Field Trip Podcast

When leaders at this school district wanted a teacher workforce that reflected the diversity of its student body, the answer was right in front of them.

Field Guide: Recruiting Millennial Teachers

Men and women in their 20's and 30's are making up an ever-increasing portion of the workforce. Are you fully prepared to attract them to your school or district? In this field guide, you'll learn how to effectively market your job openings to prospective teachers, and strategies for enriching your applicant pool through online recruiting. Download it today!

Field Trip is a podcast from Frontline Education.

The financial crisis in 2008 left many school districts scrambling to stay afloat, save jobs and move mountains for teachers and students. Here’s how one district overhauled their onboarding process in the middle of the most difficult crisis they had ever faced — and didn’t spend an extra dime.

In this conversation with Angela Cooper, Chief Human Resources Officer at Lexington School District Two in South Carolina, and with Kevin Smoak, Coordinator for Evaluation and Effectiveness, we examine:

For further reading…

Employee onboarding is a great place to slash paperwork. How do you do it? Our white paper, “The Onboarding Opportunity,” looks at how to support strategic human capital management from the day new teachers and staff walk through the door.

Heather Stocking wanted to give her Human Resources team more time to be creative and strategic. That meant getting rid of a lot of their paperwork. Sounds great, right? But it wasn’t that simple.

This is the story of how the HR department at Bettendorf Community School District went paperless. But it’s really a story about change management. It’s about getting buy-in from teachers, leaders and the school board. It’s about how Heather and her team at Bettendorf carefully (and successfully!) navigated a massive shift away from “the way things have always been done” — calming fears and addressing concerns along the way.

Field Trip is a podcast from Frontline Education.

Over the summer of 2018, the RAND Corporation released a report on the results of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching Initiative. The big question: Did teacher evaluation reforms move the needle on student achievement? In this interview, we speak with researcher, professor and author Dr. James Stronge about his perspective and reaction to the RAND Corporation’s report.

Field Trip is a podcast from Frontline Education.

At the Weilenmann School of Discovery, competency-based learning has taken wing. This week, administrators and teachers share what they’re doing, and why professional learning has never been so relevant.

Executive Director Cindy Phillips, along with several teachers and administrators, tell the story of how micro-credentials and making videos of their classroom practice help each teacher feed their inner student and gain knowledge they can use right away.

For more details on how the Weilenmann School of Discovery implemented competency-based learning and the tools they use, you can read their in-depth story.

Being a principal can be isolating. Here’s how two principals began to use podcasting, blogging and social media to connect with colleagues around the world — and the impact it had on their schools.

Nick Indeglio and Jon Ross are principals at Downingtown Area School District in Pennsylvania. While carpooling, they would often have conversations about their jobs — being instructional leaders, leading a building, and the impact being principals had on their lives and marriages. Those conversations eventually turned into a regular podcast: The Rock Star Principals.

Our conversation with Nick and Jon looks at how principals and other education leaders are using technology to share new ideas, serve their teachers and staff, and implement world-rocking strategies in their schools.

You can find the Rock Star Principals’ Podcast at their website and on YouTube.

Field Trip is a podcast from Frontline Education.

A large suburban school district. An 18% year-over-year teacher turnover rate. A superintendent who said, “We need to plug the hole in our bucket.” This is how one school district set out to give teachers more voice.

In this interview we speak with Dr. Jeannie Stone, Superintendent of Richardson ISD in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Dr. Stone talks about the factors that contributed to a the highest attrition rate of any district in their area — and what they did to increase teacher retention.

“I have four completely transformed schools right now and we're already seeing all kinds of data that’s showing that it's going to work — and it is working.”

Resources

Stay Interview Questions

When the administration at Richardson ISD conducted the Stay Interviews, the interviews were simple and accessible for teachers, designed to get at what as truly on teachers’ minds. Here are the questions they asked teachers:

Teacher Turnover Calculator

Wondering just how much teacher turnover costs your district? Our Teacher Turnover Calculator gives you an estimated dollar figure, taking into account recruiting and hiring costs, processing and onboarding, and signing bonuses — and looks at how much you could save by increasing your retention rate.

How do you bring about culture change in a school district? How do you boost instructional rigor in spite of a tiny professional development budget? Dr. Melissa Varley, Superintendent of Florham Park School District in New Jersey, talks about motivation, vision-casting and the challenging work of turning around a district’s entire outlook.

In this interview, we asked Dr. Varley about:

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Why do Response to Intervention and Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports matter? In this interview, we speak with Jim Wright, author of “The RTI Toolkit: A Practical Guide for Schools” about his experience in RTI and how schools can impact students with academic and behavioral tiered intervention systems.

We ask Jim about:

Field Trip is a podcast from Frontline Education.

RTI resources:

Featured Content - eBook: Performing an RTI/MTSS Academic Screening Process Check-Up, by Jim Wright

National Center on Intensive Intervention: Academic Progress-monitoring Tools Chart

Resources from the Florida Center for Reading Research, with a range of school-wide academic screeners suitable for use in RTI/MTSS.

Grades K-1 Student Center Activities

Grades 2-3 Student Center Activities

Grades 4-5 Student Center Activities

Resources from the Evidence-Based Intervention Network — research-based ideas for reading, math and behavior interventions, co-sponsored by school psychology programs at East Carolina University and the University of Missouri.

Reading interventions

Math interventions

It’s no secret: principals are vital to the success of a school. But what’s the best way to train those who want to step into that role? In the last few years, more schools have looked to a clinical residency training model that gives principals-in-training on-the-job experience.

This week, we speak with Jackie Gran, Chief Policy and Evaluation Officer at New Leaders, an organization that works to prepare education leaders to make an impact in some of the highest-need schools in America. Their Aspiring Principals program provides opportunities for principals-in-training to work in schools alongside mentor principals for an entire year, much like a medical residency does for doctors.

We’re also joined by Crystal Harden-Lindsey, Executive Director of Green Street Academy in Baltimore, MD, and graduate of the New Leaders Aspiring Principals program. We ask Crystal and Jackie about this residency training model, what principals and teachers say about it, and what school districts can learn as they develop the principals and leaders of tomorrow.

Field Trip is a podcast from Frontline Education.