Photo courtesy of the Arizona State University website. 

ASU Preparatory Academy and Mesa Public Schools have noticed positive changes in the learning environment after piloting new learning models created by the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at ASU.

Next Education Workforce is an initiative pushing for more effective methods of teaching and learning within a school setting. The initiative developed multiple models, including team teaching and personalized learning, which have been in testing over the last three academic years in Phoenix-area schools.

The team teaching model creates cohorts of students with similar academic goals and skills who learn from a group of educators working together to create a more personalized schedule for their students.

In the traditional model, teachers tend to have less flexibility with how curriculums are implemented and what the focus of the day is, especially in secondary school, where teachers interact with groups of students for a limited amount of time per day.

Brent Maddin, executive director of the Next Education Workforce, says that the current model of one teacher with one or more groups of students per year puts an amount of work meant for multiple educators onto an individual.

Maddin said he noticed many educators leaving the profession over multiple decades and realized the situation was caused by a failure to support educators.

“Instead of trying to prepare even more teachers to go into what might be a very challenging working environment, what if we tried to change the working environment?” Maddin said.

So far, the changes to the workforce appear positive. Megan Hanley, director of student initiatives and academies at ASU Prep, said the participating teachers are enjoying the team-based approach more than the isolated format from before.

“[Teachers in a team-based model] can kind of divide and conquer, they can use their strengths in a variety of ways,” Hanley said.

Additionally, parents with children in both the team-based and non-team-based models are eager to fully integrate the team teaching model in Mesa’s schools, according to Fourlis. 

“On September 21, we launched our very first meeting … one parent asked the question, ‘How could we expand the teacher teaming model with Arizona State University, from three grade levels to all of the grade levels at our school?’” Fourlis said. 

Mesa Public Schools has set a goal to implement at least one of the Next Education Workforce models in at least half of Mesa Public Schools’ 82 schools by 2023. 

In Downtown Phoenix and on other campuses, ASU Prep is using these models to teach beyond their enrolled students —  new and experienced educators are also learning how to work in a new format.

Mary Lou Fulton students are getting hands-on experience with Next Education Workforce Models at ASU Prep through projects like term five internships, where students in their fifth term at Fulton are paired with a school and function as a student teacher in a real classroom. 

Term five interns at ASU Prep are some of the first student teachers learning in a team-teaching environment from the start, which Sarah Rich, ASU Prep’s executive director of learning innovation, says she hopes becomes the norm.

“I think teachers who are maybe coming out of college and don’t want that traditional teaching model are really excited to come to ASU Prep, and be able to experience taking those risks and having principals that allow them to try new things that they might fail at first, but then succeed,” Rich said. 

Maddin says he is confident that structural change is needed in order to keep teachers currently in the field and recruit new teachers, and that Next Education Workforce models are the solution.

“My hope is that in 10 years time that that narrative completely shifts and that we’re thinking differently about our educator workforce as a job that isn’t one marked by isolation … we actually need to really change what it means to be a teacher and in schools today, and we can do that by changing the way that staffing models are designed.”

Contact the reporter at cpedrosa@asu.edu.