Achievement First reviews

I really appreciate you taking the time to provide a review. AF is a mission-driven network, and I'm glad to hear that's your experience as well. We are also always working to ensure teachers are being supported, because we know that's what's in the best interest of kids. But you're totally right, the hours are long! We are doing work that some people, unfortunately, say is impossible. It requires hard work. But we're taking small steps to make sure we are working smarter so that our teachers can also commit to their personal priorities outside of work. We interviewed 75 teachers last year to find out more about what makes their work challenging and how we can improve their experience. One of the biggest themes was how much time it takes to close the achievement gap, especially planning great lessons. We had to face a brutal fact: our teachers are spending way too much recreating the wheel. This year we made it a network-wide priority - and made a HUGE investment --in creating lesson plans that all teachers can use as a base in order to teach great lessons. We’re going to build lessons for every grade and subject, because we believe that it’s key to our success with kids and our support for teachers. Without question though, it has some impact on the teacher autonomy you cited. At the end of the day, we want teachers to be great leaders of kids and bring their own personalities to the classroom, but we also have a commitment to rowing together. For teachers who want a blank canvas in the classroom and the ability to make every choice on their own, we’re probably not the right network. But for teachers who want to develop their leadership while also rowing together with their team under a unified school vision, I think AF can be a great place to accomplish some incredible things for kids. Thank you again for sharing your opinions and helping others learn about AF. -Tom Kaiser, Chief Talent Officer

Thanks for taking the time to share this feedback! I appreciate you naming the high expectations aspect of this work as a positive - we totally agree. We also agree that high expectations can translate into a lot of work and some truly challenging demands on time. These aren’t easy problems to solve, so we recently brought together teachers from our schools across the network for the first ever “Hackathon” to create ways to make it easier for our amazing teachers to do the work longer. We spent an entire day innovating on new ways to support teachers. It was an extremely inspiring day that produced ten proposals that we’re currently working on bringing back to our teachers for next year. I think we realized that our teachers -- who are on the ground and doing this sacred work every day - are best positioned to help us tackle these challenges. No silver bullets, but a promising formula for continuing to innovate and make it easier to succeed in this mission (for longer). -Tom Kaiser, Chief Talent Officer