Meet Andy Rhodes of Teachers Supporting Teachers

Today we’d like to introduce you to Andy Rhodes.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My path as an educator began with a girl and a book. I knew I loved the girl who would become my wife when I heard her talk about books and her students and the impact she was seeking to take on the world.

The book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, found me at a time when I was floundering to determine who I wanted to be in the world, and Paulo Freire’s diction helped me understand the weight the profoundly human experience of being an educator could have on me and the students I worked with.

My work as an educator began in the Altgeld Gardens housing project where I taught middle school Reading and Writing. From there, I moved to a high school in Englewood where I continued teaching English Language Arts, founded boys’ and girls’ soccer programs, was voted “teacher of the year” twice by staff and students and eventually transitioned to a leadership role as Dean of Culture.

Around this time, I was accepted into UIC’s EdD program in Urban Education Leadership which lead me next to South Shore where I worked as Resident Principal through the Chicago Leadership Collaborative at Coles Elementary. After my residency concluded, I moved to my current role as Assistant Principal of South Loop Elementary, my neighborhood school.

Outside of my role at South Loop, I am Chief Academic Officer for Teachers Supporting Teachers (TST), a nonprofit my colleagues and I have been working to develop for several years. TST is a movement dedicated to ensuring Chicago’s best teachers have a lasting impact in their schools.

The way we see it, teaching deserves to be professionalized. We do this by hosting quarterly professional development sessions at the Willis Tower where we’ve had hundreds of teachers from all over the city come to network and hear from dynamic and inspired leaders in the educational landscape.

We also work in schools throughout the city alongside teachers and administrators to develop and support Instructional Leadership Teams, Teacher Mentoring programs, and Teacher-led professional development series.

Everything we do is geared toward the notion that if we can seek to embed systems for adult learning and development of pedagogical approaches, we will keep the best teachers in teaching, and they will continue to have an immeasurable impact on their schools and students.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Not always, but I’m fortunate to have been able to work with amazing people throughout my career who’ve always kept me grounded and focused on the work we’re doing for students.

I think the best educators are those that work to build strong relationships with students, which is something that I think also makes being an educator an emotionally draining career at times. We want to support our students academically but also socially and emotionally, and that can be a lot when you may have 120 students.

Working in Chicago’s underserved communities on the south side, I have lost students to gun violence and their memories will remain with me. Other students are locked up, some with very lengthy sentences, and I often reflect on what more I could have done to support these kids in the time I had with them.

The pain of losing students, whether to violence, imprisonment or simply being lost in the shuffle of a massive school system, is something that I have seen chase good educators out of the profession. The impact great teachers can have in the lives of students cannot be understated, and it’s my hope that through the work being done at TST, we can make a difference for educators throughout the city.

As for TST, our biggest struggles have been balancing the work of starting and building a nonprofit while balancing our careers and other endeavors. I’m currently working towards the final capstone writing phase of my Doctorate, I’m an Assistant Principal at a diverse and high performing urban school, I co-lead a burgeoning nonprofit, and I have a wife and daughter that are the most important things in my world.

I left behind the idea of work-life balance long ago and started to think more in terms of life balance, recognizing that my work is meaningful enough to impact me at a deeply personal level, and in as much, who I am at home with my wife and daughter grounds me in my drive to improve circumstances wherever I can in the education landscape in my city.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
At Teachers Supporting Teachers (TST), our mission is to mobilize and support teacher leaders to have a lasting impact in their schools. What sets us apart is our fervent belief in investing in teachers and the fact that all of the services and supports we offer are 100% free of charge to schools and teachers.

We believe that the impact strong teachers can have in the lives of their students and in their schools is immeasurable and absolutely worth working to support. We recognize that in many ways the education system in our city is starving.

We see schools that are struggling financially due to enrollment and therefore find difficulty in allotting time and space for teachers to work together around student growth and problems of practice. Principals are often overwhelmed with the myriad responsibilities of their roles.

Teachers feel they are on their own without the support of colleagues or administrators. Where we come in is to support schools, principals, and teachers by taking on the mentorship role of working directly with teacher leaders (who we refer to as Teacher Liaisons) who run Instructional Leadership Teams, lead Professional Development series, and develop Teacher Mentoring programming within their schools.

By empowering teachers to lead this work, and supporting them through it, we’re seeing teachers have a powerful impact in their schools to the benefit of their fellow staff members, and most importantly, to the students they serve.

I’d like to also note here that we are currently undertaking fundraising work with a goal of $25,000 in order to pay each of our Teacher Liaisons. As stated, we recognize that many of the schools who could benefit the most from our supports may not have room in their budgets to pay for outside services.

Additionally, if we believe we can mobilize teacher leadership through asking teacher leaders to take on additional tasks at their school, then we need to show how serious we are about treating teachers as professionals by compensating them for the work they’re taking on.

Outside of these in-school supports, we also offer quarterly Professional Development sessions that I feel confident in saying are the best you can find in Chicago. We’ve had an unbelievable space donated to us at Willis Tower through a partnership with IMC Financial Markets, where we host our free PD sessions.

At each session, teachers attending are provided with coffee and food and have the opportunity to hear from three varied keynote speakers who are leading innovators in education throughout Chicago. These include noted professors, authors, researchers, and dynamic school leaders.

Our hope is for these sessions to help teachers feel connected and respected. We already have over 100 teachers from all over Chicago signed up for our event on April 28th and we’re hoping to see that number continue to rise.

What were you like growing up?
As a student, I often achieved my potential academically. I’ve always been an avid reader, so I was strong in Reading and ELA subjects, but I floundered in other areas that I felt disinterested in. The exceptions here were classes where I had teachers who invested in me as a person and didn’t allow me to work on my ability.

I’m grateful looking back to the 7th/8th grade math teacher (Mr. O’Reilly) who pushed me in spite of my belief that I wasn’t a good math student and to my Junior year physics teacher (Mr. Lindbloom) who encouraged me to join the Physics club so I could take part in some incredible hands-on experiments I had never seen in class.

Teachers like those are the reason I believed I could be smart, and they are who I think of most often in supporting teachers through TST. If you asked me as a teenager where I would wind up as an adult, my responses would either have been as a professional soccer player (I was good but by no means pro material) or as “someone in business who made lots of money”.

I had inclinations towards the arts as someone who picked up guitar and piano quickly and can mostly hold a tune, and while I enjoyed theatre quite a bit it didn’t really fit into the vision I had of what it meant to be cool at the age of 15.

I look back on growing up now with some regret (while trying to also be mindful of being fair to my youthful self and lack of foresight, which I guess is pretty typical). I didn’t push myself enough, and I think it’s knowing that that drives me so much now as an adult- that I refuse to waste my time and energy or not work toward my potential, whatever that may be.

I try and surround myself with people who are similarly minded, as I recognize that I draw much inspiration and energy from the people around me. From my beautiful life-partner/wife/partner in crime to my colleagues and incredible teachers at South Loop, my professors and coaches at UIC, and my unbelievable TST team, I can’t be anything less than inspired every day.

Contact Info:

• Website: tstnfp.org
• Phone: 7087127267
• Email: arhodes@supportingteachers.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tstnonprofit/
• Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/tstnonprofit/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TSTnonprofit
• Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/22293849/

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