Strongly implemented in CES schools across the country, the ten Common Principles have an impact on thousands of students. With the Common Principle “Embracing the metaphor ‘student as worker’,” students are able to revolutionize student culture to reach new heights, bringing it outside the classroom and into the whole school community through student activism. Having students as workers provides a
Transition from middle school to high school can be very tense. You constantly worry about hairstyles, clothes, new teachers, harder work and the events of your social life. Upon attending a small school that’s focused on academics, you notice you miss out on things students at regular schools enjoy. For instance, there are no pep rallies or football games at
by Peggy Silva, Souhegan High School, Amherst, New Hampshire Peggy Silva, an English teacher at Souhegan High School in Amherst, New Hampshire, followed several students’ experiences closely in the process of writing a book about this Essential school founded in 1992. Here she describes a student preparing for the Division One Exhibition Souhegan requires midway through the high school career,
Now a freshman at City College in New York City, Jason was a senior at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School in the Bronx when he wrote the following as part of a “reading autobiography” required for his graduation portfolio. “In class, he looked as if he were never paying attention,” said Nancy Mann, Hamer’s principal, but his reflection revealed
What does a year-long “academic literacy” course look like? One example offered by the teachers involved with WestEd’s Strategic Literacy Initiative uses three long units that build on each other, as follows: From September through November, the class focuses on “reading self and society”–finding and exploring written materials that interest each reader while building and reflecting on new skills and
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
Figure 1: Essential Questions to Shape a School’s Curriculum Figure 1: A Botany Unit Designed Around Essential Questions Figure 1: A Project in Factoring for First-Year Algebra Students Figure 1: Asking Essential Questions about AIDS Figure 1: Homo-Insectivorous and the Dilemma of World Hunger What are the aims of a high school curriculum? Getting to a clear answer is the necessary first step in rethinking
Set in Denver, Colorado, this year’s CES Small Schools Project Summer Institute was a large success—especially because 60 students attended. The welcoming, almost family reunion-esque atmosphere created the perfect catalyst for discussing and sharing innovations in the small schools process. There were group workshops (set in rooms with an overabundance of Jolly Ranchers, pads of paper and pens), lively discussions
by Grant Wiggins What is essential must be experienced as essential. Essential facts and theories are only understood as the results of one’s own work; they are not self-evident notions learned through words as “knowledge,” but the residue of effective performances–Habits of Mind. When they are coaching students to engage in collaborative inquiry, teachers need to insure that essential habits
A theatre arts teacher and a Critical Friends Group coach for the Narragansett, Rhode Island school system, Jan Grant works closely with teachers in three Essential schools-elementary, middle, and high school. Her work with high school students there sparked the following reflection: The concept of Collaborative Inquiry was easy for me to accept when I first encountered it at a
The challenge teachers face in integrating their course work across the disciplines is often a matter of coming up with the right questions. At Brimmer & May School, the faculty uses Bloom’s theory of the six levels of cognition- knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation-as they design tasks for students. The result is assignments like this one from a
Much of the “quiet crisis” in adolescent literacy has to do with empowering students to use language critically– seeing it not as a barrier but an entry into a world they can question and shape. As jason sat Through his seventh-grade classes in those days–the room crowded to bursting with New York City students like himself–he learned to tune out
PROBLEM: Your skateboard is stuck under a dumpster. To get it out, you have a 4′ by 6′ sheet of plywood and a curb. You weigh 150 pounds. Can you lift the dumpster to get it out, and how? Faced with this question, students confront several of the Coalition’s nine common principles at once: they must take steps on their
All learning communities contain a multidimensional spectrum of strengths and weaknesses. By embracing this truth in their values and practices, Essential schools are well poised to respond effectively to the challenge of inclusion. Students in inclusive educational settings take many paths toward the achievement of meaningful educational and personal goals. Inclusion reorganizes a school’s environment: it opens to all students
by Carol Lacerenza-Bjork, National Re:Learning Faculty memberAt West Hill High School in Stamford, Connecticut, English teacher Carol Lacerenza-Bjork and her ninth-grade students developed a curriculum that would achieve their objectives by giving more attention to fewer required texts. Here is her account of how that year-long course took shape, as they planned backwards from the outcomes they aimed for: DEFINING
How can you tell when someone is a good reader? What do teachers look for when they are trying to understand how well someone reads? Asking students this question helps begin to unpack and demystify the reading process, say researchers from the Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) at WestEd, the federal regional educational laboratory in San Francisco. Not everyone realizes how
Like Looking in a Mirror… Denver’s Manual High School was a traditional comprehensive high school of 1,100 students with the city’s lowest student test scores and a high concentration of low-income students. In 2000, Manual High School received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to break up into three autonomous small schools. But the test scores remained
Anne Clark, teacher and administrator at Boston Arts Academy (BAA) offers insight into BAA’s fully inclusive pedagogy, an expression of its commitment to CES’s Ten Common Principles. Describing parallels between BAA’s experience with inclusion and current research findings, Clark suggests important touchstones and discussion points for all CES schools. This synthesis of research and Essential school practice demonstrates how inclusion
For more information on the Essential Schools programs referred to in this issue, contact: Alternative Community School 111 Chestnut Street Ithaca, NY 14850 (607) 274-2183 Andover High School Andover, MA 01810 (617) 470-1707 Adelphi Academy 8515 Ridge Boulevard Brooklyn, NY 11209 (718) 238-3308 The Brimmer & May School 69 Middlesex Road Chestnut Hill, MA 02167 (617) 566-7462 Bronxville High School
Adequately funded, well-functioning public schools in New York City are a precious commodity. Therefore, my parents searched long and hard for the “perfect” school for my brother and me to attend. They found School of the Future on Manhattan’s East Side when I was ready to enter sixth grade. Five years later as a junior, I am inundated with SAT
Of course, intellectual learning includes the amassing and retention of information. But information is an undigested burden unless it is understood . . . . And understanding, comprehension, means that the various parts of the information acquired are grasped in their relations to one another result that is attained only when acquisition is accompanied by constant reflection upon the meaning
From July 10 to July 31, 2006, I went to New Orleans as a volunteer with a non-profit organization called People’s Organizing Committee (POC). This organization’s main goal was to get the people most affected by Hurricane Katrina to play a leading role in rebuilding New Orleans. One year after the storm, the lower income communities still have not received
Our School City High School is in the heart of downtown Tucson in what used to be the town’s oldest and most famous dress shop. It’s a unique location for a school, with everyone from dressed-up lawyers to hungry homeless people passing by on the sidewalk every day. We even have a neon sign in our storefront window, like all
Cutting things out of the overcrowded curriculum presents our only chance for getting students to go deeper, think harder, push past complacency to the habits of mind Essential schools hold dear. But what goes and what stays? And who decides? PRETTY MUCH EVERYBODY agrees: “Less Is More” is the toughest of the Coalition’s Nine Common Principles to explain and to
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