By Ron Berger (Heinemann, 160 pages, $17.50) BUY NOW! reviewed by Laura Flaxman More than ten years ago, when I first saw Ron Berger present a portfolio of his students’ work and explain the process behind these beautiful and impressive artifacts, I was struck by this master teacher’s combination of skill, passion, energy and humility. An Ethic of Excellence: Building
Maureen Benson, principal of the Fremont Federation’s Youth Empowerment School (YES), talked with Laura Flaxman and Horace editor Jill Davidson about YES’s early successes and challenges as a small, autonomous, interconnected school. On Professional Development and Staffing Academically and instructionally, we are nowhere near where I would like us to be. But creating a cohesive staff takes time, patience, resilience
By Thomas Toch (Beacon Press, 144 pages, $15.00) reviewed by Laura Flaxman “The prospect of high schools on a more human scale ultimately requires a belief on the part of educators and policy-makers that the necessary changes to the status quo needed to create such high schools are worth the hard work needed to achieve them. The stories of the
Anna Le, a graduate of Life Academy, actively participated on the school’s design team during its transition to an autonomous small school. In conversation with Laura Flaxman, Le shares her insights about small school design from the student perspective. Laura Flaxman: What should students be aware of when they’re moving from a large high school to a small one? Anna
In the summer of 2000, I moved to Oakland to get involved in the city’s small schools initiative. For two years, I led Life Academy, the city’s first new small autonomous high school, born in 2001 from an academy program within Oakland’s 2,000-plus student Fremont High School. Having spent many years working with new school start-ups across the country, I
Far too often in conversations about schools, educators talk about students rather than with students. The worlds of student leadership and school change orbit in separate universes. At the Coalition of Essential Schools,we have sought to alter this dynamic by engaging youth along with adults in the tasks of creating and transforming schools. In our experience, the most powerful schools