Adaptive, Resilient, and Open To Change
Designing For The Future Educators of Portland Public Schools
Project's Mission
ARC services' mission is to be the central hub for the many stakeholders contributing to Portland's teachers. This includes providing structure and support for existing resources within the community, addressing the needs of tomorrow, and developing solutions for the future.
ARC Services
Arc services is divided into three focus areas: Mentorship, Research and Futures. Mentorship serves as the primary center for meeting the day-to-day needs that already have answers and methods, Research experiments with new methods, and Futures explores the farther futures of teacher's needs in PPS.
ARC Mentorship
ARC Mentorship coordinates and expands the district’s existing resources for multi-tiered support, professional development, and classroom mentorship.
ARC Research
ARC Research works directly with teachers and conducts research to help the district identify and adapt to current challenges.
ARC Futures
ARC Futures, which allows teachers to work with admins, students, and others to test new approaches, anticipating problems before they happen.
ARC Services as Hub
By connecting the many resources already in existence and previously disconnected stakeholders, ARC is the central hub for teacher's current and expanding resources.
ARC Services Platform
ARC Services is enabled by the ARC Services Platform, which provides the following key functions:
ARC Homepage
The ARC Homepage serves as a central hub for educator resources, workshops, summits and individual ARC profiles.
ARC Development
Teachers can schedule co-teaching workshops, mentorship, and more via the portal.
ARC Summit
The summit page provides registration, and also serves as a directory for teachers to access to previous events.
ARC Profile
Hours logged with ARC Services are recorded in educator's ARC profile page. This helps them to plan their weekly schedule balancing time for teaching with career development.
How might the future unfold to support these changes?
2023
National Teacher Shortage
Exacerbated by COVID-19 teaching conditions, current trends in teacher shortages continue, yielding retention as low as 50% in some areas.
2025
Congressional Response
The 119th Congress passes the Schooling Innovation Act: introduced by congressional leader Stacey Abrams, the act opens up substantial funding for improving teacher retention.
PPS Launches ARC Services
PPS introduces ARC Services as a significant component of teachers’ new contracts, to help structure the flexibility created by the modular schedules. ARC Services offers teachers coaching, mentorship, and new opportunities to innovate in their professional careers.
2029
First ARC Summit
With five years of ARC Services momentum, the first ARC Summit is an inaugural celebration and exposé of PPS teachers' hard work and innovation, showcasing the result of ARC Services' expanding offerings.*
(*We positioned our experiential artifact in 2029 as part of our brief to demonstrate partial progress towards PPS' 2035 vision.)
2035
Adaptiveness, Resilience, and Openness to Change is embedded at PPS
The introduction of ARC Services creates a self-sustaining culture of continuous learning and support, connecting teachers' experience in the classroom to district-level opportunities for equitable improvement.
PPS remains a highly desirable place for teachers to work, even when disaster strikes. For example, when wildfire smoke forces everyone back online in 2034, educators feel ready to face the uncertainty of this scenario, because they’ve taken part in ARC Services-led collaborative efforts to simulate and develop relevant strategies for the district so that students can thrive in remote learning settings, regardless of their situation at home.