Reimagining Educator Roles

Traditional Schools vs. SEEQS: A Side-by-Side Comparison

LAUNCH

At the start of our partnership, we worked with SEEQS’ leadership to identify something we could do to support their community. Leaders described hearing that teachers were feeling stretched thin; they wanted to better understand what aspects of the teacher experience felt best for teachers and what areas felt challenging. We collectively decided to audit the school’s vision for the educator experience against the day-to-day realities of teaching at SEEQS.

To kick off the audit, a Transcend Design Partner conducted a documentation review and interviewed SEEQS’ leadership to understand their vision for the teacher experience. Then, with support from another Transcend colleague, the Design Partner spent two days at SEEQS observing the community and conducting interviews and focus groups with students and staff. The site visit to SEEQS shone a light on the magic of SEEQS’ approach—both for students and for educators—and some challenges.

OUR SUPPORT

To conduct the audit, a Transcend Design Partner completed a document review, interviewed SEEQS’ leadership, and facilitated a two day site visit with support from a Transcend colleague that included extensive interviews and observations with students and staff. The Design Partner synthesized findings about how SEEQS’ vision for the teacher experience was playing out in teachers’ lived realities. The audit shone a light on the magic of SEEQS’ approach—both for students and for educators—but also revealed some challenges, particularly around a need to better balance the tradeoff between teacher autonomy and workload. In response to these findings, the Design Partner helped SEEQS leadership grapple with a core question: How do we keep the power of SEEQS’ core vision while making it more sustainable for teachers and good for student learning? Activities the Design Partner facilitated included:

• Teacher Debrief: At the end of the visit to SEEQS, Transcend’s Design Partner facilitated an all-staff meeting to debrief early observations about where teachers’ experiences were closest to and furthest from its vision. Teachers shared a need for more balance and suggested ideas to ease their planning burdens—especially for ELA and humanities—by offering starting-point resources that support sustainability without compromising teacher autonomy.

• Leader Debrief: The Design Partner reported key findings from the audit and recommendations. With coaching and guidance from Transcend’s Design Partner, SEEQS’ leadership team conducted a root cause analysis around why teachers were feeling unheard that served as a springboard for ongoing strategic planning. This debrief spurred leaders to begin planning ways to elevate teacher voice and better manage the trade-offs inherent to SEEQS’ innovative design.

Impact

Our work with SEEQS surfaced meaningful insights about the educator experience, reinvigorating both teachers and leaders and catalyzing improvements in communication, design, and sustainability.

• Teachers felt heard and re-invested in the school’s vision after participating in a debrief that named strengths and invited honest dialogue.
• Mid-level leaders gained tools and clarity to address design gaps, manage trade-offs, and communicate the “why” behind school structures.
• The leadership team deepened its commitment to two-way communication and began to develop strategies to elevate teacher voice and collaboration.
• The process validated SEEQS’ core vision while highlighting where adjustments could strengthen both adult sustainability and student learning.

Next steps include continuing to engage staff in shaping refinements to the model and supporting leaders—especially those in mid-level roles—in sustaining momentum through clearer communication, shared problem-solving, and strategic design tweaks.

Design Support Insights

Our work with SEEQS affirmed the importance of auditing the implementation of a well-developed model to surface strengths, uncover areas for improvement, and build investment as the model evolves or scales.

SEEQS’ needs closely align with what Transcend has learned from hundreds of past partnerships with schools seeking to strengthen and scale innovative learning models. Every school or learning environment has a design – a set of choices about content, instruction, educator and student roles, space, time, and more. Yet gaps often emerge between the intended design and its implementation. Comparing the vision with the current reality is a critical step in refining or expanding a model.

With SEEQS, we supported an audit of their vision for the educator experience against the day-to-day lived reality. This process confirmed that structured reflection can increase alignment, build investment, and clarify where the design needs to evolve. It also resulted in concrete insights to support internal improvement and future sharing.

SEEQS’ STRENGTHS – WHAT WORKS

How our success indicators show up at SEEQS.
Our research illuminated seven common indicators among schools with high educator satisfaction and student impact. SEEQS’ approach to educator roles is a strong example of two of these indicators.

SIMULTANEOUS DESIGN

(Indicator 1)
The school is designed with both student and educator experiences in mind.

SEEQS embodies simultaneous design because both the educator experience and the student experience were considered in the design of the school—not one or the other. SEEQS grounded their choices for both students and educators in beliefs and shared principles that align to their overall instructional vision, resulting in parallel experiences that reflect SEEQS’ belief that what drives student success must also be present for educators. Read more below to learn more about what simultaneous design—and parallelism—looks like at SEEQS.

Active Self-Direction

SEEQS Principle: Learning occurs when learners take ownership of their learning.

Students take ownership of their learning by participating in real-world projects aligned to their interests, just as teachers take ownership over their learning by designing courses aligned with their interests and passions.

I can come back and teach another year because I feel ownership in what I’m creating.

Continuous Growth & Collaboration

SEEQS Principle: Everyone is a teacher, everyone is a learner, all of the time.

Students and teachers both engage in interdisciplinary, team-based learning. Teachers’ co-planning and co-facilitation of EQS courses mirrors the teamwork students practice during their projects.

• 

  SEEQS feels like a playground for teaching.

• 

  I’m becoming better because I’m put in certain situations that require me to learn things.

Community as Foundational

SEEQS Belief: At SEEQS, a strong school community forms the soil in which everything else can grow.

Physical Activity and advisory blocks foster a sense of belonging for both students and teachers; everyone feels known beyond the classroom. Mixed-age groups also strengthen community and continuity.

The reason our kids and teachers have such a bond is because they have moments where it’s like ‘Oh my god, I got you out in dodgeball.’ It’s silly, and there’s space for that.

COHERENCE

(Indicator 2)
All parts of the school’s design—its vision, instruction, culture, staffing, schedules, and other systems—are aligned and reinforce one another to support a single purpose.

The vision of SEEQS is clear: SEEQers will be stewards of planet Earth and healthy, effective citizens of the world. What makes their design coherent is that they have built the infrastructure to support their vision. Hover below to see some examples of what this looks like at SEEQS.

Schedule

Teachers are expected to plan a new EQS course each year. They also teach at least two content courses, including an elective for some teachers. Teachers can re-teach one of those courses the following year, but they need at least one new one every other year. Their schedules were designed with these planning demands in mind; they have ~140 uninterrupted minutes of planning time every other day, in addition to 30 minutes daily to plan with their co-teacher for EQS.

Learning blocks are also longer at SEEQS so students and teachers have space to go deep and learn together.

Instructional Focus on Sustainability

The Essential Questions of Sustainability (EQS) course ensures that all students and teachers spend meaningful time every week developing skills to become stewards of planet Earth, focusing on the interconnections between humans and the environment. The class is constantly evolving, guided by the interests, desires, and expertise of students and teachers

Authentic Assessment

SEEQS prioritizes real-world learning experiences, and believes in students authentically demonstrating their mastery of skills and concepts. Student-led conferences, public project exhibitions, and portfolio defenses all provide students with ample opportunities to do this.

SEEQS also employs a standards-based grading system that breaks down learning into content standards (what students should know), performance standards (what students should be able to do), and work habits (how students approach their work), reporting progress along a continuum to guide further growth.

Co-Taught Interdisciplinary Blocks

Because EQS courses are interdisciplinary, they are co-planned and co-facilitated by teachers from different content areas. This results in fresh, content-rich ideas for the projects and activities for students.

Physical Space & Facilities

Each EQS course kicks off with an “EQS Camp,” a two-day field studies where students and teachers spend time in the community or with partners to begin exploring their essential questions.

Teachers are encouraged to continue “using the community as their classroom” during the semester. SEEQS provides its own vans, teachers get licensed to drive them, and parents give permission for field trips at the start of the year so that when the work calls for the class to go to a nature center, energy plant, lab, or elsewhere, they can.

Read more here.

SEEQS’ Gaps: What Can Be Strengthened

When schools do not reach or maintain success indicators—which can happen for a number of reasons—the quality of educator and student experiences and outcomes often decline or fail to reach their full potential.

Our audit illuminated a few disparities between SEEQS’ vision for the educator experience and teachers’ daily reality. These gaps align with two of our success indicators. Transcend’s Design Partner worked with SEEQS’ leadership team to better understand the root causes of these gaps and to identify actions they could take to bridge them. 

Read more about what we uncovered and how we think SEEQS can move forward.

Manage Trade-Offs

(Indicator 4)

As schools make design choices that improve educators’ experiences, they navigate common trade-offs. ‘Dialing up’ some aspects of the educator experience can create challenges in others. SEEQS’ example illustrates that successful teacher experience design is not about eliminating these trade-offs, but instead managing them effectively.

Trade-Off 1: Managing Autonomy & Centralization

SEEQS was designed to maximize teacher autonomy. The school’s founder wanted teachers and students to both have agency to follow their passions. However, this can come at a cost to feelings of sustainability.

SEEQS grappled with managing the trade-off between autonomy and centralization. 

• At one extreme, instructional autonomy promotes creativity, engagement, and responsiveness to student needs. 
• At the other extreme, centralization of curriculum and instructional practices decreases teacher workload and creates a consistent experience for students. 

Teacher interviews revealed that they appreciate having creative freedom, but this autonomy comes at the expense of a manageable workload. While math and science teachers follow a grade-aligned curriculum, ELA and Humanities teachers design new materials on three-year cycles to provide ongoing choice to their mixed-grade cohorts. With the added planning demands of EQS and electives, these teachers have three unique preps every quarter.

We have a lot of curricular freedom and flexibility, and that’s an opportunity, but the limitation is, you only have 24 hours in a day, so you have to be able to manage your time and figure out where do you want to use that freedom and flexibility, and where do you not.

Trade-Off 2: Managing Model Fidelity & Adaptability

Since its founding over a decade ago, SEEQS has refined its model in ways that align with its vision for teaching and learning, reaching a “steady state.” This fidelity, however, can limit responsiveness to emerging needs.

SEEQS navigated tensions between maintaining fidelity to their model and adapting to evolving needs and interests.

• At one extreme, model fidelity ensures a consistent experience and reliable impact. It’s especially important when specific model elements are known to drive results.
• At the other extreme, adaptability invites the community to respond to needs as they arise. 

After a decade of iteration, SEEQS leaders felt their model was solid and were hesitant to change it. However, Transcend’s audit revealed a tension: teachers believed in the vision, but felt unheard. Ultimately, fidelity to their model limited their responsiveness to teachers’ emergent needs, like starting-point planning resources to lessen the demands of planning. 

Sometimes it feels like we hold on to an ideal over the reality.

Co-Design With, Not For, Teachers

(Indicator 3)

Schools that create the most sustainable positive impact have built a culture and systems for continuous cycles of co-design with teachers. When administrators design for teachers or envision co-design as a one-time event, leaders can overlook sustainability issues that compromise student and teacher experiences and outcomes.

The Gap

Although SEEQS felt their design had reached a steady state after nearly a decade of refinement, they had not fully engaged educators in conversations about its history, its evolution, or how to navigate its inherent trade-offs. Teachers were given significant autonomy to make decisions that affect their classes, but some teachers felt like their ideas and concerns about the overall SEEQS model, or broader school structures, weren’t heard. 

Our interviews with teachers and leaders revealed a range of perspectives on teacher voice in school-wide decision-making: some felt concerned about a perceived decrease in collective decision-making and increased centralization, while others believed that not all decisions can or should be made collectively.

• 

  When SEEQS was a start-up school, everyone had an opinion, and it took too long to get a decision. It feels like we have swung on the opposite end of the pendulum.

  – Teacher, SEQS Charter School

• 

  Teachers want a lot of voice but they don’t have the context/ perspective to be systems thinkers. We need more calibration on what teacher voice looks like.

  – Teacher, SEQS Charter School

• 

  I think teachers always want more control than they have. Part of it is being an employee. Part of it is being at a school where we are progressive and teachers want a say in what they do.

  – Teacher, SEQS Charter School

Recommendations for SEEQS

Transcend’s audit laid important groundwork for SEEQS to continue to strengthen its design of the teacher experience and yielded important insights that can inspire ongoing work to reimagine educator roles.

Below are the recommendations that we delivered to the SEEQS team at the conclusion of our design partnership:

OPPORTUNITIES FOR SEEQS TO SCALE THEIR IMPACT

What to Scale

SEEQS is a comprehensive school model that includes a set of cohesive design choices that support their vision for both student and educator experiences. The design choices that make their model impactful for educators—and that drive student impact—can be adapted by schools seeking to strengthen one or more of the following:

• Interdisciplinary co-teaching
• Teacher autonomy
• Mindful scheduling
• Relationship-building structures

How to Scale

SEEQS already has a sharing hub that offers workshops and site visits to educators interested in learning how to facilitate EQS or to see what Portfolio Defenses look and feel like. We encourage them to consider one or more ways to share design choices that reimagine and strengthen the educator role, or teach others how to engage in a visioning and planning process like the one they took, based on their capacity and interest. For example, SEEQS could create:

• Implementation Toolkit: Codify approaches—including their core components, rationale, and implementation guidance—into a toolkit designed for sharing within and beyond Hawaiʻi with light-touch, long-term support. 
• Webinars or In-Person PDs: Design a set of PD offerings that support schools to understand how to create a strong vision for teaching and learning and impacts both educators and students, anchoring in their own experience designing parallel experiences.
• Marketing Content that Elevates Reimagining Adult Roles: Market some existing sharing work—in particular related to EQS—to audiences seeking to reimagine educator roles, not just schools interested in reimagining student experiences.