IN-DEPTH PROJECTS OF FULL MEMBER SCHOOLS
2004-2005 SCHOOL YEAR
IN-DEPTH SCHOOL VISITS
Al Raby High School
Because Al Raby High School was new this year, the principal wanted to insure that it was headed in a good direction and providing the best possible education, based on its focus on environment and community. The school therefore requested that its Alliance project consist of a five-day Practice-Based Inquiry? school visit, in order to obtain reliable data on instruction and student learning, as well as guidance on ways to improve. The visit employed a team of one teacher, one teacher-leader, and one school administrator, led by Tom Wilson, who developed the protocols and processes used in the visit. It involved interviews with students, teachers, administrators, and parents; shadowing of students and observing in classrooms; and study of school documents, test data, and student work. And the process for the write-up required thorough assurance that reported observations were carefully confirmed and objective, rather than based on team members' individual philosophies. The report is the property of the school, and is intended to guide the school in its own improvement efforts.
Two important outcomes thus emerged from this effort. First, the school staff have reviewed the report and begun to plan specific strategies to address the needs identified in it. One or more of these will become the focus for the school's 2005-06 in-depth project with the Alliance. Second, the principal along with one member of the visit team reported on the excellent value of the report, both at our July retreat, resulting in a strong request for PBI visits to additional schools next year. This report emphasized not only that the report was useful for the school, but also served as an outstanding professional development for the visiting team members themselves.
Perspectives Charter School
Perspectives also requested an in-depth school visit as the focus of its Alliance project, particularly because it will be preparing, next year, to apply for renewal of its charter. The Perspectives visit team was larger by two members than that at Al Raby, due to the greater size of the school. Again, the team was led by Tom Wilson. Both Perspectives and Al Raby specified to the team the particular goals of the school and the concerns felt by their staffs, which in turn guided many of the observations and considerations of the team. Perspectives had experienced such a visit several years ago, and knew it would yield important and accurate information. Like Al Raby, the school leadership also reported to the Alliance membership on the high quality of the process and the report; and like Al Raby, the visit team expressed great appreciation for the opportunity to observe and think so deeply about teaching and learning.
IMPROVING LITERACY AND BILINGUAL INSTRUCTION
Passages Charter School
Passages' project began as a way to improve literacy instruction with an emphasis on helping staff learn how to be more effective with ELL students. It expanded to include mapping out the curriculum as a whole to improve instruction across the curriculum and provide teachers with clear guidelines for supporting non-native English speaking students and strengthen their learning of content. Passages has been working with Dr. Sonia Soltero of DePaul University to analyze teachers' present skills in this area, develop the new guidelines, and then conduct professional development to help teachers adopt the new approaches in their classroom. The guidelines will be complete by summers' end and staff development will begin when teachers return for planning time before school begins. The guidelines will also provide a clear definition of approaches used by Passages faculty that will help orient new teachers to the school's educational philosophy and practice.
Telpochcalli Elementary School
Because Telpochcalli School serves a largely Latino student population, with many students not only newly arrived in this country but lacking school experience in their original land of origin, faculty and leaders in the school felt a strong need to re-examine and make explicit their approach to bilingual instruction within their regular classrooms. While most Telpochcalli teachers have strong skills in this area, changes in staff and the passage of time have resulted in a need to re-calibrate their work together. The faculty therefore established a committee to investigate the approaches being used in the school, the most up-to-date literature on the subject, and the practice of other schools with similar populations. This work has been supported by consultation with Maria Teresa Garreton, chair of the Bilingual Education Department at Chicago State University and an internationally recognized expert in the field.
The committee has planned a retreat at which it will present its findings and guide the full faculty to complete and adopt a new, more explicit set of bilingual instruction guidelines for the school. This retreat will take place at the end of the summer. Staff development will be planned for fall in support of teachers who need additional training to effectively carry out the instructional strategies endorsed by the new guidelines. Telpochcalli has always emphasized teacher leadership, and this effort has effectively built on that tradition.
Whittier Elementary School
The goal for this project was to help a core group of teachers expand their repertoire of reading strategies/practices that lead students to become independent readers. A reading consultant provided coaching weekly for 14 weeks in five classrooms in third and fourth grade. The consultant demonstrated a variety of strategies, but focused particularly on literature circles, and met with teachers to plan and to reflect on lessons. On these days the coach also met with other teachers on a consultative basis. The second phase of the project, to be implanted in the 2005-06 school year, is to have teachers share strategies they've learned and mastered by conducting model lessons that other teachers will observe. Thus peer coaching with observations will be one teacher outcome of this activity. The end result will be to develop practices that are implemented school-wide, increasing the amount of students' reading and their ability to analyze and discuss the material they read.
SCHOOL CLIMATE
ACT Charter
ACT used their project to create an in-depth advisory curriculum to address academic achievement and school climate concerns. At ACT, while all staff members lead a student advisory; some are more committed - and better equipped - to conduct meaningful advisory classes than others who are less invested or unfamiliar with the advisory concept. To address this disconnect between the school's stated goal and actual practice, which school leaders felt was negatively impacting student performance, a task force of ACT Teachers researched and developed a scope and sequence plan for the advisory curriculum, and then searched out high quality lessons and activities for teachers to use in each category of the plan. The full faculty was consulted repeatedly during the development process. Parent and student focus groups provided critical feedback on the preliminary curriculum, while the UMOJA Student Development Corporation provided strategic advice.
Staff will be trained prior to school, and the new advisory curriculum will be piloted in the 2005-2006 school year. Success of the program will be assessed based on attendance levels, increased academic performance indicators, and improved student behavior.
Big Picture Back of the Yards
Big Picture's project sought to make school "cool" and strengthen the community culture within the school. To achieve this goal, the school created an "Action Team"(2 students chosen from each advisory for a total of 8 students) to carry out projects that improve the school in various ways. They are piloting this effort during spring and fall semesters of 2005, after which they will help form additional action teams. These students met regularly in the Spring to establish meeting norms, discuss student responsibilities and ways to establish a positive community culture, and to work together with two of the teachers to carry out a first project - a breakfast honoring internship mentors from local businesses and community organizations. This event modeled to the students how the learning goals can be used in any type of project. It is also gave them an idea of what it was like to plan something big that would benefit the entire school.
Starting in the fall, these students (and then others) will carry out one project each semester, focused on a school improvement effort, a social event, a larger community improvement project or an academic enrichment effort. The students will write proposals explaining their choice of focus and showing how they will incorporate learning in each of the areas of study required in the overall curriculum of the school. The pilot group will submit plans for their first project in October and will complete the project by December. During the Spring semester of 2006 the students will work to recruit additional participants and split into two groups with some experienced students in each. A very competent staff member has emerged as a new leader a result of heading up this project.
North Lawndale College Prep
The academic performance of NLCP male African American and Latino students has been significantly lower than female students, impeding the ability of the young men to reach their full potential and to successfully compete for lifetime opportunities, whether academic, economic, or social. Therefore, a group of NLCP male faculty and students created M2EN (Minority Men Exceeding the Norm), an initiative to transform the behaviors, leadership contributions, and academic achievements of male students. A retreat in Atlanta, Georgia - centered at Morehouse College - was used to initiate and build ownership for the transformation effort, involving 33 NLCP male students and seven minority men. As a result of their planning, these students are organized into "houses" that facilitate positive peer support and mutual accountability. Individual and collective performance measures involving behavior, acts of leadership, and academic achievement are constantly updated and widely communicated among the members of the NLCP "houses." The Council of Elders (ten minority men staff members) provides guidance to the "houses." At the end of the school year, a M2EN awards ceremony was held to honor those male students who demonstrated significant improvement, leadership, and contributions to male achievement at NLCP.
Students participating in M2EN had a significantly improved daily; and a record number of male students completed college scholarship applications. A baseline of academic performance has been established and will be re-measured at the end of the Fall 2005 semester to determine if a significant change is occurring. Next year, NLCP will continue with the M2EN project, looking to improve the capability of parents/guardians and NLCP faculty members to support the development of our male students. NLCP would like to explore a working relationship with Ron Feguson of Harvard University, an expert on minority male issues. And the leadership roles of the male faculty have been absolutely central to the development of the project.
SPECIALIZED INDIVIDUAL SCHOOL TOPICS
School of Entrepreneurship (South Shore Campus)
The School of Entrepreneurship created a Micro-loan Plus Project designed to challenge the school's curriculum to become more than a theoretical approach to the subject matter of Entrepreneurship. Students created business plans, and were encouraged to move their business ideas into reality. The student generated business plans were evaluated for viability in competition format judged by outside experts. Winners from the business plan competition were awarded monetary prizes and seed money in the form of micro-loans for their businesses.
The business plan competition succeeded in generating greater student participation and more engagement in their entrepreneurship coursework. Previously, less than 20% of students had completed a business plan within their business course. As a result of the competition, more than 50% of the students had completed business plans. Next year, Entrepreneurship plans to implement an internal marketing program to get more student-owned business to participate in the micro loan opportunity. Students also indicated they would like to have more adult mentoring as well as peer mentoring. Again, teacher leadership was encouraged, as the business department chair took initiative and saw his work produce gratifying results.
Noble Street Charter High School
Noble Street's project focused on using assessment of student learning as a more purposeful tool for providing teachers with feedback to adjust teaching. Faculty developed quarterly content-area assessments and used results to make adjustments in instruction. Intended outcomes: 1) increased number and quality of adjustments in teaching; 2) increased student achievement on classroom assessments and standardized assessments; 3) development of assessment calendar and process; 4) engagement in curriculum review to align curriculum with standardized assessments
As a result of the project, a database of quarterly assessments for each content
area and
each level of instruction was created and an ongoing conversation about assessment
and teaching and learning begun. It is expected that next year teachers will
be able to plan more effectively for the quarterly assessments because they
already have developed a set of assessments based on benchmarks. In addition,
teachers gained experience in developing assessments and analyzing data.
Young Womens Leadership Charter School
YWLCS sought to strengthen the school's professional development program by developing a cohesive, teacher-led, practice-based professional development committee and process that is able to evolve to meet the priorities and needs of the faculty. Goals of the project include: 1) a professional development plan with specific outcomes; 2) increased capacity of teacher leaders and the leadership team to plan, execute, evaluate and adjust professional development programs; 3) increased alignment between professional development and instructional support; and 4) improved student achievement.
Teacher survey data and reflections by the committee indicate that the teacher-led professional development is a welcome and needed change. A related outcome is that work on reading and writing has been spun off to a content based team, headed up by Camille Farrington, Director of Instructional Support, to allow for strengthened focus in that area. The school's ultimate goal is to achieve alignment between its professional development program, in-class instructional support, and student support work. They hope to design a more coherent, focused and in-depth professional development program that will help teachers gain a sense of efficacy in their practice and confidence to implement the skills and strategies learned in professional development.
For the first time, YWLCS created a new organizational process and structure (e.g. the Professional Development Committee) that began to meet and gain experience in planning and implementing professional development activities. Teachers on the Committee reported being much more invested in the success of professional development activities. Next year, more veteran YWLCS teachers need to be utilized as resources for professional development. This group tends to perceive professional development goals and activities as things they already know. Serving on the Committee will not only maximize their experience by supporting newer teachers, but they themselves will deepen their own knowledge and skills through the planning, facilitation and evaluation process.
