Both my wife Teresa and I teach at The Soulsville Charter School. It is a special place for many reasons, but none more so than because of the way that our leadership has strategically made individual and collective teacher voices in indispensable part of our culture. Teacher voices isn’t something that we just pay lip-service to; it’s coded into our DNA through the way we set our culture and  the way we structure our work week. And it’s a big part of why we’re able to retain high quality teachers from year to year.

Last week Teresa and I co-authored a piece on Soulsville and its teacher-centered culture for The Century Foundation, as a part of their “Smarter Charter” series on how to include teacher voices in charter schools in hopes that what we do could be replicated by other charters or even traditional public schools.

You can read the whole piece by clicking the link above, but here’s the summary of the three key practices employed by our school to include teacher voices:

First, Soulsville has created a culture where teachers are encouraged to share their voice and feel comfortable doing so. At many schools, teachers feel apprehensive about sharing their perspectives. At Soulsville, we are encouraged to share our thoughts and suggestions about how to improve our school.

Second, we have a great teacher-driven culture in which we feel treated like the professionals that we are. Our administration goes to great lengths to include teachers in every major decision made regarding the school, whether through directly crafting the policies or contributing our thoughts in formal settings.

Third, this is all possible because we’ve systemically woven teacher voice opportunities into the fabric of the school year. We actively and regularly set aside time for groups of teachers to come together to discuss school policy and make recommendations to our administrative team.

By Jon and Teresa Alfuth