Adaptability
Nonprofits must be agile and responsive to external shifts. Changes in funding, regulations, or community needs require organizations to adjust their programs, services, and resource allocation.
New Strategies to Achieve the Mission
Hope Academy’s leadership seeks to double its physical space and admit more students despite finding itself in a turbulent time for staffing in the field of education. In addition, even with teachers leaving their profession in droves since the COVID-19 pandemic, Hope Academy is seeking to fill its new space with mission-oriented educators to teach its expanded student body.
To meet the new set of goals articulated in its mission, the school now offers high school seniors a college-credit introduction to education class that includes spending time as a teacher’s aide, which allows the participants to gain practical precollege experience in the field of education. Further, the school started a Teacher Residency Program to train existing instructors from other institutions during the summer months. The instructors in training and school leaders see this as a win-win: It’s a way for potential recruits to evaluate whether to apply to work at the school as teachers, and the school can evaluate potential new hires during their time in the program.
By employing these two new strategies to help implement their faith-based mission, Hope Academy is providing youth who may wish to become educators with valuable experiences that may change the trajectory of their professional lives while benefiting students in the classrooms where they are assigned. Additionally, this initiative—designed to train and recruit talent during these trying times for employers of educators—can benefit the school’s teacher recruitment effort.
I’ve always heard that you should never be afraid to be training your replacement. I know there are some leaders…[who] actually don’t want people around them [who are]…smarter, better, stronger…than they are because they actually feel threatened by those people. [But] I have found in my work that the more of those types of people you can surround yourself with, really, the more successful that you’re going to be in your efforts.
Katherine White
Greater Atlanta Christian School
We are focusing on Our Now, Our New, and Our Next. So, we’re looking at change across the board, and it’s a positive change for us, and is making us more aware of…where we are now, and where we plan to go.
Carla Hall
Mary Hall Freedom Village
