Common Principles for Uncommon Schools

Horace Volume 24 | 2008 | Issue 1

Lifecycles of Educators: Essential School Staff Development: This issue examines the career directions of Essential school teachers and education leaders, focusing on professional learning communities to address the challenge of developing the capacity of educators and administrators to sustain success, create improvement, and start new schools.

Connecting Compensation and Evaluation to Build Professional Development

At Maryknoll School in Honolulu, Hawaii, a Coalition of Essential Schools affiliate since 1995, teachers and administrators are continually working on the issue of building capacity for leadership. This has led to implementation of an alternative to the traditional salary scale. Our Compensation Committee, made up of teachers, administrators, and school board members, is charged with all matters pertaining to

Horace: Volume 24 | 2008 | Issue 1 Published: April 14, 2008 By: Natalie Morey Topics: Learning Structures, Small Learning Communities

Essential Staff for Essential Schools: Horace Interviews Misha Lesley

Misha Lesley, founding principal of Empowerment College Preparatory High School in Houston, Texas, currently serves on the CES National Executive Board and is a Program Director at Prepared 4 Life, a Houston-based organization that develops asset-based experiential after-school programs for middle school students. Through participation in the CES Small Schools Network, Misha has worked with many new and veteran CES

Horace: Volume 24 | 2008 | Issue 1 Published: April 14, 2008 By: Jill Davidson Topics: Learning Structures, Small Learning Communities

From The Inside Out: Eagle Rock School Producing a New Generation of CES Teachers

Six years ago, I founded Eagle Rock’s Teaching Fellowship Program in collaboration with Public Allies, Inc. and under the auspices of Eagle Rock’s Professional Development Center. I knew the power of teacher education that Eagle Rock provided, as I had participated in an internship at the school in 1994. Eagle Rock’s Teaching Fellowship has two perspectives: local and global. Locally,

Horace: Volume 24 | 2008 | Issue 1 Published: April 14, 2008 By: Dan Condon Topics: Learning Structures, Small Learning Communities

Go to the Source: More about the Schools and Organizations Featured in this Issue

Boston Arts Academy 174 Ipswich Street Boston, Massachusetts 02215 telephone: 617.635.6470 www.bostonartsacademy.org Boston Day and Evening Academy 20 Kearsarge Avenue Roxbury, Massachusetts 02119 telephone: 617.635.6789 www.bacademy.org Capital City Public Charter School 3047 15th Street, NW Washington, District of Columbia 20009 telephone: 202.387.0309 email: mail@ccpcs.org www.ccpcs.org Empowerment College Preparatory High School 5655 Selinsky Houston, Texas 77048-1898 telephone: 713.732.9231 hs.houstonisd.org/empowermenths Eagle Rock

Horace: Volume 24 | 2008 | Issue 1 Published: April 14, 2008 By: Topics:

Good Teaching Is a Conversation

Last night, I finished editing a draft of a friend’s article on artificial skin, which he had written for a scientific journal. The prose was exceptionally dense, almost opaque, built on a specialized vocabulary that I did not know. I could edit for mechanics and usage, but I could offer virtually nothing to criticize or clarify content. However, despite all

Investing in Teachers For Student Success: The Teaching Fellows Program

Capital City Public Charter School was founded in 2000 with a vision of an academic program built on progressive principles and research on educational best practices. An Expeditionary Learning school and CES affiliate, Capital City was not standard fare for graduates of the average teacher training program. From the beginning, it was clear that a critical challenge would be the

Learning by Teaching: The New Teachers Collaborative

A belief in “learning by doing” lies at the heart of the New Teachers Collaborative (NTC), a small teacher-preparation program at the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School, and its partner, the Theodore R. Sizer Teachers Center, in Devens, Massachusetts. Now in its sixth year, NTC is designed to bring to adult learners the 10 Common Principles that we, as

Looking Together at Student Work, Second Edition

Looking Together at Student Work, Second Edition by Tina Blythe, David Allen, and Barbara Shieffelin Powell (Teachers College Press, 96 pages, $15.95) Looking Together at Student Work is a succinct, polished, and valuable guide to the practice and outcomes of educators reviewing, thinking about, and gaining understanding from student performances and other artifacts of intellectual endeavor. The authors distill the

Horace: Volume 24 | 2008 | Issue 1 Published: April 14, 2008 By: Jill Davidson Topics:

Make the Impossible Possible: One Man’s Crusade to Inspire Others to Dream Bigger and Achieve the Extraordinary

Make the Impossible Possible: One Man’s Crusade to Inspire Others to Dream Bigger and Achieve the Extraordinary by Bill Strickland with Vince Rause (Doubleday, 240 pages, $23.95) Make the Impossible Possible is a guide to dreaming huge and making that dream happen. Bill Strickland, founder and CEO of Pittsburgh’s Manchester Bidwell, a jobs training center and community arts program, forcefully

Horace: Volume 24 | 2008 | Issue 1 Published: April 14, 2008 By: Jill Davidson Topics:

Notes on this Issue

The perspectives offered here may seem less inclusive of student voices than those that generally appear in Horace. But all the authors included in these pages – all CES network educators and school leaders – describe professional learning communities that “walk the walk,” using the CES Common Principles as their guide for inquiry and mastery. For CES veterans, some of

Horace: Volume 24 | 2008 | Issue 1 Published: April 14, 2008 By: Jill Davidson Topics: Teacher Collaboration & Learning

Principled Principal Development: The Greater Boston Principal Residency Network

Educators in Massachusetts are faced with this question: what measures are necessary to stop a policy that is clearly discriminatory against low-income school districts whose students, as a rule, are racial and cultural minorities? And what stands and measures must educators take in order to identify racist and misguided policies to the policy-makers and offer proposals to reverse these policies?

Horace: Volume 24 | 2008 | Issue 1 Published: April 14, 2008 By: Topics: Learning Structures, Small Learning Communities

Teachers Talking Together: The Power of Professional Community

Schools that encourage teachers to do excellent work, as Boston Arts Academy (BAA) does, are “professional learning communities.” A professional learning community exists when the entire faculty and staff, including the administration, work together towards a shared set of standards and assessments that are known to everyone, including the students. Such a school is a learning environment not only for

Horace: Volume 24 | 2008 | Issue 1 Published: April 14, 2008 By: Linda Nathan Topics: Learning Structures, Small Learning Communities

Where to Go for More: Resources for Essential School Staff Development

Horace is indebted to two sources in particular for some of these items and ideas. Consultation with Gene Thompson-Grove, National School Reform Faculty Facilitator and Founding Co-Director Emerita, was immensely valuable both in identifying specific resources and clarifying the history of interconnections between CES and NSRF. As well, resources mentioned in “Adult Learning: Turning the Corner to Instructional Change,” a

Horace: Volume 24 | 2008 | Issue 1 Published: April 14, 2008 By: Topics:
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