Human Resources

Because Aspire’s education program focuses on creating powerful, personalized learning experiences for each child, Aspire’s teachers need to be bright, highly skilled, creative, and dedicated. Aspire’s human resource systems are designed to attract, select, develop, inspire, and reward these educators.

  • Teacher Hiring: This page describes how Aspire recruits and selects its teachers
  • Professional Development: This page describes the varied approaches Aspire uses to help its educators grow and develop professionally.
  • Performance Management: This page describes how teachers are evaluated at Aspire.

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Teacher Recruitment and Hiring

Aspire actively recruits educators interested in working in more accountable, innovative, collaborative environments. The organization has an extensive network of relationships through which to recruit outstanding teachers and administrators. Aspire also uses traditional advertising media: classified advertisements, Internet postings, and job announcements through local credentialing programs. Word-of-mouth among teachers is also an important channel.

Aspire has a multiple-stage hiring approach that includes:

  1. a resume screen;
  2. interview with a site hiring committee (comprised of Aspire principal, teachers, and parents);
  3. writing sample;
  4. demonstration lesson with students;
  5. reference checks.

Although this is a lengthier process than that used by most education organization, Aspire believes that finding the right match for both organization and individual will decrease turnover that is disruptive for student learning and school culture.

Professional Development

Once teachers are hired, Aspire invests in those individuals to support their continued professional development. Aspire’s multi-pronged support system includes:

  • 3 weeks of summer training for all teachers new to Aspire
  • 1:1 sessions with instructional coaches
  •  New Teacher Support Group
  • Opportunity to observe demonstration lessons by grade-level Lead Teachers and Model Teachers
  • Regular classroom observations and formal performance feedback from the principal
  • Guidance in applying for Certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Performance Management

Aspire principals conduct periodic performance evaluations to provide regular feedback to teachers to inform their professional growth; to ensure that teachers are appropriately rewarded according to their actual performance; and to build a culture of accountability.

Criteria

In addition to Aspire’s core values, Aspire uses the 5 criteria developed by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (www.nbpts.org) to evaluate its teachers:

  • Commitment to students
  • Knowledge of subject matter
  • Skill in management of learning
  • Reflection
  • Collaboration

Schedule

Principals meet with each educator several times during the school year to discuss individual performance:

  • Beginning of year (or end of previous year): during this non-evaluative discussion, the educator and principal discuss development goals for the year
  • Mid-year: during this mini-evaluation during the 10th-15th week of school, principal conducts a formal observation and provides concrete, constructive suggestions to improve the educator’s performance against the standards.
  • End of year: The final, formal evaluation takes place during 25th-30th week of school. Principals conduct a formal observation and evaluate educator’s performance against the Standards and individual development goals. The educator also conducts a self-evaluation for discussion purposes, and may elect to solicit feedback from peers. The principal’s final evaluation will be combined with student test results and parent survey to determine the educator’s merit pay raise for the following school year.

In addition, principals may set additional formal or informal evaluation times for educators who are having difficulty meeting the Standards.