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Getting Started: Thinking through the start of a new small school
Humanities Prep and its sister school, The James Baldwin School, have spent the better part of two years planning for Baldwin’s September 2005 opening. We would be pleased to discuss what went well, what was knowingly anticipated, and what luck we had as the residue of our “intelligent design.” At the same time, we are quite willing to share what surprised us, caught us off guard and could have gone a lot better. Whether you have just opened this fall or plan to next year (and for those veteran schools who want to think through their opening anew), we look forward to thinking things through with you.
| QUESTIONS with Answers |
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Much of the research on school improvement associates the power of the vision and mission being shared - a live part of the decision-making processes of the school. Why do you think that in so many schools, it is a lifeless (done and shelved) aspect of the school. What needs to happen for building and district level administrators to really believe in the "power of the vision?"
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Good question, as all of these are.
First (since this is the first response I'm offering so far) I’d like to offer a quick hello all participating in this dialogue.
I’m writing from the co-director’s office of the James Baldwin School, a new CES small school in New York City, and a replication of essential aspects of the Humanities Prep model. Prep is the school where I taught for 8 years, and where three of the founding teachers, and eight of the founding students, had all been working and learning together for several years before we opened the James Baldwin School. Prep is our mentor school, or sister school, and there is much that we share, so I imagine that when I address certain questions it will be as much as a long-time colleague of Vincent and the staff at Prep as it is as a teacher, Principal and Co-director at Baldwin.
Our two schools share a mission statement and core values. (Both should be posted on Changelab.) The mission statement is far reaching, encompassing much – and it is an essential school text that we return to at moments when we can contemplate it thoughtfully. We may turn to it at a retreat, and we may reference or excerpt it in our literature, outreach materials, letters to parents, communication with students, and the wider community. What is strong about the mission statement is that it has many meaningful philosophical points of entry and covers a lot of ground. This makes it flexible, durable, and accessible to many people in a diversity of settings. It’s also eloquent (credit to Perry Weiner, founder of Prep when it was just a program within a larger high school), and this makes it a pleasure to return to.
But the mission is not always a text that we can surface and probe. It is difficult to make quick reference to a passage. Our Core Values provide this, however: There is a list of seven and they become constant and recurring points of reference for the school community throughout a day and all along a school year. We work hard to insure that they are never considered “done and shelved.” And I think that we derive much of our vision of our community from these values, and to the extent that we make them live in the lives of the students, they thus live for administrators, school leaders, teachers, and they become tangible to people more distant from the everyday workings of the school as well, at a district level or in the eyes of visitors.
How do we make this vision – our Core Values - shared and lived every day in the school?
We’ve tried to upload resources related to this question onto Changelab, by the way, so have a look there if you wish more detail. In short, here are a few of the ways that the vision and values remain with us and guide us:
We offer courses that are inspired by the Core Values, and we ask teachers to make reference to Core Values in their course descriptions. For instance, “The Core Values in History,” a global studies course that researches “commitment to democracy” and the roots of a certain kind of democracy in ancient Greece; and the “commitment to justice” in the context of 20th century South Africa.
We base behavioral and academic interventions on infractions – not of rules – but of core values and community norms. So, for example, students have taken other students to the “Fairness Committee” (a community-based judicial body, like a student court) for violating the core value “respect for the intellect,” because the student was cutting school. Or a student has taken another to “Fairness” for violating “respect for diversity” when she uttered a racial slur – to give but two examples.
We give awards at the end of each semester for a ”strong commitment to” and an “emerging voice” in the various core values. And the nominations for these awards come from the students themselves in Advisory groups, following a day or two of discussions of who is a deserving recipient.
Art work is posted in the school with reference to a core value. Our lunch, bathroom, and other policies will make reference to them as well.
In sum, we make every effort to keep the core values (the essentials of our vision of a good community and school) alive in every day actions and discussions, and we give them a prominent place in school ceremony and ritual. This keeps them alive.
- Elijah
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To build on Elijah’s response, I would highlight two key aspects. First, for a school to develop a positive and meaningful culture, through which effective instruction can flow, it is helpful to find many ways, formal and informal, for the mission to be articulated. I believe this is what Elijah illustrates with his reference to our schools’ core values. Engaging communication necessarily gives the mission life and keeps it off the shelf and in the hands of a school’s community members. Not insignificantly, this is an important way for the school to be unique, special.
Second, it is particularly important to work to establish a school’s special mission because the external pressures on schools, from district administrators and others, tend to push schools toward standardization (for the purpose of sorting schools among other things) and away from visionary and creative approaches to education. I think the best way to deal with district and other external stakeholders is to invite them to school and show them whatever best exemplifies your mission, preferably with students doing the talking and demonstrating.
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How are "small schools" approaching the planning and implementation of instructional technology to challenge students' thinking and communication skills? Additionally--how do you approach the role of student assessment data, as it relates to and informs this technologically-rich learning environment?
-Christopher Adams
Instructional Computing Specialist
Mohawk Regional Information Center
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I find this an intriguing question – perhaps in part because I don’t fully understand all of the terms; so I apologize if my thoughts don’t fully address the topic...
How do small schools employ “instructional technology” to “challenge students’ thinking and communication skills?”
My first thoughts in response are questions: What is instructional technology? By this do you mean computer technology - the programs and applications, and the various skills and forms of literacy and fluency that attend this technology? Does one include the technologies of written communication in that category as well?
I think that any small school – or large school – any school - has a responsibility to help students develop agility with the technologies that they will need to do good and meaningful work in their future, given the changing demands of the society; and we have the responsibility to provide them access to technology, for the execution of tasks and communication of ideas, that is consistent with the technologies that they have known in the earlier stages of their identity formation. In other words, we need to initiate them to the tools and skills they will need in the future, and we need to build upon the tools and skills they bring to us from their past experience. For some students this means teaching them how to use a computer for the first time. For some it means building upon the computer skills they bring, introducing them to dream weaver, flash, power point, photo shop, programming and website construction. For other students this means teaching them how to write a sentence and a paragraph, with the technology of pen or pencil in their hand.
We asked our students earlier this year to address envelopes to their homes so that we could send home an announcement. Some knew how; others did not. Perhaps this speaks to the obsolescence of hand-written communication and the primacy of typed and digital and web-based communication. Or perhaps it speaks to educational neglect, or to a literacy divide in our society that we are obligated to address – in addition to the digital divide.
In a diverse and economically and culturally divided society, how should/can we differentiate our instruction so that each student is challenged appropriately and leaves us with strong prospects for a happy future of fulfilling work and a healthy identity based on consistency between skills held and skills demanded by society? Small schools have particular advantages in this regard, in that we can know our students well and quickly and apportion resources accordingly.
We’ve only got four computers now in our new school, and they’re all in the offices. Eight more are being delivered this morning – right now in fact - and they will be distributed to two of four classrooms and one common work space. We will work to acquire more computers, of course, and eventually to create a lab where both sophisticated and basic computer skills can be acquired. Books are on order, too, that haven’t arrived yet. What should be our future priorities in terms of the technology we acquire and use and teach? I’m not entirely sure. This is a challenging question – which I think can only be answered with integrity if one has a strong sense of what is socially equitable and just, and a solid knowledge of who are students are, where they come from, and where they ought to be going if they are to live meaningful happy lives.
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| Q: |
We are converting an existing high school into 5 autonomous high schools. Do you have any best practices or advice on the best way/methodology to go about naming the new schools?
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During our planning year, when the (soon-to-be) new school staff and Prep staff were together working in the same school, collectively planning the new one, our process for naming the new school involved many meetings and conversations, formal and informal, between faculty and with students. In the end we came to a consensus agreement on the name of the school. But there was a lot of debate – good debate – and serious consideration about the symbolic meaning of the name of the institution. Students and parents were involved, but the staff did not delegate decision-making power to any other body than itself. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend our process, so I won’t go into details; I would simply recommend that you find a way for people in your community to have meaningful discussions about the potential nameS of the school, with enough detachment so that no one develops an unbending allegiance to any one title – for in the end it may not be chosen. And, whatever name you choose, in the end, as with any symbol, it takes on the meaning that a community or group gives it. So no matter the names you debate and the name you ultimately select, if you do good work under that banner, it will become a symbol of good work. That is to say, the meaning of the name will follow from the meaning of what you do. On the other hand, meaning can flow from a name and guide you. (Sorry if I’m rambling here a bit… it’s a challenge – a good one – to do this and school at the same time!) For us, James Baldwin offered a particularly inspiring figure, someone who was critical of America’s injustices and equally committed to its experiment with democratic freedoms; further, his mode of artistic expression mirrors our pedagogical aspirations: to begin with the individual’s experience and build outward to new experience, knowledge and larger communities of engagement and commitment. Choosing this name gave us something to live up to – both in terms of the work we do in classes with students and the social mission of that work, and in terms of the project of educating ourselves and others to the importance of Baldwin’s writings, ideas and legacy.
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We loved the opportunity to engage students in the naming process and they contributed a great deal to the process. One lesson learned was not to start just with names of famous and not so famous people: initially, it led many in the direction of a popularity contest. If we were to do it again, I would recommend beginning with the mission and whatever else we hoped to create as a distinguishing feature of the school. Then, charge the students with the responsibility of researching folks who embodied those principles and features. Of course, various names will be raised from the beginning, but the context for hearing those names informs thinking about them.
Also, The James Baldwin School began with an "Intensive" mini course that focused on the legacy of James Baldwin, and that was a very constructive approach to embracing the neme and finding another way to articulate and access the mission.
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Engaging parents who have little English Language Development has been a challenge. Is it in our best interest to create an ESL for parents?
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My suggestion is to first be specific about what constitutes your “challenge.” In general, we educators tend to draw quickly upon our problem-solving skills without really processing the problem sufficiently. Creating ESL for parents may be a good solution, but first be clear about exactly what problems it addresses. Check the
“Descriptive Consultancy” in The Power of Protocols by Joseph P. McDonald et al.
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| Q: |
Is there a national 'standard' or 'process' for obtaining waivers from Federal, State and Local law and regulation that provides for the initiation and or creation of a small secondary school within a larger school and district that are stuck in'memory' and devoid of 'imagination' (AKA Fear Based Management)?
Context: Alternative Education at the secondary level within a secondary population of 2,300.
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If I catch your drift, you will need to excavate your district and state for whatever guidelines either may have for school creation, chartering or otherwise. I am not aware of any Federal guidelines in this area beyond civil rights protections and the like. The “standard” and “process” for new school creation is certainly more demanding than establishing a small learning community (SLC) within a large secondary school. Some (now dated) research that I am aware of indicates that the life expectancy of a mini-school within a larger school is about four years. This is how long Humanities Prep was a mini-school prior to its being approved as an autonomous school in 1997. One CES school that has survived for over 20 years, albeit reluctantly as an alternative SLC within a large secondary school, is Scarsdale Alternative School in Scarsdale, New York.
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What would be your recommendation for someone starting a small school based on the CES format independent of a high school or school district?
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There are so many possible implications to the scenario you describe. It sounds like a charter opportunity which may mean that although you have no district constraints, you will need to navigate around state expectations and regulations -- you'd certainly want to know in detail the lay of the land so that you can strategize well. Second, there are so many ways to be a CES school. You will need to articulate its vision, mission, focus. I suggest that this should be done in community, finding ways to hear many voices and surface a diversity of needs to be addressed.
Beyond those considerations, in a more or less generic sense, I would endorse at least three aspects of the work that Humanities Prep and James Baldwin did as we sought to give birth to the new school. We created a core of four talented and committed teachers, each of whom believed in a collaborative model of leadership, who worked together - some for several years -- as teachers, as curriculum writers, as policy-makers and as school implementers (somehow that feels different than saying administrators).
New schools, especially here in New York City which now has about 420 high schools, are usually staffed with mostly inexperienced folks. We sought to create a healthier mix of veterans and novices. A new school needs to be proud (with justification!) of its instruction from the start. The students deserve no less, parents and guardians gain confidence, and stakeholders find reasons to support your efforts.
Second, leadership needs to be developed as the school is being planned. Having leadership enter a new school after its been planned creates a problematic dynamic between those who conceived of the school and someone who is somehow chosen to lead it. It's not impossible to find an inspired match, but it is far from ideal. In our situation, the core group had strong expectations of a highly collaborative leadership model which Elijah embraces wholeheartedly. That is certainly our bias and it aligns well with CES principles. Elijah, and his co-director Chris Olson, also engaged in a leadership development program over the last year that further informed their thinking and approach to what the school required to be a place of excellence. In addition, being Elijah and Chris' mentor, they got to see quite clearly my gifts, my gaps (and my gaffes) and I believe we were able to speak honestly about them.
Finally, visit schools and speak to their teachers and students. It has been inspiring, delightful and informative to experience so many incredible learning organizations in NYC and as part of the Small Schools Project. One cannot help but learn about so many essential aspects of school creation by engaging in focused visits.
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In the planning phase what were the essential items that you considered "deal breakers" if they had not been present as you were designing your school. If "buy in" was a problem what did you do to help with the process.
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In our situation school size was a deal-breaker. In fact, before receiving the CES new school grant our proposal was rejected by another Gates intermediary because we wouldn't agree to grow to 500 students. (The intermediary was later informed that the Gates foundation itself did not want new schools of more than 400.) Although we believe that CES would have been supportive of a school of around 175 students, Humanities Prep's size, the NYC Department of Education wanted us to agree to 400. We were able to negotiate a model that would be capped at 324 students (yes, exactly 324 students). Another example of what might have been a deal-breaker would have been if the new school had been told it would have to conform to the NYC district's mandated curricula in all of the core subject areas as practically all other new schools are required. One advantage of James Baldwin being considered a "replication" of Humanities Prep (which has a waiver from the mandated curriculum as do all member schools of the CES Center in NYC, the New York Performance Standards Consortium) is that we were able to argue that to replicate a school while adopting a totally different curriculum was, effectively, not a replication at all. All that said, I would take care in labeling issues as deal breakers. My experience is that once you are a school you will have to fight about what's best for your students and school more or less constantly. What was defined as a possible deal-breaker before your school begins, becomes a potential school breaker once you have begun. What if Prep or Baldwin is told we must now grow to 500, or we must now implement the mandated curricula? You need to be prepared to fight, deflect, and ultimately conquer external forces that challenge your school's essential beliefs.
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Having had two years focussed effort to start the school and time to consider current research and practice, what processes have you put in place to sustain ongoing change? What provisions are made for individual and collective professional reflection, growth and development?
David Boon, Department of Education, tasmania, Australia
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This question seems connected to one listed above, which asks about structured collaborative discussions. I think we have found, at Humanities Prep, the James Baldwin School, and at other CES schools we know, that it is in structured - and sometimes unstructured - collaborative discussions that collective professional reflection, growth and development can be fostered. I think that two of the most important provisions that we have made for such discussions - and the collective reflection that they can permit - are 1) a our weekly staff meeting cycle, and 2) our common physical space.
Our weekly meeting cycle includes a Monday morning meeting when the staff gathers for announcements pertinent to the week and to suggest agenda items for a two hour Wednesday afternoon meeting where most questions of school operations and governance are collectively determined by the entire staff, by consensus. The chair of the Wednesday meeting rotates among the staff, and whoever is chair for the week meets with a co-director to prioritize the agenda items that have been suggested that Monday. Distributing the responsibilities for the meeting in this way helps all staff develop a sense of ownership over the conversations we have and the prioities we establish as a professional learning community. Because the decisions at the meeting are made by consensus, facilitated using various protocols to encourage participation by many, collective professional reflection and self-critique at the whole school level becomes on-going, and so does change. (Sometimes the on-going nature of this change is frustrating - for sometimes it seems that there is little that is stable or everlasting - but with core values and a strong sense of mission as foundation, a school can endure the uncertainties and fluctuations of a democratic process.) The focus of the faculty meeting is not only on questions of school operations and governance: time is structured in weekly for the discussion of student work, engagement, and potential academic and behavioral interventions; time is also structured in for focus on instruction and curriculum. For example, at the James Baldwin School this year, we have decided to aportion one hour of the two for collective decision-making needed to run the school, twenty minutes for socializing information about attendance and student participaiton in classes so that advisors can make informed phone calls home, and then forty minutes one week for instructional pd and forty minutes the next week for a focused discussion of student concerns led by our social worker.
In addition to the meeting cycle, each school has a common space - at Prep it's called Prep Central - where most teachers' desks, books, student work stations, and chairs and couches for discussion are collected. This allows for daily conversations between teachers and between teachers and students. The informal conversations - before, during and after school - between teachers that happen in this space are an essential aspect of the professional reflection that is essential to healthy on-going change and growth.
If we can bring people together - in formal ways, such as thoughtfully structured meetings - and in informal ways, such as thoughtfully planned common spaces of interaction - then these important discussions are likely to occur in whatever human institution. Essential, of course (a "deal breaker" perhaps, as Vince noted above), is size. Forty people can't really all sit around a table and have meaningful discussions. But ten to twenty can, as thoughtfully planned small schools and SLCs are demonstrating.
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Enrollment: If you have a set maximum number of students per class and school, as many schools do, then what happens if a student fails for a school year? If the school keeps the student then the school is over its maximum enrollment per class and violates its charter. Is it permissible to simply not accept that student for the following year which would prevent exceeding the next class years total and create an opening in the higher grade? Or should the school under enroll and attempt to anticipate the potential for failing students?
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Chartering requirements vary from state to state, so my first question is to what extent the charter itself can be flexible? Chartering rules and accountability measures should not undermine your ability to meet the needs of the students you are chartered to serve. Various contingencies, as in the scenario you pose, need to be accounted for in the plan for the school. However, quite understandably, other contingencies may arise that you may not anticipate. They too need to be responded to with the students needs serving as your guide for action, not the imperatives of an organizational construct that works against those needs.
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Facility:
What is a reasonable annual cost to lease a 10,000 square foot 1953 elementary school in a rural PA?
What tips can you give me on leasing a building?
What pitfalls did you encounter?
What percentage of your budget is used toward leasing or “mortgage” payments?
Goals:
In order to get our charter approved we need to provide information and be somewhat specific. To avoid being revoked we need to meet those goals with an unknown enrollment. Our school plans to be small, 10-12 students per class year and 60-72 students total. One student doing poorly will have a tremendous impact on our scores. How specific should our goals be?
We have heard that charter students upon entry have low reading and math scores. Should we state a within percentage of the local district?
Admissions:
Can our admission’s policy set specific prerequisite courses that must have been passed for enrollment (for example, 6th grade math or 9th grade biology)?
Assessment:
What reading and math tests do you use to pre-test students after enrollment to determine the baseline?
Finance:
How does your finance plan work? What position within your school signs checks? How many are needed? How many are authorized? What role does your board treasurer play?
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To be clear, Humanities Prep and James Baldwin are not charter schools. So, in my response to your questions and others that reference chartering, I am searching for the larger issues or principles that seem to be relevant. With the average cost of an apartment in Manhattan averaging over $1 million, I am in no position to figure out a fair price for the building you have your eyes on. I would recommend that you reach out to possible school partners/supporters (businesses, citizens, CBOs) who may be willing, even excited, to help with cost and other non-educational issues you are sure to encounter. I'm sure I am not the first to suggest that making community outreach a significant part of your action plan could yield some very helpful results as you launch your school.
You are right to be concerned about statistical distortions within such a small school. You might investigate ways to quantify what promises to be a very personalized accountabilty system within your school. Check the research on "value-added" accountability systems and see if there may be ways to document how each student progresses instead of relying on more traditional measures. You could also investigate the possibility of giving overall statistics for two-year periods. The federal government allows that in relation to NCLB when a particular school does not have a large enough cohort to render a fair statistical reading.
Regarding issues such as finance, assessment and admissions requirements, the more familiar you are with Pennsylvania chartering guidelines, the better you will be able to assess your options. I strongly recommend visiting other very small schools and networking regularly with other charters to learn how they navigate the system. The pressures to conform to all of the rules and regulations are great and are not likely to relent. That makes it imperative for you and your planning team to be very clear about what the school stands for and what you see as essential to your mission. Optimally, your plans should be an organic and proactive articulation of what you believe in, and not a reactive reponse to the fear of revocation.
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What were the top professional development needs of your teaching staff? How did they receive training - did you use on-site seminars as well as on-line learning? What did you find to be most effective for teachers and the impact they are having on student learning?
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My approach to professional development stems from a few points of departure. Among them: 1) Understanding that deep expertise can be found outside the school and should be engaged, first look to the faculty to provide PD. Action research and peer observations are two potent formats. 2) The most effective PD occurs when the faculty itself articulates the need for it. Sometimes this is articulated quickly, and sometimes it takes years before the faculty as a whole comes to understand the need for special professional intervention. A needs assessment developed WITH the faculty can lead to a joint understanding of the need for a particular form of PD. 3)Whenever possible have a team of faculty engage in externally delivered PD; do not depend on one person to turnkey, not even the principal (arguably especially not the principal). 4) If folks external to the school are coming to deliver PD, meet with them first and ideally have them observe the faculty and the school and meet with teachers before beginning their PD session.
Certainly among the top needs I would include differentiated instruction and curriculum development. Two of the more effective approaches include a targeted action research project and some of the curriculum work we have done in conjunction with our partner, Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound. We have not, as a school, used on-line learning.
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A colleaugue and I are coming over to Boston for the Fall Forum for the CES network. We are visiting Fenway and Boston Arts Academy. Is there another school we can visit in the Boston area on Tuesday 1 November that might enlighten us further on the small schools project?
Thanks
David McLaughlin
cc davyways@aol.com
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You may want to check with either Mara Benitez (mbenitez@essentialschools.org) or Laura Flaxman (lflaxman@essentialschools.org) of CES National who coordinate the work of the SSP for further recommendations. You may also want to contact Dan French (Dfrench@ccebos.org) or Jayne Ortega (jortega@ccebos.org) of the Center for Collaborative Education for recommendations of other wonderful schools to visit in the Boston area.
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Reflecting on your planning year - what were the three best things you did to prepare? What were the three things you found to be the greatest challenge and how did you overcome them?
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Our planning year context was not typical of most new school start-ups. The core teaching staff, the emerging leadership, even interested parents and students who were considering transferring to the new school as part of a leadership cadre, were all embedded in Humanities Preparatory Academy. As we anticipated, all of these elements, part of a deliberative transplanting process, were enormously helpful in launching The James Baldwin School last month. We believe this provides a model of new high school development that could be employed elsewhere. We used the new school creation process as the basis for an intensive needs analysis of Humanities Prep. We reviewed key elements of our school design and evaluated how well they were working and how each element would need to be adapted within the new school's design. Although we had a core planning team, the entire staff contributed to the process of developing the new school and trouble-shooting emerging issues. We spent a great deal of time, through day long and overnight retreats as well as regular meetings with the emerging SSP network, consulting and honing our ideas with one another, other schools and our main partners (CES and Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound). One last thing which was extremely important: we fought hard to have the new school begin in the same building with Humanities Prep which facilitates a meaningful ongoing mentoring process. However, all of these "best things" created our greatest "challenges" simultaneously. We had to be very conscious of not viewing the process as dividing Prep but creating Baldwin. The was very challenging because of the objective reality of what we were doing. Four very talented, bright and wonderful colleagues who held the Prep mission close to their hearts would not be on our faculty come September 2005. Similarly, some extraordinary, emerging student leaders would also leave our school. Although the needs analysis was valuable to Prep, we spent much time as a staff focusing on creating the new school, time that could have been spent further improving our pedagogical practices. My hope is, and I believe it is the case, that the Prep staff sees the creation of Baldwin in many ways as an expansion of Prep without Prep growing its enrollment. We anticipate that over time Baldwin, being a democratic school, will adopt practices that diverge from those of Prep (just as Prep's practices also change over time). Nevertheless, we are confident that we will both hold to the same mission. Being in the same building will help support this goal and, in no small way, takes the sting out of the transfer of faculty and students -- they are literally right down the hall.
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As an extension of the 'Shared Vision' question, what provisions are you making for using structured collaborative discussions for your own curriculum development and staff, and for teaching/learning practice with students in courses? I am interested in such discussions on all levels for elementary schools, and have a daughter who is thriving at The Institute for Collaborative Studies here in NYC, where such discussions are part of the program.
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I refer you to some of our previous responses, especially Elijah's response to the gentleman from Australia and my response to the question about professional development. To be a bit more specific, this term at Prep, we are focusing on creating schoolwide literacy strategies that account for the level of differentiation necessitated by our heterogeneously grouped classes. We are also focusing on curriculum development that transforms our courses into "expeditions" as described by the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound Core Benchmarks (see: www.elob.org), and on ways to better prepare our students to complete the demanding performance based assessment tasks required for graduation. In addition to our faculty meetings and upcoming retreat, we are engaging in an action research project (the results of which we plan to share at a special conference we are co-hosting with School of the Future on April 29, 2006) and we have started a formal CFG (critical friends group).
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Our school is having a conversation about creating a vision both for the school and the lanuage arts curriculum. What is the relationship between mission, vision and beliefs?
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The "vision thing!" Much of the current literature in our field flows from business school research regarding the role of the CEO (think principal) as vision maker or variations on the principal as holder and purveyor of the vision. Others (I would include myself here) do not eschew the role of school leaders but point to the need to share the vision among the school's community members in ways that involve the community in the process of creating the vision. (See the work of Peter Senge in Schools That Learn, for example.) In general, I believe that institutionalizing ways to bring to the surface a school community's collective intelligence holds more promise than depending on charasmatic focus. In your situation, it seems appropriate to create exercises that encourage the sharing of dreams, the liberal use of metaphors, and the out-of-the-box thinking that visioning invites. In regard to the relationship you mention, a fairly conventional, yet useful, way of viewing the idea of vision is to place it at the center of a set of concentric circles and follow it with beliefs, mission, policies, processes, and then, procedures. Draw the concentric lines as dashed lines to highlight the need to travel and work through the circles, and to help illustrate the interconnectedness of each layer. As a school leader, I find this construction most helpful in the process of consensus building. Even if a school has a strong school culture, the ecology of a school is delicate. Paradoxically, the more staff members care about the school and believe in it, the more sensitive they tend to be about disagreements or conflicts that arise that threaten the school's ecology. How close to the center of the concentric circles the problem can be placed informs us all about the kind of response that is required. In thinking about school vision and curriculum vision, I would recommend processes that allow the school community, led by the teachers and school leaders, to articulate their vision, beliefs and elements of mission and seek to discover points of consensus. If they cannot be discovered, then you need to work on processes to mold the consensus points.
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I am an external coach assigned to a school that is required to create small learning communities (Abbott Regulations, New Jersey). What might be my most important task as I work with the steering committee created and the school principal? What is your experience with this type of conversion?
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Humanities Prep, a school of 175 students, has always shared a building with Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities, a school of over 2000 students. Although we have worked cooperatively over the last eight years, we did not actively collaborate. Our circumstance has now changed. The introduction of a third school into the building, The James Baldwin School, is happening at the same time that the larger high school is dividing into four small learning communities (SLCs) and has renamed itself The Bayard Rustin Educational Complex. We have formed the Humanities Campus Governing Council (the core members are the three principals and the four SLC directors) and Humanities Prep, therein, has moved from cooperation to collaboration. The work of the larger school is being sponsored and coached by the Institute for Student Achievement (ISA) which is led by Geri House. My immediate response to your question is to not assume that all the stakeholders, in the building and out, know their roles. Conversions necessarily fall into the "building the plane while you fly it" metaphor. I believe you can be very helpful if you are conscious of this and work to spread that consciousness around the table so that all are deliberative (and patient) around role definition. Second, a related point involves the redefinition of the principal's role given the emergence of directors of the SLCs. Accountability issues in particular can be quite thorny as leaders' tasks change. Third, who is on the Steering Committee? You may also help the group think deeply about this so that the possibility of leadership isolation is avoided. I recommend that you contact ISA to see if they are ready to share the documentation of our process to date.
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