Resources | Coalition of Essential Schools

Small Schools = Better World Communities are eager for change and are looking toward their young people to solve educational challenges. Schools continue making classes larger and harder for students to learn on an individual... March 25, 2008 by Carol Ann Schmid - Student-as-worker

Nation Building: Out with the Old and In with the New Imagine, if you will, that you are a citizen of a small nation. Now this nation has been trudging along through the years, its citizens coming and going, most of them not angered, but never truly... March 25, 2008 by Michael Sawyer - Instruction, Student-as-worker

The Shelter of Leadership Creating challenging and personalized schools for all young people is the first step in giving the new generation of youth a strong foundation to start their lives. I felt the energy of a... March 25, 2008 by Maria K. Walczuk - Instruction, Student-as-worker

Why I Am a Strong Believer in My School My name is Nnamdi Nwaezeapu. I am currently an eighth grader attending Capital City Public Charter School. Capital City (CCPCS) was established in the fall of 1999 and revolutionized the way that... March 25, 2008 by Nnamdi Nwaezeapu - Instruction, Student-as-worker

My Educational Activism Yarmouth High School (YHS) may look like an ordinary brick high school with parking spaces in the front, the American flag waving by the front door, and the flocks of kids waiting for the buses in... March 25, 2008 by Emma Brightbill - Instruction, Student-as-worker

Meaningful Learning for the “Real World” For many teenagers, school is just school; a place to go and learn about numbers and things that happened way before we were born and nothing more. But for me, school is something that holds much... March 27, 2008 by Tina Cassidy - Instruction, Student-as-worker

"Student as Worker" Applied Outside the Classroom Strongly implemented in CES schools across the country, the ten Common Principles have an impact on thousands of students. With the Common Principle “Embracing the metaphor ‘student as... March 27, 2008 by Lou Vargas - Instruction, Student-as-worker

What Does Freedom Mean at the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School? "A democracy is more than a form of government; it is a primary mode of associated living, or conjoint communicated experience.” —John Dewey Most high school students consider the day they... March 27, 2008 by Amanda Griffin, Kayla Reeves - Instruction, Student-as-worker

Katrina Volunteer From July 10 to July 31, 2006, I went to New Orleans as a volunteer with a non-profit organization called People’s Organizing Committee (POC). This organization’s main goal was to get the... March 27, 2008 by Julius Rainey - Instruction, Student-as-worker

Go To The Source: Contact Information for the Schools in this Issue Academy of Citizenship and Empowerment 4424 S 188th Street SeaTac, Washington 98188 phone: 206/433-2342 www.hsd401.org/ourschools/highschools/ace/ Capital City Public Charter School 3047... March 27, 2008

Notes on This Issue On evenings and weekends, I’m often immersed in my own service-learning projects. I’m part of the PTO of my son’s elementary school. I’m active in a group working for improved... April 02, 2008 by Jill Davidson - Community Collaboration, Service-Learning

The Power of Service-Learning: One School’s Quest I had no idea when I started this experience how much real learning I would actually do. So much of the understanding of something is not found in a book or classroom experience. It was only when I... April 02, 2008 by Kim Huseman, Lawrence Kohn - Community Collaboration, Service-Learning

Doing Something Real: Horace interviews with Debbie Meier on Community Service Deborah Meier began her teaching career as a kindergarten and Head Start teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City. She was the founder and teacher-director of a network of highly successful... April 02, 2008 - Community Collaboration

Eagle Rock School: An Ethic of Service Eagle Rock School, located in Estes Park, Colorado, is two schools in one: a school for high school age students and a professional development center for adults, particularly educators. Year-round,... April 03, 2008 by John Guffey - Community Collaboration

"Learning Through Interests": Lessons from the Met Kristin Waugh-Hempel has been working at The Metropolitan Regional Career & Technical Center (the Met) since 1998. After serving as an advisor for four years, she focused her energy on the... April 03, 2008 by Kristen Waugh Hempel - Community Collaboration

Spotlights on Community-Based Learning: The Center for Technical Education and Wildwood School By most measures, the Center for Technical Education in Leominster, Massachusetts and the Wildwood Secondary School in Los Angeles seem to be vastly different sorts of schools: public, East coast,... April 03, 2008 by Jill Davidson - Community Collaboration

Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son by Kevin Jennings (Beacon Press, 288 pages, $24.95) Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son gives us a glimpse of the familiar worlds of family and school told from a... April 03, 2008 by Daryl Lynn Johnson

The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker by Mike Rose (Penguin, 288 pages, $15.00) In The Mind at Work, Mike Rose examines the connection between the body and the mind... April 03, 2008 by Jill Davidson

Where to Go for More: On Community-Based Learning The Giraffe Heroes Project “Giraffe Heroes are people who stick their necks out for the common good,” says the Giraffe Heroes Project website, meaning that people whom the project designates... April 03, 2008

Go to the Source: More about the Schools and Other Organizations Featured in this Issue Schools The Center for Technical Education 122 Granite Street Leominster, Massachusetts 01453 phone: 978/534-7735 www.leominster.mec.edu/cte.htm Central Park East Secondary... April 03, 2008

Notes on this Issue The perspectives offered here may seem less inclusive of student voices than those that generally appear in Horace. But all the authors included in these pages – all CES network educators and... April 04, 2008 by Jill Davidson - Teacher Collaboration & Learning

Teachers Talking Together: The Power of Professional Community Schools that encourage teachers to do excellent work, as Boston Arts Academy (BAA) does, are “professional learning communities.” A professional learning community exists when the entire... April 04, 2008 by Linda Nathan - Learning Structures, Small Learning Communities

Essential Staff for Essential Schools: Horace Interviews Misha Lesley Misha Lesley, founding principal of Empowerment College Preparatory High School in Houston, Texas, currently serves on the CES National Executive Board and is a Program Director at Prepared 4 Life, a... April 14, 2008 by Jill Davidson - Learning Structures, Small Learning Communities

Good Teaching Is a Conversation Last night, I finished editing a draft of a friend’s article on artificial skin, which he had written for a scientific journal. The prose was exceptionally dense, almost opaque, built on a... April 14, 2008 by Eileen Shakespear - Learning Structures, Small Learning Communities

Connecting Compensation and Evaluation to Build Professional Development At Maryknoll School in Honolulu, Hawaii, a Coalition of Essential Schools affiliate since 1995, teachers and administrators are continually working on the issue of building capacity for leadership.... April 14, 2008 by Natalie Morey - Learning Structures, Small Learning Communities

Learning by Teaching: The New Teachers Collaborative A belief in “learning by doing” lies at the heart of the New Teachers Collaborative (NTC), a small teacher-preparation program at the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School,... April 14, 2008 by Claire Fox Ringwall, Laura Rogers - Learning Structures, Small Learning Communities

From The Inside Out: Eagle Rock School Producing a New Generation of CES Teachers Six years ago, I founded Eagle Rock’s Teaching Fellowship Program in collaboration with Public Allies, Inc. and under the auspices of Eagle Rock’s Professional Development Center. I knew... April 14, 2008 by Dan Condon - Learning Structures, Small Learning Communities

Investing in Teachers For Student Success: The Teaching Fellows Program Capital City Public Charter School was founded in 2000 with a vision of an academic program built on progressive principles and research on educational best practices. An Expeditionary Learning... April 14, 2008 by Amy Wendel, Ann Mantil - Learning Structures, Small Learning Communities

Principled Principal Development: The Greater Boston Principal Residency Network Educators in Massachusetts are faced with this question: what measures are necessary to stop a policy that is clearly discriminatory against low-income school districts whose students, as a... April 14, 2008 - Learning Structures, Small Learning Communities

Looking Together at Student Work, Second Edition Looking Together at Student Work, Second Edition by Tina Blythe, David Allen, and Barbara Shieffelin Powell (Teachers College Press, 96 pages, $15.95) Looking Together at Student Work is a... April 14, 2008 by Jill Davidson

Make the Impossible Possible: One Man’s Crusade to Inspire Others to Dream Bigger and Achieve the Extraordinary Make the Impossible Possible: One Man’s Crusade to Inspire Others to Dream Bigger and Achieve the Extraordinary by Bill Strickland with Vince Rause (Doubleday, 240 pages, $23.95) Make the... April 14, 2008 by Jill Davidson

Where to Go for More: Resources for Essential School Staff Development Horace is indebted to two sources in particular for some of these items and ideas. Consultation with Gene Thompson-Grove, National School Reform Faculty Facilitator and Founding Co-Director Emerita,... April 14, 2008

Go to the Source: More about the Schools and Organizations Featured in this Issue Boston Arts Academy 174 Ipswich Street Boston, Massachusetts 02215 telephone: 617.635.6470 www.bostonartsacademy.org Boston Day and Evening Academy 20 Kearsarge Avenue Roxbury,... April 14, 2008

Notes on This Issue The subtitle of this issue of Horace is “Teacher Voices,” and when you look at the authors listed above, you’ll see that the content for this issue has been written almost entirely by CES... June 20, 2008 by Jill Davidson

Implementing Cross-Curricular Literacy Strategies in a Democratic School Federal Hocking High School (FHHS) is in Stewart, Ohio, in the southeastern corner of the state. Considered to be part of Appalachia, the area is a wonderful patchwork of rolling hills and mixed... June 20, 2008 by Ben Warner, Sue Collins - Curriculum

Scientific Literacy through Inquiry: Practicing Scientific Process through Pinhole Photography What is it like to think and work like a scientist? At School of the Future, students learn to engage in the curriculum as scientists and work within the scientific process of examining a situation,... June 23, 2008 by Allison Godshall

The Literacy You Get Is Equal to the Culture You Create Why do you need to read another article on literacy? Haven’t we been through all this before—in one corner, the argument to structure students’ reading and writing strictly, and in the other,... June 23, 2008 by Ann Cook, Phyllis Tashlik

Fun, Easy, and Effective: Sustained Silent Reading as a High School Practice Recently I gave a tour of Noble High School (NHS) to a visiting teacher. A large rural high school in southern Maine, NHS is divided into three schools-within-a-school called academies. Each academy... June 23, 2008 by Kevin Perks

Literacy and Democracy Go Hand in Hand: Teaching and Learning Literacy Skills in a Relevant, Meaningful Context At Monadnock Community Connections School (MC2), mid-year Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) scores were in. 44 students, five teachers, two tutors, and two parents had accepted the community-wide... June 23, 2008 by Kim Carter

Democratically Led Professional Development for Schoolwide Literacy Improvement Since its inception in 1999, Poland Regional High School and Bruce M. Whittier Middle School (PRHS/BWMS) has been at the forefront of school reform. Some of our programs and structures that help our... June 23, 2008 by Heather Manchester - Instruction

Paper Clips Paper Clips, produced by the Johnson Group in association with Ergo Entertainment (2-disc Special Edition, $24.99; Educational Edition, $79.99) Given the current worldwide political climate,... June 23, 2008 by Eva A. Frank

Collaborative Teacher Leadership: How Teachers Can Foster Equitable Schools Collaborative Teacher Leadership: How Teachers Can Foster Equitable Schools, by Martin L. Krovetz and Gilberto Arriaza (Corwin Press, 216 pages, $29.95) While Collaborative Teacher Leadership... June 23, 2008 by Jill Davidson

Go to the Source: More about the Essential Schools Featured in this Issue Schools Eagle Rock School & Professional Development Center Post Office Box 1770 2750 Notaiah Road Estes Park, Colorado 80517 phone: 970/586-0600 www.eaglerockschool.org Federal Hocking... June 23, 2008

Notes on this Issue Essential schools are committed to the belief that all students can create opportunities to pursue their dreams and that college matriculation and degree completion should be available for all. These... June 24, 2008 by Jill Davidson

How the CES Common Principles Help Essential Schools Create Transitions to Higher Education How do the CES Common Principles inform Essential schools as they prepare their students to make the transition from high school to higher education? Through the experience of leaders, teachers,... June 24, 2008

Opportunities to Stumble and Pick Themselves Up: Horace Interviews Nancy Faust Sizer on the Senior Year Currently a Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Nancy Sizer was the acting co-principal of the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School in 1998-99 and served as... July 10, 2008 by Nancy Sizer

Longitudinal Research Indicates CES Graduate Collegiate Success Graduates are among the most valuable sources of information for schools committed to developing educational programs that make an enduring difference in students’ lives. Schools often gather... July 10, 2008 by Jill Davidson

Excerpt from First in the Family: Advice about College from First-Generation Students Supporting first-generation students not only to get into college but stay and finish interrupts negative generational patterns in powerful ways. The National Center for Education Statistics reports... July 10, 2008 by Kathleen Cushman

The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb (Basic Books, 422 pages, $15.95) Sometimes I pick up a book that makes me wish I... July 10, 2008 by Jill Davidson

Values Go to School: Exploring Ethics with Children Values Go to School: Exploring Ethics with Children, Jonathan Diamond Associates in association with the faculty of the Child Development Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, VHS $24.95, DVD... July 10, 2008 by Jill Davidson