage you to go and visit schools and not only talk to the teachers,
00:54:57
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.
00:55:16
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.
00:55:26
Speaker
It's just incredible.
00:55:27
Speaker
And the more schools you can visit, the more opportunities that you can pull from.
00:55:33
Speaker
You don't know what you don't know.
00:55:35
Speaker
And so taking that year of exploration or more is incredible.
00:55:40
Speaker
to gather all of that information and as a team continue to have those hard conversations about what would this look like?
00:55:47
Speaker
What does it need to look like for our kids?
00:55:50
Speaker
And then also be open to change every year because you have maybe a cohort of students that will stick with you.
00:55:58
Speaker
You know, we've got seventh through 12th grade, 95% of them end up staying from year to year.
00:56:04
Speaker
but you still get those new kids that are coming in or things change or personalities change or whatever it is.
00:56:11
Speaker
And so it can't be a rigid program.
00:56:14
Speaker
You have to build the framework, build the structure, but be willing to redecorate every year with the kids that you have.
00:56:25
Speaker
I really like the way you put that.
00:56:26
Speaker
And that's, that's one reason why I'm super excited.
00:56:30
Speaker
You know, I'm,
00:56:33
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.
00:56:44
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.
00:56:51
Speaker
And we specifically made the job description so that it wasn't just a description of Amanda.
00:56:57
Speaker
You know, it was plenty of freedom for that person to make this role their own.
00:57:01
Speaker
and to help our school grow and change to fit their ideas.
00:57:07
Speaker
And I think that's really exciting.
00:57:09
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.
00:57:22
Speaker
The opportunity is immense.
00:57:24
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.
00:57:38
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.
00:57:49
Speaker
in which case they probably shouldn't have been there anyway.
00:57:51
Speaker
So it kind of works out.
00:57:54
Speaker
So again, thank you so much, Amy, Liz, Taryn.
00:57:58
Speaker
This is really cool.
00:57:59
Speaker
There's a lot of great questions.
00:58:01
Speaker
I can't wait to share this with even more people.
00:58:03
Speaker
Audience was great.
00:58:04
Speaker
Loved all the questions.
00:58:06
Speaker
If you want to learn more, you can visit them at teacherpowered.org.
00:58:09
Speaker
You can visit us at humanrestorationproject.org.
00:58:13
Speaker
And again, thanks.
00:58:16
Speaker
Thanks for checking that out.
00:58:17
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.