On a rainy Saturday morning at Nashville’s Templeton Academy, dozens of teachers with a combined experience of 574 years in the classroom gathered to share best practices and offer support.
“There’s a seriousness to silliness,” Hilario Lomelí, assistant professor of Latinx Studies at Vanderbilt University, said. “If you want to be chaotic and goofy, you’ve got to plan for it. There can be a rigorous approach to implementing joy.”
The group that day — representing 16 public schools, nine private schools, four charters and three community education organizations — was assembled by The Educators’ Cooperative (EdCo), a Middle Tennessee mutual aid network established “by teachers, for teachers.”
Its goal is to ease the pressures and challenges educators face – like low pay, lack of support, burnout and changing curriculums – that ultimately lead to high turnover and a national teacher shortage. EdCo aims to provide a support network, opening up opportunities for collaboration and professional development, among other things.
“We could be a model for every city in this country for how to retain teachers and do amazing things for students,” EdCo Executive Director Amy Nystrand said.
However, a lack of funding for dedicated staff and new initiatives has challenged the Nashville-based organization’s growth.
A collaborative model
Greg O’Loughlin started EdCo in 2017 out of “necessity, frustration and curiosity.”
As a sixth-grade teacher at University School of Nashville, he wanted to refine his practice, “chop it up with other nerds who love the same,” but he felt siloed. There was no structure in place to access the extensive wisdom of experienced teachers throughout the city.
The co-op provides that opportunity. The teachers participate in a free, week-long summer conference as part of the network. Then, throughout the school year, they have access to workshops, monthly coffees and arts and social events organized by EdCo. Teachers also can request peers to observe them in the classroom and consult on tools, techniques or how to help struggling students.
Today, EdCo has 234 members. Sixty-three percent are public school teachers. Twenty-three percent come from private schools, 12 percent from charter schools and two percent from other educational organizations, such as colleges and community groups. Collectively, they represent 124 schools across Middle Tennessee.
This kind of collaboration between public, private and charter school teachers is “very, very rare,” said Xiu Cravens, a professor at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development. In fact, Cravens said, she’s unaware of any other teacher-led, cross-sector model like it in the United States.
Teacher-led professional learning is something schools in the U.S. often don’t have the time or resources to offer, said Cravens. But learning environments are most effective when teachers are invited to participate in building a “shared, accessible, and growing knowledge base,” she wrote in a study published in the Journal of Educational Administration.
That certainly rings true for some who have joined the network, like Nita Smith. She’s a music teacher who has taught within Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) for 32 years. She said EdCo has shown her the importance of nurturing not only her students and herself but her fellow teachers, as well, “no matter what or where we teach.”
Maegan Bell is a fifth-grade English teacher in her third year. She joined EdCo to learn from those who have chosen to stick around in the profession.
“Any new job is scary and lonely,” she said. However, being part of the network has given her a place to work through professional questions and insecurities with peers.
The cost and scope of teacher turnover
Nationwide, approximately 23 percent of teachers left their positions in the 2022-2023 school year. Schools with students experiencing the highest levels of poverty lost 29 percent of their teachers, 40 percent of whom went to wealthier schools. Eight percent of public school teachers and 12 percent of private school teachers leave the field entirely each year.
As of May 2023, nearly 4,000 teaching positions were vacant or filled by staff with emergency credentials in Tennessee. That summer, MNPS lost 14.4 percent of its teachers.
In that same school year, EdCo Data Coordinator Nancy Pendleton said that 94 percent of EdCo’s members stayed in their classrooms.
Research shows teacher turnover can have long-lasting, negative repercussions for schools and student outcomes. Replacing a teacher costs nearly $12,000 in small school districts and can surge as high as $25,000 in larger districts, according to the Learning Policy Institute.
To fill empty positions, many school districts are lowering the bar for entry with reduced education requirements, said Nystrand, but “turning the faucet on harder doesn’t help if you’ve got a hole in the bucket.”
Teachers don’t need “toxic positivity and pizza parties,” she added.
“It’s infantilizing. Nothing will change until they’re treated like the professionals they are. The people I work with are some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. They know what they need to be effective.”
Most school systems would rather “ask for donations to buy pencils and highlight ‘hero-teachers’ than engage with systemic issues,” EdCo founder O’Loughlin said.
To that end, the organization allows teachers to engage and collaborate with their peers across the city who are interested in finding accessible solutions. O’Loughlin said it also creates a safety net for students in unstable living situations who may move frequently throughout the year, allowing teachers to quickly understand new students’ needs by consulting with previous educators.
Challenges to growth
Currently, EdCo is funded by a combination of private donations and grants from companies and foundations. Membership is free, but the teachers are encouraged to contribute if they are able. Though the group received limited, temporary funds from the state during the COVID-19 pandemic, EdCo has not received any funding from Metro.
Principals, school heads and department chairs, as well as education policy advisors for Mayor Freddie O’Connell and three previous administrations, have told O’Loughlin that they appreciate the work, but it’s “not enough of a priority for the city to fund,” he said.
Still, O’Loughlin hopes to grow the EdCo network by one to two additional cohorts each year in Nashville. After that, the vision is to serve surrounding counties and establish a model that could be replicated nationwide.
Right now, Nystrand, EdCo’s executive director, is the only salaried employee. She teaches math to middle school “newcomers,” students who have recently arrived in the country, until 12:30 p.m. every day. Then, in the afternoons and on weekends, she leads EdCo’s operations with the help of contractors and volunteers who tackle grant writing, data collection, graphic design and events.
The group’s current goal is to grow its annual budget from $200,000 to $385,000 per year — enough to hire a full-time program coordinator and fund initiatives such as pen pal programs and bike-building workshops.
‘Taking care of teachers takes care of students’
As midday party buses paraded past rain-soaked windows at Templeton Academy, a workshop inside on Chicano art was standing room only, while, in a larger room across the hall, attendees interested in cultivating a classroom culture of critical thinking lounged in beanbag chairs and perched on tabletops.
“Make it easy on yourself,” said MNPS special education teacher Natalie Vadas in a presentation about working with different kinds of learners. “Give students choice, like tic-tac-toe boards, where they can pick three things to get the assignment done. Then, they can decide how they want to participate. Move the blocks away, and the learning is right there.”
The EdCo programming is meant to give teachers similar opportunities to choose, between immersive conferences, online message boards, coffees and cultural events—a variety of ways to connect in service of what works best for them and their students.
“Kids don’t know if they’re sitting in a charter, private or public school,” Nystrand said. “All of them deserve the best teacher they can have that day, and the teachers deserve to be happy in what they’re doing with full access to the best available practices. Taking care of teachers takes care of students, regardless of where they’re sitting.”