Designing the Next Education Workforce with Brent Maddin and Krista Adams
The default one-teacher-one-classroom model of schooling is unsustainable for most educators. As a result, our education system does not reliably deliver quality learning outcomes and experiences for nearly enough people, especially students of color and those from low-income backgrounds. With the disruptions caused by COVID, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity — and obligation — to fundamentally redesign how we staff schools. We need to build the Next Education Workforce.
Next Education Workforce staffing models 1) provide all students with deeper and personalized learning by building teams of educators with distributed expertise and 2) empower educators by developing new opportunities to enter, specialize and advance in the profession.
Beginning as pilot in 2019 in one school, by Fall 2021 the work has expanded to nearly 30 schools across 5 school districts impacting over 260 educators and 6600 students. Mesa Public Schools – the largest school district in Arizona – has made a bold commitment to begin moving 50% of their schools to Next Education Workforce models in the next five years. In the near future the work will expand to building team-based models in California and other states with the goal of launching models with at least 50 district partners in the next five years.
One of the schools leading the way in building these innovative staffing models is Stevenson Elementary in Mesa Public Schools in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The first year of their work, teaming across a single grade level, is documented here. During the span of one year, and in the midst of the pandemic, the school has successfully transitioned to team-based staffing models school wide under the leadership of Principal Krista Adams.
More about our guests below the video
Our guests
Dr. Brent Maddin is Executive Director of the Next Education Workforce, at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. He collaborates with colleagues across ASU, P12 educators, and the community to redesign models of schooling based on teams of educators with distributed expertise who are better able to deliver on the promise of deeper and personalized learning for ALL students.
Krista Adams has served as a teacher, Title I Facilitator and school administrator for over 20 years in the state of Arizona. This is her fourth year serving as the proud principal of Stevenson Elementary in Mesa Public Schools where teams of educators work together to provide deeper, personalized learning for students through an inquiry model.
Learn more about the Next Education Workforce
You can find an overview of the Next Education Workforce on the website and access to the full set of resource collections (continually growing), here. A few of the most important resources include:
- An 8:00 minute podcast overview of the Next Education Workforce
- MLFTC Dean Carole Basile’s blog post What’s a college of education for?,
- The “What is the Next Education Workforce?” resource collection
- For an example of one of the current school models, please see the SPARK School spotlight; others are here
- A few descriptions of how the Next Education Workforce creates new opportunities in specific instructional models – for example, Authentic assessment work time and Thematic learning rotation
- The white paper and implementation briefs addressing how MLFTC partnered with two districts to implement team-based residencies for teacher candidates (these models have since changed a bit, but it gives you a sense)