“Going from Good to Great”

Michelle Verdiner • Cahn Fellow 2019

Teachers College Community School (TCCS) was challenged with the technical problem of becoming a split site school. We obtained a second school building in addition to the current school building to house our growing school body. We needed to relocate grades PreK- 2nd grade in one building and maintain grades 3-8 in the original location; this led to technical and adaptive challenges. One major concern was the need to distribute leadership to ensure that we maintained instructional rigor and coherence across both buildings. As leadership continues to expand grades, our key teachers are either transitioning into leadership roles in another school community or are asking to move into leadership roles within the school. This is GREAT but the challenge is to build sustainability in the systems to continue the work that has been established. We are a small school so any change has rippling effects.

While the strategic work around building teacher leadership and capacity has proven to be effective, teachers now have requested to move vertically to continue the work. This means there would be at least one new teacher across many of the key grades. This was definitely an unintended consequence. We needed to work on developing plans to establish and sustain systems that support high expectations school-wide to help build capacity of current and new staff.