Home > Resources > School Design > Learning Structures

A Big School Takes the Team Approach

Type: Example from Schools Author(s): Kathleen Cushman Source: Performance. No. 20, April 1995.

Coral Springs Middle School
10300 Wiles Road
Coral Springs, Florida 33076
(305) 344-5500

Sharon Shaulis, Principal
2112 students grades 6-8
97 teachers, 33 other staff
20.5% minority students

In the midst of its population explosion this middle school improved student performance by strengthening team structures that make school more personal and inclusive.

Only when a fire drill fills the halls of Coral Springs Middle School does one get a true sense of the awesome energies that 2100 young adolescents can unleash in a school built for 1300 - and of why the staff here eliminated bells in favor of a flexible schedule that avoids this scene wherever possible. The northwest corner of Broward county is growing and changing so fast that Coral Springs, a high-achieving and affluent community faced with an influx of new faces and new needs, has had to adapt in every way it can.

But in the classrooms and faculty rooms of this middle school one soon senses a commitment to change that goes far beyond convenience. "when it comes to teaching and learning, teachers and kids here speak the same language now," says Susan Bruining. She has seen the school through five years of change, during which it embraced the principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools, and she testifies to a steady rise in the quality of work from students of every academic description.

In practice, the no-bells policy plays out this school's stated goal to help all children learn to their full potential. As long as the kids get to lunch on time, Coral Springs' 19 teams of five or six teachers have full authority to arrange the daily schedule for their 160 students. While the school bustles with comings and goings, a sense pervades of order, purpose, and shared values.

Every Voice Matters

In part, this can be laid to a foundation of trust and cooperation among faculty, parents, and administration that was many years in the making. When principal Sharon Shaulis took over in late 1994 from her predecessor, Frances Vandiver, the staff had spent six years developing a shared decision-making procedure, talking over its goals, and restructuring the school to reflect them. To personalize learning they tried breaking the huge student body into cross-grade "houses" of around 700 students. Teams of teachers devised interdisciplinary projects and met weekly before school to share innovative classroom strategies. Parents started coming to the school for study groups, and ten students from each grade sat on the governance council.

At the same time, the faculty began to eliminate the rigid tracking that had placed students with special needs in separate classes with little academic emphasis. Exceptional students now join a regular team whose teachers are supported by a specialist, and share the same grade-level work as their peers. "no one's complaining that their kids are no longer in the basic class," says Shaulis wryly.

Test scores back up the efficacy of such "mainstreaming". Mathematical reasoning skills for eighth-graders have improved, standardized tests show, since the school threw out its low-track math courses. In 1993, the first year every Florida eighth-grader took the state's new performance-based writing assessment, Coral Springs led the district; 1994 and 1995 found the school in second and first place again. "Even our special needs students scored within the same range as regular students in the district," Shaulis observes. The results decidedly support research by University of Illinois professor Robert Felman, whose studies show scores rising consistently in middle schools where teachers share substantial planning time.

Writing, Writing Everywhere

The push to improve student writing across the curriculum has brought this school's faculty together around another common goal. In Shelley Kaiser's eighth-grade social studies class, students paired up to produce newspapers describing the causes, progress, and results of the American Revolution. Along the way they got coaching in expository and persuasive writing from English teacher Allison Jaffe, and their work was scored using both a history and language arts rubric. (See sidebar.)

Math students also work regularly on communication skills. In their quarterly portfolios, for instance, they are asked to think through a problem they missed on a test or assignment, explaining the correct solution and why it works. And in one two-week unit, students argued out the mathematics of a complex political and environmental problem involving drilling for offshore oil deposits in New England.

Like many of this school's initiatives, the commitment to raising writing standards has had its effect on the district's other schools. Many Coral Springs Middle School teachers are now trainers for national Writing Project workshops or other summer offerings sponsored by the county.

Making sure that new approaches carry through from the early grades to high school is also a priority in this district. Coral Springs Middle School teachers share professional development with five nearby elementary schools and a high school in a K-12 "Innovation Zone," which focuses on learning to identify and reach students with different learning styles, creating "high-option environments" to help them succeed.

Demonstrating Understanding

Coral Springs' math department has also taken a leadership role in raising standards for students at every level. "We piloted a program in which all kids worked with pre-algebra concepts early on," says teacher Christine Flynn. "Every teacher chooses from a menu of applications and resources so they can find the best entry point for each student."

This school's emphasis on developing higher-order thinking skills is perhaps most evident when one drops into classrooms at random and watches students at work. In Susan Fronrath's sixth-grade social studies class, two girls dressed as Sumerians present an exhibition on that ancient culture to an attentive audience of their peers. The talk is laced with modern-day comparisons, enlivened with homemade artifacts, strongly organized, and rich in content. The girls field questions with aplomb, drawing analogies to everything from American slavery to the pharaohs of Egypt. Using a time line, they augment each other's explanations of Sumerian religion, geography, and culture with impromptu examples. At the end they list and evaluate their sources. The class has taken notes, expecting to need what they are learning some day soon. And in this rapidly expanding county, one has little doubt that they will.

The Challenge: Improving Student Writing Across the Curriculum

Coral Springs Middle school teachers Allison Jaffe and Shelley Kaiser recently asked their eighth-graders to demonstrate their understanding across both social studies and language arts. "Was the American Revolution inevitable?" they asked, and double-blocked their classes so students could carry out sustained work on the question throughout the unit. For their exhibition, students prepared not only a persuasive essay but Revolutionary-era "newspapers" describing and analyzing the war's causes, progress, results, and major characters. They drew political cartoons, created crossword puzzles to elicit important facts, and editorialized on the dilemmas of the time. To do well required mastery of a range of skills in research, reading, critical thinking, and problem solving. No less, the assignment revealed students' progress in both expository and persuasive writing. A few sample excerpts follow in unedited form:

.....The new King did not take into consideration that after 200 years of living separate lifestyles that a sudden change back to harsh English rule would make a spark, that would eventually cause a tremendous fire. Their cultures grew so far apart that you could not tell that the colonies were ruled by the British anymore. The American colonies set up their own system of government which differed greatly from the English government. The British did not see that the colonists adapted to the new way of life in the Americas....(David Arenson)

....Some believe that the war was won through luck, but others felt it was due to our advantages. How could that be? The British had more advantages than us, or did they? They had paid, experienced soldiers, but our volunteers were fighting for a cause. At stake were our ideals and our freedom! Another advantage was that we were close to home. The British had a navy, but that only gave them minimum control of the coast. Their generals were not usually promoted for their abilities. This caused bad judgment and careless mistakes. Our leaders....were selected because of their abilities which meant good judgment, the respect of the troops, confidence and strong leadership. There were some disadvantages too though. For instance, the British had money and we did not. At least the money we did have was worth practically nothing. We had hardly any power to raise taxes and therefore could not gain anything that way. So, to sum it all up, we may have had less advantages, but the ones we had were the ones that counted. (Sabrina Salvitti)

Performance

Progress Reports from the Coalition of Essential Schools
Number 20, April 1995
Editor: Kathleen Cushman

A continuing series describing areas in which Essential Schools are demonstrating significant progress toward change using the Nine Common Principles.

This resource last updated: May 14, 2002

Database Information:

About CES | CES Network | Fall Forum | Small Schools Project | Resources
My Homebase | Jobs | Search | Site Map | Contact Us | Home