Common Principles for Uncommon Schools

Horace Developing Leaders

Coaching Students to Assess How They Are Doing

Randy Wisehart and his team partner at Hibberd Middle School in Richmond, Indiana ask their eighth-grade Humanities students to suggest and defend their own course grade, using a number of instruments including this final exercise: Please indicate your self-assessed grade of ____, and support your opinion with your work from the nine weeks??specifically, your written work, book reviews, daily assignments,

Comments from Maureen Benson, Principal, Youth Empowerment School

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

Horace: Developing Leaders Published: September 10, 2004 By: Jill Davidson, Laura Flaxman Topics: Developing Leaders, The Change Process

Empowering Students: Essential Schools’ Missing Link

Students are too often the forgotten heart of school reform-its whole purpose and its major resource. how can their power be nurtured and tapped as schools work toward more active learning, more personal and decent school climates, and higher standards and expectations? THE KIDS PILED OUT OF VANS into the May splendor of the summer camp nestled in the New

Essential Leadership in the School Change Process

What does it take to lead people through school change? Who can do it, and how? What responsibilities fall to school leaders in pressing the conversation about hard issues, creating a sense of urgency, yet not discouraging those for whom change means loss, risk, and uncertainty? What was the best way to serve the needs of the Spanish-speaking students at

Horace: Developing Leaders Published: October 11, 1997 By: Kathleen Cushman Topics: Developing Leaders

Giving the Kids the Keys: An Advisory Plan that Involves Students in Setting Standard

by Bill Johnson, National Re:Learning Faculty Just as a learner’s permit allows students to develop the skills of driving under the tutelage of a responsible adult, this advisory curriculum gives them a framework in which they take gradual responsibility for their own success a system of performance tasks, initially in a coached and guided environment, but finally on their own.

Giving the Kids the Keys: An Advisory Plan that Involves Students in Setting Standards

by Bill Johnson, National Re:Learning Faculty Just as a learner’s permit allows students to develop the skills of driving under the tutelage of a responsible adult, this advisory curriculum gives them a framework in which they take gradual responsibility for their own success a system of performance tasks, initially in a coached and guided environment, but finally on their own.

Horace Talks with Eric Nadelstern: New York City’s Autonomy Zone

To learn more from a uniquely informed perspective on how Essential schools can thrive in large urban districts, Jill Davidson, Horace‘s editor, interviewed Eric Nadelstern, the Chief Academic Officer for New Schools at the New York City Department of Education in charge of the city’s thirty-school Autonomy Zone. The founding principal of the International High School at LaGuardia Community College,

Horace: Developing Leaders Published: September 9, 2005 By: Eric Nadelstern Topics: Democratic Practice, Developing Leaders

How Leaders Can Help a Group Construct New Learning

Rather than focusing on what an individual leader does “to” or “for” others with a particular intent, Linda Lambert describes leadership in schools as happening in the relationships among everyone in the community: administrators, teachers, students, and parents. These “reciprocal processes,” she says, “enable participants in an educational community to construct meanings that lead toward a common purpose of schooling.”

Horace: Developing Leaders Published: October 11, 1997 By: Kathleen Cushman Topics: Developing Leaders

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Students Rewrite the Nine Common Principles

1. The school should focus on helping students learn to use their minds well. This includes helping students to: make connections between subjects; understand instead of memorize; go beyond set expectations (do extra credit work because they want to!); and develop life skills (think critically and logically and communicate clearly). Academics should be the top priority of the school and

Indianapolis’ Commitment to Small High Schools: Finding New Ways to Say Yes

“Indianapolis Public Schools operates some of the worst dropout factories in the nation. Hundreds of students each year quit school, most landing in dead-end jobs or prisons. In some families, dropping out has become a way of life with neither parents nor children completing high school,” begins the first paragraph of a May 2005 eight-part editorial series published in the

Principals As Coaches: The Thomson Fellowships

Many of the principals quoted in this issue, though not all, have been named Thomson Fellows by the Coalition of Essential Schools, under the aegis of an ambitious professional development project called the National Re:Learning Faculty. The Re:Learning Faculty may be best known for its Citibank Faculty, experienced teachers who work closely with colleagues in their own Essential schools and

Raising Power Issues in Schools: Leadership and the Challenges of Equity

Inequities of race and ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, or position in the social structure of schools have much to do with whether every child is learning well, most Essential School educators acknowledge. Do school leaders have a responsibility to raise such power issues as part of school change? And should they take precedence over other pressing issues that face a

Horace: Developing Leaders Published: October 11, 1997 By: Kathleen Cushman Topics: Developing Leaders

Readings on Leadership

Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal, Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991. Robert Evans, The Human Side of School Change, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996. Michael Fullan, Change Forces: Probing the Depths of Educational Reform. London: Falmer Press, 1993. John P. Kotter, Leading Change. Boston: Harvard Business School, 1996. Linda Lambert et al., Who Will Save

Horace: Developing Leaders Published: October 11, 1997 By: Kathleen Cushman Topics: Developing Leaders

Reframing Organizational Change

Leaders tend to act in different “frames” that reflect their personal styles and that focus on different aspects of any particular problem, suggest Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal, who have written widely about organizational change. Some are especially sensitive to the needs of people in the organization and gravitate toward human resources. Some see structure as the key to most

Horace: Developing Leaders Published: October 11, 1997 By: Kathleen Cushman Topics: Developing Leaders

Resources: Professional Development, School Restructuring, and Small Schools

Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools BayCES’s website provides a substantial range of tools, ideas, inspirations, and resources for creating small schools from large schools and for establishing new small schools. Throughout, BayCES keeps a close focus on equity, emphasizing professional development that creates opportunities for all students to learn. The BayCES newsletter, Schools by Design, is available on the

Horace: Developing Leaders Published: September 10, 2004 By: Topics: Democratic Practice, Developing Leaders, The Change Process

STAGES OF STUDENT EMPOWERMENT: What’s a Teacher to Do?

Stage 1: The Honeymoon This is terrific; finally somebody cares what we students think. This school is nothing like what I’m used to you have freedom and you can do whatever you want. Do not be lulled by the students’ euphoria. This will not be easy; their joy will not last without some hard work in setting goals and parameters

The Essential School Principal: A Changing Role in a Changing School

A strong principal’s convictions and guidance have proved crucial to the lasting success of school change. But how do leaders balance authority with a healthy respect for teachers’ growing participation in key decisions? How can they ensure that change will outlast their tenure? When people talk about what Essential school principals do, I notice, they reach for metaphors from geometry,

The Human Face of Change

In dealing with the natural human reactions inherent in school change, says Robert Evans, a Massachusetts psychologist who has helped train many of the Coalition’s National Faculty, leaders would benefit from orienting their efforts not around techniques but around a few key predispositions or biases: 1. Clarity and focus. Concentrate on one or two big and achievable changes at a

Horace: Developing Leaders Published: October 11, 1997 By: Kathleen Cushman Topics: Developing Leaders

What a Democratic Education Looks Like

Equity Democratic education raises issues of equity and deals with structural inequality. Political engagement Democratic education raises political and social issues and sees the global in the particular Participatory classroom processes Democratic education provides students with choice and authority in the classroom, both individual and collective choice. Community Democratic education is concerned with the nature of relationships in the classroom.

What Should School Change Leaders Know and Be Able to Do?

What do we look for in a change leader, and how do we know it when we see it? The question comes from Phillip Schlechty, who heads the Center for Leadership in School Reform in Louisville, Kentucky and has written much about the particular problems school leaders face in a time of change. He lays out the following suggestions, which

Horace: Developing Leaders Published: October 11, 1997 By: Kathleen Cushman Topics: Developing Leaders
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