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THE PRACTICE:
Developing a Learning Community
The school develops a culture in which students and teachers know each other well and learning?including ongoing professional development for all staff members?is valued. Parents and other community members partner with school staff to insure that all students graduate from high school with options that lead to further achievement.
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Content Presented By:
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The Education Alliance at Brown University
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National Association of Secondary School Principals
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What is it?
When high schools become learning communities, they show improvement in both the practice of educators and the engagement of students. There is regular collaboration about school goals, curriculum design, assessment strategies, and instructional techniques. This, in turn, raises the bar for educators' performance while providing the support necessary for their improvement. Furthermore, staff who know their students well can celebrate their distinctive successes and support their individual growth. Such attention helps to engage students in the learning process and to make them feel part of the school community. Schools partner with parents, business leaders, and other community members to provide a range of experiences for students. These include internships, service learning activities, and other non-academic growth opportunities, all of which further enrich their learning community by extending it beyond the school walls.
Questions to Think About
- What kinds of departmental and interdepartmental collaboration take place in your school (coaching, study groups, team teaching, etc.)? How effective is this collaboration at contributing to staff members' professional growth? What kind of impact has it had on student learning?
- Do parents and community members feel ownership of your school's change initiative? How do you know? What activities would members of the community describe as engaging them in planning and school improvement?
Breaking Ranks: Changing An American Institution is a 1996 publication of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. It offers a series of recommendations that have become a guiding force for high school redesign throughout the nation. Listed below are the recommendations applicable to this practice. For a clearer picture of what each recommendation looks like in action, click on it, and its "indicators" will appear.
High schools create small units in which anonymity is banished.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 5, #01
Every high school will be a learning community for teachers and the other professionals it employs.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 7, #01
Each educator creates a Personal Learning Plan that addresses his or her need to grow, stressing knowledge and skills related to improved student learning.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 7, #02
The school offers its staff substantive, ongoing professional development to help them deal with issues of diversity.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 8, #04
A high school regards itself as a community in which members of the staff collaborate to develop and implement the school's learning goals.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 12, #01
The support staff of a high school- secretaries, custodians, cafeteria workers, and others- will also be encouraged and assisted in their own career growth and drawn into the larger school community as adults who can promote the well-being of students.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 7, #05
The high school requires each student to participate in a service program in the community or in the school itself that has educational value.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 12, #07
High schools create small units in which anonymity is banished.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 5, #01
Indicators:
- The high school is organized in a way that addresses the individual needs of students and teachers and students know each other well.
- House plans and cluster programs group students into smaller units.
- The school develops a schedule whereby students and teachers are teamed, and there is time allowed for advisory.
- The school philosophy permits students to flourish as individuals, and promotes the idea that adults at the school care about students and their schoolwork.
[Return to List of Recommendations]
Every high school will be a learning community for teachers and the other professionals it employs.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 7, #01
Indicators:
- Teachers work together collaboratively to reflect upon and critique their instructional practices and to share feedback about student work with one another.
- Teachers regularly share with one another their experiences about effective classroom practice and engage in reflective dialogue about their instruction.
- Teacher collaboration and reflection are valued and respected to the degree that they permeate the culture of the school (e.g., lunchroom conversations are about teaching and student learning).
- Examining student work together is the basis of much of the school improvement effort within the building and occurs both formally and informally (e.g., teachers across different subject areas look at samples of student writing together to determine if students are meeting the learning expectations that have been established).
- Teacher teaming allows teachers to have common planning time to develop lessons together, to discuss student progress, and to reflect upon and critique their work.
- Critical friends groups or comparable peer support/mentoring programs exist.
[Return to List of Recommendations]
Each educator creates a Personal Learning Plan that addresses his or her need to grow, stressing knowledge and skills related to improved student learning.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 7, #02
Indicators:
- Teachers work together collaboratively to develop and revise curriculum.
- All teachers are involved in curriculum development and revision through a variety of formal and informal collaborative opportunities both within and across departments.
- The district and the school provide multiple opportunities for teachers to engage in professional development toward instructional improvement.
- Teachers are supported and encouraged in their efforts to meet together frequently to critique and improve their own classroom curriculum.
- Teachers are knowledgeable about current research on effective instructional approaches and reflective about their own practice.
- Teachers engage in professional development opportunities that allow them to develop a broad range of assessment strategies for their classes.
- Teachers engage in formal training opportunities about assessment strategies (e.g., workshops on portfolio development; seminars on performance assessment; a conference on senior projects).
[Return to List of Recommendations]
The school offers its staff substantive, ongoing professional development to help them deal with issues of diversity.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 8, #04
Indicators:
- Teachers and staff members are provided with professional development preparation to discuss issues of diversity and how they can best teach students with diverse backgrounds.
- Educators inform themselves about the cultural backgrounds of their students and show sensitivity toward the particular needs that may accompany those differences in backgrounds.
- Teachers help students understand and appreciate the differences among those that inhabit the classroom.
[Return to List of Recommendations]
A high school regards itself as a community in which members of the staff collaborate to develop and implement the school's learning goals.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 12, #01
Indicators:
- Teachers and administrators meet together to look at student work and classroom assessment results in order to revise curriculum and modify instruction.
- Teachers meet together regularly (ideally with administrators as well) to share and look at student work for the purpose of improving curriculum and instruction (e.g., all grade 10 English teachers look at samples of student essays written in their classes as a means of determining consistent grading standards and whether curriculum and instruction need modification; all teachers at a staff meeting look at cross-subject student portfolios to determine whether students are acquiring self-reflection skills).
- The professional culture of the school is one of collaboration and reflection and is characterized by thoughtful, reflective, and constructive discourse about student learning and well being in both formal and informal settings. Teachers routinely dialogue with each other both within and across subject areas about students, curriculum, and teaching.
- A collaborative spirit of reflection and inquiry exists within the faculty evidenced by ongoing conversations, both formal (e.g., within departments, critical friends groups, common planning time, meetings of teams, peer-coaching sessions, study groups, etc.) and informal (e.g., at lunch tables, over coffee in the faculty room, in the hallways between classes, etc.).
- Teachers routinely engage in conversations about learning expectations, consistent grading standards, quality of student work, Personal Learning Plans, instructional practices, and curriculum revision.
[Return to List of Recommendations]
The support staff of a high school- secretaries, custodians, cafeteria workers, and others- will also be encouraged and assisted in their own career growth and drawn into the larger school community as adults who can promote the well-being of students.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 7, #05
Indicators:
- All staff members (not just teachers) assume responsibility for promoting the well-being and learning of students.
- Administrators, support service personnel, and other non-teaching professionals engage in conversations with teachers about the quality of and issues associated with student learning.
- Where appropriate, support service personnel are integral members of teams who consult about the needs of individual students.
- Teachers routinely alert appropriate personnel and/or contact parents when they have concerns about students.
- Staff members keep one another appropriately informed about individual student needs/issues and how they impact student learning.
- All personnel (e.g., administrators, faculty members, secretaries, custodians, aides, cafeteria workers, etc.) treat students in respectful and supportive ways.
- Support services personnel and library/information services personnel knowledgeable about the curriculum and involved in its implementation, evaluation, and revision and work with classroom teachers to ensure students have access to resources that support the curriculum.
- The support services personnel (i.e., guidance, health, special education) interact and work collaboratively with staff both within the building and in community organizations to address the academic, social, emotional, and physical needs of students.
- All students have access to comprehensive guidance and counseling services that include personal, social, career, and college counseling.
[Return to List of Recommendations]
The high school requires each student to participate in a service program in the community or in the school itself that has educational value.
Breaking Ranks, Ch 12, #07
Indicators:
- The health of our democracy depends on students gaining a sense of their connection to the larger community and one of the ways to create this connection is through service learning that enables young people to contribute their efforts to activities that are useful to the community and reflect on what they learn from participation.
- The school defines the educational objectives and establishes the criteria for assessing the experience.
- The school philosophy embraces the educational value of service learning.
- The school can develop a format by which students and use experiences outside of the classroom to derive formal lessons on the value of helping others.
[Return to List of Recommendations]
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