Saying Goodbye to “One Teacher, One Classroom:” How New Models are Modernizing Teaching

By: David Nitkin and Tess Reed

The “one teacher, one classroom” model is a shared experience for most American students. For over a century, we’ve been learning in rows of desks, batched by age, completing assignments designed for all yet tailored to none. This approach to teaching and learning worked to prepare young people for life in the industrial era, but a century’s worth of changes to the economy—accelerated by the rapid emergence of AI— mean it’s not how today’s students learn best. Nor is it effective in preparing them for the world of tomorrow. 

The industrial model isn’t how today’s teachers work best, either. Unsustainable workloads, classroom isolation, and polarizing environments are fueling low morale among K-12 educators. AI is shifting the ground beneath teachers’ feet, requiring them to navigate not just new tools but new moral and ethical concerns. And as Gen Z steps into the workforce, their prioritization of well-being conflicts with what many schools ask of their staff. 

The result: fewer people entering the profession and changing perceptions of the field at large. Just 37% of parents want their children to teach, and only 15% of teachers would recommend the profession to a friend. 

But what if the solution isn’t just recruiting more teachers or adding mental health days to retain them, but instead reimagining what teaching looks like entirely? Innovative communities across the country are implementing promising models that reimagine adults’ roles while engaging students with the creative thinking, collaboration, and problem-solving skills they’ll need in an AI-transformed world. 

Reimagining Educator Roles, a new report from Transcend and the Robertson Foundation, explores how these models solve for some of teaching’s biggest challenges. For example: 

• Like many rural communities, Colorado’s Montrose County School District was grappling with a teacher shortage. Seventeen teachers, two administrators, and the union president came together to design a new, more sustainable teaching model through working conditions that set teachers up to thrive and feel fulfilled. The resulting Teaching and Learning Academy is a personalized, team-based learning model that combines small group instruction, strong student-teacher relationships, and collaborative classroom spaces to foster independence, engagement, and academic growth.

• In New York City, Ember Charter Schools professionalized teaching by empowering those closest to students to shape their learning and building clear, rewarding pathways for educator growth. Leaders envisioned a school where educators wouldn’t need to leave the classroom to lead and where leadership was earned through meaningful contribution rather than formal credentials. Ember created The Firm: a teacher-led, distributed leadership model inspired by the structure of a law firm. New teachers can rise from being Co-Teaching Apprentices to Junior, Mid-Level, and Senior Associates, all the way up to Partners—teacher-leaders who make organizational decisions by consensus. 

• And in California, teachers from Fresno and Clovis School Districts spent a year planning the Center for Advanced Research and Technology (CART). Serving 11th and 12th graders from both districts, CART is an off-campus, half-day program where students take credit-bearing, three-hour interdisciplinary “labs” team-taught by former industry professionals and certified teachers. Labs are held in large spaces with 70-80 students and two or three teachers who create learning experiences that teach core content through the lens of a specific career. By empowering nontraditional teachers with flexible use of time in a team environment, every day looks different and students receive customized, highly relevant, and rigorous instruction. 

Montrose, Ember, and CART represent three of the five emerging educator models identified in the report. Additional promising models include: 

1. Team-Based with Differentiated Roles: Like Montrose, this model leverages teams of four to six educators with differentiated roles to lead large cohorts of students split into flexible small groupings
2. Interdisciplinary Co-Teaching: With teachers from across subjects co-creating curriculum, this model supports project- and inquiry-based instruction that fuels cross-disciplinary critical thinking in students
3. Autonomous Leaders with Distributed Leadership: Like Ember, this model honors teachers’ expertise and opportunities for teacher leadership without leaving the classroom 
4. Hybrid Technology-Enabled: This model uses technology to maximize teacher time, energy, and expertise towards mentorship, electives, and individualized attention. It is particularly effective in supporting students with unique schedules or needs that don’t fit with traditional school schedules or instruction.
5. Industry Professional Integration: Like CART, industry professionals partner with traditional teachers to co-create industry-relevant curriculum that bridge the gap between school and career. By leveraging industry professionals and community partners, individual teachers aren’t over-burdened. 

These new approaches to teaching are springing up in a wide range of communities with distinct local contexts. But while their contexts are unique, they share seven commonalities that enable them to  effectively implement new teacher models with demonstrable impact on both adults and young people:

1. Simultaneous Design: Designing for students and educators in tandem, aligning experiences and outcomes across both.
2. Coherence: Starting with a clear instructional vision and make aligned choices about curriculum, scheduling, educator pipelines and training, and more.
3. Co-Design: Sustaining impact by engaging teachers in continuous co-design—not through one-off input or top-down decisions.
4. Trade-off Management: Making intentional trade-offs to improve educator experiences, balancing competing priorities.
5. Role Clarity: Clarifying the educator experience they’ve designed—along with trade-offs—to attract and retain mission-aligned staff.
6. Homegrown Talent: Building their own talent and leadership pipelines when traditional preparation falls short of their model’s needs.
7. Adoptable Models: Adapting evidence-based models to local needs helps schools go further, faster, with greater impact.

What makes these emerging teaching models so encouraging is their adaptability to local contexts. Schools and systems can adjust their adult roles in response to the K-12 world’s unprecedented shifts and their community’s unique hopes for their students. Whether a community is facing falling enrollment or reduced funding, whether families are calling for more career-connected opportunities or more student-driven learning, schools can pull from these emerging educator models to create teaching and learning experiences that transform how they “do” school. 

The question isn’t whether we can afford to reimagine teaching—it’s whether we can afford not to. As AI reshapes what students need to learn, we also need to rethink how adults can best support that learning. Start by asking your teachers what they need. Then give them the teams, growth opportunities, and leadership pathways they deserve.

David Nitkin is a Managing Partner at Transcend, where he leads the organization’s work related to evidence, measurement, and assessment. 

Tess Reed is a Learning Partner at Transcend, where she focuses on cultivating students’ agency, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.

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