Presenting Schools

Desert Edge High School – Goodyear, AZ

The Power of School-Wide Advisory Programs

Our time together will focus on the power of school-wide advisory programs.  Guidance teams, teachers and school administrators will give perspective on how to get started, some of the challenges we face and how far you can take your own advisory program.  This session will have something for everyone including an advisory lesson modeled by those who do it every week.  Curriculum will be shared and questions will be addressed.  The advisory program at Desert Edge High School is in its third year of implementation and the results from a discipline and climate perspective are incredible.
 

Breaking Ranks from the ground up, The Verrado Story

If you didn’t have the constraints of your current building, or an entrenched staff resistant to change, what would your school be like?  That was the challenge faced by the Verrado High School planning team.   We are excited to present our programs and strategies for school redesign utilizing Breaking Ranks II during this session.  SLC’s, advisory, Project Based Learning, a unique building, technology, curriculum alignment, staff development, and a freshman transition program are all important parts of increasing rigor through relevance and personalization at Verrado.
 

Hanover High School – Hanover, NH

Student-Centered Schools Begin with Empowered Students:Hanover High School's Council as a Model of School Governance

Hanover High School's Council is unique in that, unlike a traditional student council, it has a diverse demographic (students, staff, community members) and real power to make decisions that govern the daily life of the school.  Our presentation will show how the democratic school movement spawned the HHS Council, its current role in the school, and how it is handling a current issue, academic integrity, by revisiting a policy it originally created and creating a new, more stringent one in response to a community issue.
 

Hope High School – Providence, RI

Hope for the Future: An Individual Learning Plan Program Delivered through Advisories

The goal of this session is to share how one high school delivers an Individual Learning Plan Program through Advisories that personalizes student learning, helps students prepare for their future through effective planning and generates meaningful data that is used to continuously improve the program.
 

Converting a large urban high school into six autonomous small schools is no easy task—it is the most invasive of redesign efforts. In their fourth year as a small school, the School of Business has built on the success of a strong career/technical program by creating a learning community that focuses on rigor, personalization, and supports for student learning. Leaders from the School of Business (one of six such small schools at the San Diego High Educational Complex) will share their experiences and talk about how they were able to overcome the tough obstacles during the transformation.
 

Boston Arts Academy – Boston, MA

Professional Learning Communities: How do we cultivate staff accountability?

This workshop will examine Boston Arts Academy’s professional learning community, and its evolution and establishment as the centerpiece of an effective school.  We will look at how the community becomes collectively accountable for learning at BAA. Participants will address issues of teacher and student accountability and how a well-established professional community can result in the creation of a culture of trust and mutual support, which affects the student’s educational experience by supporting student achievement.  We will explain our structure of goal setting, specifically at the school, teacher, and student level and how these structures provide all members of the community with the opportunity to reflect on progress and challenges and thus continually work at improvement.  We will look at our framework of RICO (refine, invent, connect, and own) as well as our school-wide shared values.
 

Washington County Public Schools:
North Hagerstown High – Hagerstown, MD
South Hagerstown High – Hagerstown, MD

Achieving Peak Performance: Building Communities of Learners

The two city schools in Hagerstown, Maryland (North Hagerstown High and South Hagerstown High) invite you to learn about their learning communities.  The schools will demonstrate how they share common goals and desired outcomes yet have chosen different approaches to achieve peak performance.  South Hagerstown will present their implementation of three vertically-aligned houses, while North Hagerstown will explain their matrix systems for math and English.  The following topics will be presented:

à        Vertically-Aligned Houses

o    Interdisciplinary Teaming

o    Senior Portfolio

à        Matrix Structures

o    Immediate Built-in Intervention

o    Math Improvement Plan

o    Individual Learning Plans

o    “Pausing the Curriculum”

à        Advisement

o    Student Advisory Council

o    Student-led Conferencing

Urban Academy – New York City, NY
 

Napa Vintage High School – Napa, CA

The Transformation:  Creating a New 9th Grade Program

Vintage HS believes that if students feel valued and successful in 9th grade, they will be successful for their entire high school careers.  We have translated that belief into action by creating 9th grade Houses, completely revamping our 9th grade curriculum, implementing a hugely successful transition program, and creating a rich array of academic interventions for struggling students.  Come hear the story of our on-going struggle to transform the 9th grade experience from one that was academically light and disconnected for most students into one in which students confront a robust curriculum within a warm and caring environment.
 

JC Harmon High School – Kansas City, KN
 

Granger High School – Granger, WA

The Power of Relationships

Granger High School at one time had a 50% graduation rate coupled with only 20% of its students reading at standard.  In 2001 attendance at parent/ teacher conferences was listed at a pathetic 10% with expectations of students at an all time low. 

Fast forward to 2007 and you will find students graduating at a 90% rate; furthermore, 80% of the students are reading at standard. Attendance at parent/student/teacher conferences is listed at 100% nine times in a row. 

This session will focus on the power of relationships established in an advisory/mentorship setting.

 Granger High School was selected as a model high school in 2004 and 2006 because of its academic achievement even though the school population is 92% poverty and 90% students of color. Our school has also been selected as a National Showcase School for the 2007-08 school year.
 

Dayton Early College – Dayton, OH

This School Makes You Want to Work

The Dayton Early College Academy is a concrete response to convince and prepare urban learners to go to college. A partnership among the University of Dayton, Sinclair Community College, and the Dayton (Ohio) Public Schools, DECA serves students who are underrepresented in higher education, students who haven’t had the academics to meet college readiness standards, students for whom the cost of college is prohibitive, and to a large extent, students of color. DECA strives for inclusion, not skimming the gifted, but tapping the potential of more ordinary students. DECA students and principal will present the story of their successes and struggles to create a personalized, rigorous high school where graduation is based on performance requirements, not Carnegie units. DECA recently graduated its first class with one hundred percent enrolled in college—almost all the first in their families. Strategies for creating a culture of achievement and tackling high stakes testing will be presented. 
 

Kelvyn Park High School – Chicago, IL

Student-Driven Community Leadership

Kelvyn Park is a high school in Chicago, IL serving 1,694 students, 95% of whom are of Hispanic origin and low income.  The Social Justice Academy (SJA) is a program that integrates a student-driven, academically rigorous Language Arts curriculum with themes of social justice, service learning, and community leadership.  A team of teachers partner with a local community organization called Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA), to support students in academic success and civic engagement.  Junior and Senior students will present on key elements of the program and highlight several successful projects including a documentary and action research project on gangs.
 

St. Charles East High School – St. Charles, IL
 

St. Charles North High School – St. Charles, IL
 

North Lawndale College Prep Charter – Chicago, IL

Tying It All Together at NLCP

Springdale High School – Springdale, AR

Springdale High School Sophomore Center - Transition from Junior High to
High School, and a Changing School Culture

Springdale High School (10-12), nestled in northwest Arkansas, was once a school of moderate student poverty and minimal cultural diversity; however, that has changed.  Faced with an increasing minority population (Hispanic and Marshallese) and higher student poverty, SHS reorganized its structure to meet the changing school demographics.  Join us during this informative session as you will learn more about high achievement and student success at SHS, and the story behind the Sophomore Center, established (2005) to instill a culture of student accomplishment and success. Through researched-based reorganization, teacher teaming and collaboration, and involvement of local philanthropic organizations, SHS has a viable plan of interventions and instructional techniques.
 

David Douglas High – Portland, OR

Successful Practices and Strategies to Raise Student Achievement.

Mission High School – San Francisco, CA

Using the Master Schedule to Bring About Change

How do you create a Master Schedule which promotes equity, increases personalization and facilitates teacher collaboration?  Learn how Mission High School in San Francisco redesigned its Master Schedule and increased its API by 162 points, doubled its 4-year college acceptance rate and reduced teacher turnover.  How do you create teams or SLCs?  How do you build Common Planning Time for teachers into the schedule?  This presentation will describe how Mission analyzed its old Master Schedule to determine how resources were distributed and the steps Mission took to create a new foundation for SLC redesign. 
 

Clear Creek ISD – League City, TX

Smaller Learning Communities, A District Story

Clear Creek Independent School District began implementation of Smaller Learning Communities with research and site visits in 2003. Throughout the process, forward movement of the initiative has continued at differing rates for each of the four comprehensive high school campuses. During this session you will learn of two important strategies used by CCISD, strategic planning and collaboration time within the school day.
 

Environmental Charter – Lawndale, CA

Finding the Balance!

Environmental Charter High School (ECHS) is an innovative public charter high school serving a racially diverse low-income community. Our mission is to provide all students with a hands on rigorous college prep curriculum that extends learning into the local environment so all student graduate with the knowledge values and skills to become life long learners and quality stewards.  During our seven years, we have accepted and embraced the delicate tension between the two key components of our mission: college prep and experiential learning.  Finding the balance between these is the source of many of our challenges as well as our successes.  Join ECHS team of leaders (staff and students) to learn more about our history, students, data, and programs.  Modeling best instructional practices, this session will highlight both our college prep programs and our experiential programs including:
1. intersession, our interdisciplinary inquiry program,
2. earth day, a day of service learning,
3. Green Ambassadors Program, a unique program where students participate in a series of 10 weeks inquiry projects that culminate in service and acquire college credit
4. our unique college prep/avid program where every graduate is admitted into a four college or university.

Doherty High School – Colorado Springs, CO

“Building 4R” Future”:  Every Student, Every Day!

This session will focus on the “4R’s” at Doherty High School (Relationships, Rigor, Relevance and Respect) supported by our Professional Learning Communities approach to school improvement.  Participants will learn about our Pyramid of Interventions and associated implementation of RTI with a focus on literacy and increased academic rigor. We will share practical ideas including:  how to help teachers analyze and use data to inform instruction, how to support the work of collaborative teacher teams, and methods of motivating students to improve on state tests through individual goal setting and the use of technology.  The success of these strategies in our large, “urban fringe” school, has resulted in the achievement of AYP, and national and state recognition.
 

Affecting Sustainable and Positive School Transformation:  A Literacy Example

Noble High School and Noble Middle School in southern Maine have been actively engaged in the process of transforming how they approach teaching and learning.  For example, in the past three years both schools have created multifaceted and comprehensive literacy programs.  These programs include daily time for sustained reading, reading and writing workshops, literacy centers with targeted interventions for struggling readers, and supports for reading across the content areas. Throughout all of this work, NHS has developed a framework for school transformation that has helped guide sustainable and positive change.  The session will present this framework, which we refer to as a Cycle of Transformation, using NHS’s and NMS’s literacy programs as examples.  We will engage participants in interactive activities designed to support them in applying the framework.  Participants will walk away with the map of a plan for affecting positive school change in their own context.
 

Bassett High School – La Puente, CA

Bassett High Advisory- Making it Happen!

Bassett High School presents the process used to research, develop, and implement and Advisory Program from the ground up.  During this session participants will learn about current projects, successes, and obstacles past and present, along with suggestions for implementation.  Bassett High is located in La Puente, California, roughly 15 miles east of Los Angeles.  We serve 1450 students, 92% Hispanic/Latino, 82% Free and Reduced Lunch.
 

Presenting Middle Schools
 

Hopkins West Junior High – Minnetonka, MN

Creating a Hotbed of Literacy

Inspiring a school-wide literacy focus requires concrete foundational steps that enable all teachers and administrators to have ownership in the teaching of the reading process.  Join us for a look at how Hopkins West Junior High has grown from a small group of novices to a staff committed to creating a culture of literacy throughout our school.  Ideas and practical strategies will be shared on how to use data to inform literacy instruction and how staff and students can be “hooked” on the power of literacy to better meet the needs of all of our learners.  We will share how building strategic initiatives are aligned to eliminate the achievement gap through collaborative professional development.
 

Thurgood Marshall Middle School – Chicago, IL

A Framework for Fun, Learning and Success - Model Middle School Development

Learn the secrets of a working middle school model through a practical look at a high performing middle school and its evolution.  Team development, curriculum design, and scheduling are just a few of the areas which will be addressed in this informative and engaging session. Top-Secret methods for improving test prep skills, without driving students crazy, will also be discussed.
 

DePortola Middle School – San Diego, CA

Building a Successful School that focuses on Supporting All Students

Gaspar de Portola is proud to be named as a California Distinguished School 2003 and a Schools to Watch Model Middle School 2006.  These honors reflect the hard work of the staff demonstrated through their committed efforts to help all students succeed.  Participants will learn strategies to assist their students to strive towards becoming responsible, respectful, and caring individuals.  Emphasis will be placed on sharing the Schools to Watch selection criteria of “academic excellence” (how we “ACE” up our instruction), “social equity” (creating Flood Teams), “developmental responsiveness” (character education), and “organizational support” (creating a warm and friendly school climate which focuses on student achievement).
 

William Thomas Middle School – American Falls, ID

With Six You Get Eggroll

In the 1968 Movie “With Six You Get Eggroll” the Iverson/Mclure families discovered that the synergy of the two families merging together to create a new family was stronger and better than either of them had separately.

As we implement the cornerstones of Breaking Ranks In The Middle™, the interaction of the cornerstones when combined produce a total effect that is far greater than the sum of the individual cornerstones. During this session we will share the programs we have implemented at our school over the past 18 years that have helped us meet the nine cornerstones of Breaking Ranks. 

Programs that will be discussed include: transition, advisory, teams, team time, broad-based decision making, success for every student, and professional development.