Fall Forum 2010, Demanding Education That Matters: Equitable Organizational Practices & Policy Strand

Register for Fall Forum: http://www.regonline.com/fall_forum_2010 

Advisory Capacity: Examining the Advisory Group System
This session will provide an in-depth study of the Advisory or “Counseling Group” systems within Essential Schools. Students and staff from Steller Secondary School who have had experience with the system will facilitate a group discussion about problem-solving and Advisory group benefits. Participants in the interest group will gain knowledge of the meaning of “Advisory Group,” along with techniques for the success of any similar group within their own schools.
Steller Secondary School | Anna Miller, Kaylin Saur | Interest Group
Friday, Nov. 12, 8:00-9:45am

Habits of Mind and Heart: It's Not Just for School, It's for Life!
Habits of Mind and Heart drive all teaching and learning at Wildwood School, creating students with internal motivation to meet high standards. As Aristotle said, "Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit". This workshop will feature an activity in which all participants will create their own Habits of Mind and Heart for their school sites. Students will share their experiences of how habits affect their classes, their extracurricular activities, and their personal lives.
Wildwood School | Deb Christenson | Workshop
Friday, Nov. 12, 8:00-9:45am

The Wisdom of the Whole: Distributive Leadership and Collaborative Decision-Making in Small Schools
This workshop will focus on distributive leadership.  What are the institutional gains? How do students benefit? What challenges are inherent in maintaining balance and integrity throughout this process? Join Laura Castro, teacher, and Julie Conason, principal, from Humanities Preparatory Academy, a small school that has been using this leadership model for over 13 years, to discuss how it works. Bring insights, experiences, and challenges from your own school for a rich exchange about building teacher and leader capacity through collaboration.
Humanities Preparatory Academy | Laura Castro, Julie Conason | Workshop
Friday, Nov. 12, 8:00-9:45am

Advisory: A Design for Personalization
Can you describe what it looks like when you are known well? Personalization allows for better student achievement and success. We believe that Advisory can be used as a personalization structure toward the goal of equitable and high achievement. We will review and model examples of effective advisory curriculum and practices and consider the development of advisory programs and tools for your school. We will highlight structures and tools for advisors to develop relationships that create support for students from their network of teachers, parents, and classmates. Hear from students and advisors about the challenges and successes of Advisory.
Leadership High School | Elizabeth Rood | Workshop
Friday, Nov. 12, 10:15am-12:00pm

N.P.L.B. (No Politician Left Behind): The True Revamping of Education
Tired of feeling powerless due to education policies that get in the way of effective teaching? The purpose of this workshop is to become educated about the politics of education and what YOU can do to change them. Facilitators will share tools and strategies that they have already used in their home state and on a national level that participants can implement immediately, starting in this workshop!
The Met School/Big Picture Learning | Lynne Damiano, Keith Nalbach | Workshop
Friday, Nov. 12, 10:15am-12:00pm

TIPs: Teacher Improvement Plans that Help Instead of Hurt
Teacher evaluations can be stressful for both teachers and administrators, leading everyone to want to avoid them. Teacher Improvement Plans need to help rather than hurt. We will explore ways to create equity among staff members, create high expectations, and build decency and trust into the process of working with struggling staff members by exploring how to be clear and honest, create transparent guidelines, and have a clear process that increases trust, satisfaction, and performance.
Da Vinci / Wiseburn 21st Century Schools | Jeanne Fauci | Workshop
Friday, Nov. 12, 10:15am-12:00pm

Shoots from Roots! Sharing and Sustaining Leadership in Our Schools
Sustainable leadership in a school requires a shared responsibility of all stakeholders, not just the designated leader. In this session, we will explore and examine how to foster an “activist engagement” that counters external and internal forces that may affect or compromise the core values of a school over time. The primary aim is to promote a cross-fertilization of good ideas and effective strategies that nurture progressive shoots to grow from their honored roots.
Lehman Alternative Community School | Joe Greenberg, Dave Lehman | Interest Group
Friday, Nov. 12, 1:30pm-3:15pm

Mission-Driven Power Sharing
This workshop pulls the curtain back on what structures contribute to actualizing power sharing in the school setting. How does this get done? How do we honor the time folks contribute to important school-wide leadership roles? How is the work sustained?  Participants will have time to think through how existing and necessary leadership practices in their settings can thrive in deliberate conditions that promote shared power. Souhegan High School continues to learn, grow, and revise practices that enhance shared leadership. Sarah Hooper-Barbato, humanities teacher and Division One Coordinator, and Colleen L. Meaney, Dean of Faculty, lead this look behind Souhegan’s curtain.
Souhegan High School | Sarah Hooper-Barbato, Colleen L. Meaney | Workshop
Friday, Nov. 12, 1:30pm-3:15pm

Linked Learning: Pathways to College and Career
What would happen if school districts and the schools they serve shared the goal of having all students graduate high school prepared for college and career? Take a look inside schools and districts that are achieving that goal through California’s Linked Learning Initiative. Learn how the four components of Linked Learning can transform your small school or small learning community into an inclusive environment that offers engaging and equitable learning opportunities for all students.
Los Angeles Small Schools Center | Jeanne Fauci, Talma Shultz | Workshop
Friday, Nov. 12, 3:45pm-5:30pm

Inside the Mission Hill School: Democratic Education in Practice
This session is a talk and discussions led by a recent recipient of the CES Ted Sizer Dissertation grant. Matthew Knoester is a former teacher at the Mission Hill School in Boston who has conducted a dissertation study that was an evaluation and ethnography of the Mission Hill School. In his research he drew on interviews with 63 people who have been intimately involved with the school—approximately one part staff, one part parents, and one part graduates of the school. He uses a theory of democratic education and critical educational studies to help make sense of the results. In this session, Matthew will discuss how he conducted the research, what he found, and why he thinks it is important. There will also be small group discussions about key dilemmas that were found in the study and about other critical topics, followed by a large group discussion led by Matthew.
Sizer Scholar | Matthew Knoester | Workshop
Friday, Nov. 12, 3:45pm-5:30pm

Eighteen Years Young: Federal Hocking’s Advisory Gets a Tune-Up
In the spring of 2009, the staff of Federal Hocking Secondary School began transforming their advisory program. The school (whose advisory program is now 18 years old) had experienced several systemic changes, yet the advisory structure had remained essentially the same. The staff, students, and principal embarked on a complete overhaul and are now in the process of implementing the changes. This interest group, lead by Federal Hocking parent and teacher Ann Cell, will be run as a modified tuning protocol. Participants will gain new ideas on how advisories can and should grow with their schools and consider how changes to their own schools might be reflected in their advisory programs.
Federal Hocking High School | Ann Cell | Interest Group
Saturday, Nov. 13, 8:00-9:45am

Collaborative School Leadership: Building a Small School with Big Heart
Civitas School of Leadership was built upon the CES Common Principles. Fairness and trust, democracy and equity: these are the heart of our school culture. Our Principal always asks, “What do you guys think?” and “Is that fair?” Hiring, master schedules, professional development, employee evaluation, and curriculum design are tasks we complete collaboratively, coming to consensus. Students see a powerful model of democracy at work. Hear our story and share your experiences building equitable schools.
Civitas School of Leadership | Rosamaria Figueroa-Calderon | Interest Group
Saturday, Nov. 13, 8:00-9:45am

Democracy as a Way of Learning: Facilitating Student Choice and Voice
If we think of democratic practice “as a way of learning as well as a way of governing,” everything in school has the potential for modeling and teaching public skills and civic habits. Join us for an interactive exploration of First Amendment rights and responsibilities and the power of choice and voice when students and adults co-create community and co-construct learning.
QED Foundation | Elizabeth Cardine, Lucas Braley | Workshop
Saturday, Nov. 13, 8:00-9:45am

Controlling Our Destiny: Developing a Professional Learning Community to Increase Student Learning
In an NCLB world, too many educators believe that they have little control over their classroom practice. This session is meant to empower practitioners to take back the control they deserve. The facilitators, who lead professional learning at their school site, will guide participants through a process in developing a Professional Learning Community around an identified problem of practice, resulting in increased student learning. Development of a concrete action plan will conclude the session.
New San Juan High School | Steve Hunt, Nicole Kukral | Workshop
Saturday, Nov. 13, 10:15am-12:00pm

Standing for Something: Teaching as a Philosophical and Political Act
In this session, an educational researcher and a practitioner will share six recently completed studies that consider the following aspects of progressive education: teacher identity, teaching English Learners, small school contexts, the collective role of teacher-leaders, teaching toward democracy, and full careers in education. Participants will engage in supported “cafe conversations” with the researcher-practitioners around ways to sustain environments that are both academically successful for every student and professionally meaningful for every educator.
New Haven Unified School District | Joey Feldman, Lynda Tredway | Workshop
Saturday, Nov. 13, 10:15am-12:00pm

Sustaining a School-Wide Commitment to Equity in the Face of Budget Cuts: Experience and Lessons
In this interactive workshop, participants will work with the School Redesign Network at Stanford University and Hillsdale High School leaders to learn how Hillsdale built a school-wide commitment to equitable practices through small learning communities. Participants will learn how this commitment can guide decision making and be sustained through budget cuts. Participants will take away methods for using shared values and democratic decision making for examining tough financial choices.
School Redesign Network | Elle Rustique, Diane Friedlaender, School Redesign Network at Stanford University, and Jeff Gilbert, Principal, Hillsdale High School | Workshop
Saturday, Nov. 13, 10:15am-12:00pm

Leading Through Transition: Text-Based Discussion on Sustaining a School’s Identity during Leadership Change
How does a school sustain its identity through a change in leadership? Please join us for a text-based discussion on the article “Sustaining Change: The Struggle to Maintain Change at Central Park East Secondary School” by Diane Suiter and Deborah Meier. This article can be found at www.essentialschools.org in the resource section. We will explore this text as well as explore how other schools have maintained their commitment to the CES Common Principles while experiencing significant changes in school leadership.
Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School | Diane Kruse | Interest Group
Saturday, Nov. 13, 10:15am-12:00pm

Why It Matters: What We Can Do Without Money if It's Important Enough
Education has been the subject of a lot of hype for the past 25 years, but rarely are we prepared to ask ourselves what matters most--why we should require every youngster to spend 12 years in school, and why we insist that unless they spend 16 years, there is little hope they can earn a decent wage? That's the task that CES must reinstate as Essential. Any path will take us somewhere, but where do we want to go?
Coalition of Essential Schools | Deborah Meier | Workshop
Saturday, Nov. 13, 10:15am-12:00pm

Register for Fall Forum: http://www.regonline.com/fall_forum_2010