Guest Post: Elevating Teaching, Supporting Teachers at AfterCLASS

By Shannon L. Blady, AfterClass Executive Director

FlipEducation is excited to host Guest Posts from those committed to flipping school systems + putting radical trust in teachers.

I first started to internalize the constant demands of being a teacher back in 2002. I had just been hired to teach first grade at John Dibert Elementary School on Orleans Avenue. I was quite familiar with this school, as it seemed that not a lot had changed since I had left at the age of 12. I had been enrolled in Dibert from Kindergarten to sixth grade. Enrolled is such a formal school registration word. Let me rephrase. I had been entrenched in the culture of this community, nurtured by this family nearly every day for seven years. Getting hired there was a homecoming and some of my favorite teachers were still there, working their magic. Was I really going to be colleagues with the very people who inspired me to teach in the first place? One day at the start of the school year, I was sitting in a faculty meeting in a room that had once been my Kindergarten classroom when one of the veteran teachers lamented that teaching was certainly not the same as it was when I was a child and described it as feeling like a puppet on a string.

Over the next several years of teaching, I discovered that she was not wrong. I continued to teach there and, because of Hurricane Katrina, other schools as well. I followed the mandates, adopted the programs, and experienced the intense pressures of being a classroom teacher. Despite the pressures, I was fortunate enough to have open-minded principals who encouraged me and my colleagues to experiment with our new ideas and fresh approaches. We were treated as professionals, we met the needs of our students, and we enjoyed what we did. Yes, it was demanding and complex work, but we were fully supported.

Fast forward nearly twenty years and I’m in my office, advising practicing teachers who are working towards their teaching certification. There is still joy and creativity and a love for teaching, but the familiar constraints thread into our conversations. They are afraid to try anything innovative or to veer from the scripts and lists. I also pass out tissues as they share their frustrations of not having enough support in the classroom. Of course, not all teachers have these experiences, but the number of those who did seemed to be on the rise. What could we do?

I met with my colleagues Brooke Grant, Monique Hodges, and Desi Richter who also knew firsthand of the frustrations of local teachers. We asked this question and others: How could we lift teachers to a place of support and ultimately empowerment? How could we work with local educational organizations to create a thriving hub in our city? We dreamed up what this space could look like, what it could offer, and we eventually founded AfterCLASS with the support of a generous gift from someone who also believes in teachers, Phyllis M. Taylor, chair and president of the Patrick F. Taylor Foundation.

We continued to survey local teachers to ask about their needs and experiences. From their responses, we ordered the books they requested, we set out to meet community partners who could help us in this work, and we drafted plans for the professional development they sought. Through our research and experiences, we understood that effective, successful professional development should be ongoing, interactive, and relevant. Above all, we knew that we wanted it to be teacher-designed and teacher-led. Our first two series, one focused on Special Education and the other on Classroom Management, were a hit, and local teachers are currently facilitating, contributing to, and designing the following AfterCLASS programs:

• The Teacher Activism Book Club to address racism in our schools and what teachers can and must to about it
• The Latinx Young Adult Literature Book Club, co-hosted with Tulane’s Stone Center for Latin American Studies
• The Collaborative of Social Studies Teachers working to align their curriculum with an anti-racist framework, co-hosted with S.S.Nola
• Teacher as Writer- for teachers who write and who teach writing
• A Mindfulness Series to help teachers understand how to respond to trauma and anxiety
• The AfterCLASS New Teacher Circle, a yearlong experience to support new teachers
• Meeting the Needs of our English Language Learners

In addition to these programs, AfterCLASS is a physical space in the Taylor Education Center. It is just as vibrant and hip as any other start-up nonprofit space because teachers deserve that, too. We provide school supplies, coffee, healthy snacks, printers, a classroom for teachers to practice their lessons, a professional development library, a Social and Emotional Learning library, and a teachers’ lounge where we can meet to collaborate, relax, plan, and network. We can’t wait to return to the space to continue our in-person collaboration and our Sunday morning yoga sessions, but we are thrilled that our online communities are going strong.

AfterCLASS aims to be a source of support in both the grace and the advocacy. We will do all that we can to ensure that teachers do not feel like puppets on a string.