• Opportunity Culture

    Are you a great teacher who’s ready to take the next step in your career—without leaving the students you love? Consider applying for our Multi-Classroom Leader positions! Teachers who meet the identified requirements may apply in iCIMS (Elementary | Secondary).

    Our district was awarded an Opportunity Culture Advanced Teaching Roles Grant that focuses on advancing teacher leadership within a school. Thirteen schools will participate in the 2025-26 school year. 

    Central to the model are staffing structures that expand the roles and responsibilities of the teacher to increase their impact on student learning. Multi-Classroom Leaders (MCLs), who will receive differential pay ranging from $12,000-$15,000 additional to their usual salary due to increased responsibilities, will lead a team of teachers, co-plan, provide differentiated support, analyze data, and facilitate instructional change in response to identified needs. MCLs will also provide part-time classroom instruction. 

    What is Opportunity Culture?

    Opportunity Culture is a national movement to extend the reach of excellent teachers, principals, and their teams to more students, for more pay, within regular school budgets. That means great opportunities to have a fulfilling career path full of support. Nearly 20 school districts in North Carolina use or are in the process of implementing Opportunity Culture staffing models. 

    Opportunity Culture schools have attracted large numbers of outstanding educators committed to creating a culture of excellence for students, teachers, and staff. 

    The Opportunity Culture team at Chapel Hill-based Public Impact supports and trains districts, schools, and partners who share our commitment to reaching every student with excellent teaching, every year, and to providing outstanding career opportunities to teachers.

    Why did we apply for a grant to use the Opportunity Culture model?

    To provide all students with excellent teaching and to help students close achievement gaps and leap ahead, our district is piloting Opportunity Culture models for teachers and students. Opportunity Culture models enable schools to reach every student with excellent teachers and their teams—consistently—while paying teachers more for their extra responsibilities, and helping all educators improve on the job and work collaboratively. All pay supplements are funded through reallocations of existing budgets, not temporary grants.

    What new roles will participating WCPSS schools have?

    Opportunity Culture models create new roles for teachers—through a foundation of the Multi-Classroom Leader role—and support staff, and they carefully integrate technology to save teachers time and help individualize instruction, often through small groups. The most effective teachers are responsible not only for helping more students, but also for helping their peers achieve teaching excellence, too. Research has shown large student learning gains for students on Multi-Classroom Leader teams.

    In the 2024-45 school year, participating WCPSS schools included one or two Multi-Classroom Leaders teams per school as part of the first year of the grant work. The areas in which these teams were implemented were selected by the principal. 

    Multi-Classroom Leaders

    In this role, Multi-Classroom Leaders (MCLs) form the cornerstone of Opportunity Culture implementation. MCLs are teachers with records of high-growth student learning who lead a small teaching team in lesson planning, data analysis, instructional changes, and the creation of a tutoring culture, for higher pay. MCLs observe and coach team teachers, co-teach with them, and model instruction, while continuing to teach some portion of the time. MCLs will receive differential pay ranging from $12,000-$15,000 additional to their usual salary, depending on the size of the teacher team. 

    Team Reach Teacher

    Team Reach Teachers (TRTs) include all classroom teachers who serve on a MCL teaching team. They directly teach more students than usual—but typically without raising instructional group sizes—for higher pay. 

    Years of data analysis indicate that schools with more than one TRT per MCL team are more likely to produce high-growth student learning schoolwide than schools that restrict this role.

    Like all teachers on an MCL team, TRTs receive the MCL’s powerful, ongoing, on-the-job support and guidance, and they have the support of advanced paraprofessionals in the role of Reach Associates. In collaboration with their MCL team, they support the building of a tutoring culture with increased small-group tutoring and teaching time.

    Reach Associates

    Instructional Assistants serve in the advanced Reach Associate (RA) role, supporting an MCL team by providing key support and release time to the MCL and teachers, with a focus on small-group tutoring.

    RAs play a variety of roles, but the core role is to provide instructional support, with the strong guidance and coaching of the MCL. Typically, they will tutor small groups or individuals, as the MCL and team determine, in a learning lab or in a teacher’s classroom.​ While directly working with students as much as possible, RAs collaborate with the MCL team when schedules allow on planning and student data analysis, to strengthen their support in team efforts to build and lead a tutoring culture.

    Participating Schools

    For the 2024-25 school year, the following schools are participating in the Opportunity Culture Advanced Teaching Roles Grant:

    • Durant Road Middle
    • Knightdale High
    • North Garner Middle
    • Southeast Raleigh Elementary
    • Wakelon Elementary

    For the 2025-26 school year, the following additional schools will participate in the grant:

    • Banks Road Elementary
    • East Millbrook Magnet Middle
    • Reedy Creek Elementary
    • Rogers Lane Elementary
    • Smith Magnet Elementary
    • Timber Drive Elementary
    • West Lake Middle
    • Yates Mill Elementary

     

    If you have questions about Opportunity Culture at WCPSS, please contact Dr. Lloyd Gardner at lygardner@wcpss.net. If you are interested in our Multi-Classroom Leader positions, see the Multi-Classroom Leader job postings (Elementary | Secondary) on iCIMS.