Overview

From late fall 2022 to spring 2023, the Reinvention Lab entered into early-stage research around what we were calling “New Roles”, that morphed into “Abundant Staffing.” The “big picture” questions that got us interested in this line of inquiry were:

• What opportunities existed for surrounding educators with an ecosystem of different people that could support 21st century learning outcomes?
• Could new human capital structures for education be a lever for reinvented learning?
• If so, how could TFA, as a talent engine, support that?

We have since “composted” this research, and did not pursue the development of offerings directly related to this research.

We have shared aspects of this research publicly: for instance, in Getting Smart and at a presentation at SXSWedu 2024.

Why we explored this problem space

In summer 2022, there were many post-pandemic headlines about teacher shortages (here and here are two examples). We saw many schools frantically trying to fill positions and struggling. We started to wonder: Are we operating from a scarcity mindset as a field?

What we were seeing: There are not enough teachers to meet our students basic needs, and that means we put our heads down. We try to problem solve the challenge of the moment (get your classes covered today when both the teacher and sub doesn’t show up) and then one day, we’ll get to redesign for more of this juicy kind of learning.

What we were thinking: There is an incredible opportunity to reframe this moment; it still requires us to be honest about just how hard and real the challenges are, but to approach it with an abundance orientation. What if instead we instead challenged ourselves to design instead for a robust community of support for an expanded definition of learning?

What happens if we don’t simply fill these spots 1:1, but instead think more broadly about staffing shortages? When looking at places like High School for Recording Arts or Brooklyn STEAM, we also were inspired by innovative schools that were thinking about an ecosystem of support around young people to achieve 21st century learning outcomes: how industry professionals, out of school educators, pathways coordinators, and other types of adults were brought in to support student outcomes. That led us to wonder: if different human capital strategies can support innovative learning, could they also be used as a lever to help less innovative schools transform, especially when they are facing a particularly acute pain point (staffing shortages)?

Original Assumptions

• Hypothesis 1: If new roles are created, traditional schools will be able to meet a broader range of learners’ needs.
• Hypothesis 2: If TFA helps co-design and then recruits, selects, trains & supports these “new roles”, we can make it easy for schools to adopt this paradigm shift
• Hypothesis 3: If we create a broader set of roles in schools, we could attract the next generation of leaders who want to be in relationship to students’ learning, but don’t (yet) want to be teachers.

What we did

There were three major components to our research:

1. Interviews with innovative school leaders who had different human capital structures and were pursuing reinvented learning. We wondered:
   1. What are the exemplars of this intersection?
   2. What policies are they using to implement these solutions (or, in most cases, what “hacks” are they finding within the system?)
   3. What culture and mindset change is needed for people in the building?
   4. What types of schools is this most common for?