What Makes a Good Small School? The School Redesign Network at Stanford University, led by Linda Darling-Hammond, offers Ten Features of Good Small Schools, a concise and lively portrait of what matters in schools for children and young people to strive and thrive. Since 2002 when it was published, the account has helped thousands of teachers, educators, students, parents, community members, business allies, and other partners who care to create strong places of powerful teaching and learning. Check out the guidebook at http://www.srnleads.org/data/pdfs/10_features.pdf.

How did the Belmont Zone of Choice become a reality?  With an exuberance to give youth a spectacular education and a zeal to maximize the intellectual resources and talent that so many teachers bring to their work, the co-founders of the Los Angeles Small Schools Collective (today’s Center), Dr. Karen Hunter Quartz, Ms. Cris Gutierrez and Ms. Jeanne Fauci, envisioned the possibilities of creating a network of enlivening places to teach and learn.  Collaborating with union and community leaders, students and families, academics and national small school thinkers became central to the strategy to establish autonomous small schools based on Boston’s Pilot Schools.  With a grant that the Coalition of Essential Schools awarded to the effort, the organizing became a quest.  Read The Belmont Zone of Choice: Community-Driven Action for School Change, and see the alchemy of vision, perseverance and practice that turned possibility into reality. http://www.essentialschools.org/resources/358

What is the district and union agreement that makes autonomy real to create a Pilot school? It took an ambitious vision of the Los Angeles Small Schools Collective (today’s Center) and a widespread team of educators, families, community and union leaders with national partners advocating from 2004 to 2007 to establish the Belmont Pilot Agreement, which sets forth the formal commitment to autonomy and related obligations for ten independent small schools to be created within the Belmont region of central Los Angeles.  Read the agreement here. http://bruincommunityschool.gseis.ucla.edu/UCLA-CS_Pilot_Schools_files/LAUSDUTLAMou.PDF

Where can I find curricular materials, lesson plans or other resources to strengthen working with students? Our partner, UCLA’s Center X, provides an online space called the Teacher Workroom with all sorts of helpful materials to extend and deepen teaching and learning.  There essays and a range of classroom resources to engage youth in a range of understandings and efforts, including documents from the UCLA Mathematics Project, lesson plans from the History-Geography Project and the Teacher Education Program, and materials from the Science Project’s NanoScience Institute.  We invite you to visit the Teacher Workroom: http://centerx.gseis.ucla.edu/xchange-repository/back-issues/spring-2009/teachers-workroom

What is a teacher-led source of stimulating classroom and school-change materials and practices? The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES), our partner, has a splendid online library of materials and resources designed, developed and used by teachers over the last several years.  These classroom and school materials demonstrate the CES Common Principles that have proven to support student success.   Settle into the diverse projects and products at http://www.essentialschools.org/resources/.  Learn more about the Common Principles, too. http://www.essentialschools.org/items/4.

How can we reinvent big, troubled schools?  When the Julia Richman Education Complex came alive as a multigenerational home for six small schools, it rejuvenated learning and lives in a community where once an overcrowded, unsafe, troubled high school of 2,600 kids had existed.  With imagination and intellectual vibrancy, teams of dedicated faculty, students, families and community allies have prevailed in working hard and graduating more than 90% of students who also head off to college. The Julia Richman Education Complex: The JREC Story presents the case study co-authored by researchers at NCREST and Stanford University in collaboration with school leaders at JREC's Urban Academy.  Learn more! http://www.srnleads.org/resources/products/jrec.html

How are young lives affected by small schools?  For decades, John Merrow, who holds a doctorate in education, has paid close attention as a journalist to the quality and struggles of education.  He listens to, considers and reveals stories of children, youth and adults in the midst of classrooms and schools impacted by practices, programs and policies.  Heralded for his astute and extensive investigations, Merrow has received numerous awards and honors.  He celebrates and critiques the work of teachers and students mindful of the significance that each life bears for our democratic society.  As he sets out to learn more about the effect of small schools on adolescents, his Learning Matters production company gives us in “Small Schools Big Reforms” a stunning view of the personal and academic lives in New York City’s small schools.  Watch or listen to the series. http://learningmatters.tv/?s=Small+Schools+Big+reforms