ICL is seeking strategic partners and funders to collaborate in piloting Schools of Collaborative Excellence: a model for school change encouraged by school-based leaders who believe that student engagement is pivotal to student attendance, attention, and academic achievement. Here’s an excerpt from the project proposal:
The work of education amounts to the successful management of a huge number of relationships: teacher–learner, teacher–learner–classmates, teacher–teaching and nonteaching colleagues, teacher–learner–learner’s family or parents, teacher–learner–social service agency, teacher–principal, and more. But as aware as we are of the importance of relationship-building and relationship-management for successful teachers, school leaders, and students, we spend precious little time preparing them with the skills and dispositions to do this well, and even less time building cultures and administrative structures in our schools that value, encourage, and facilitate authentic collaboration. A School of Collaborative Excellence moves collaboration to the center of its culture and the work of its teachers and administrators.
Becoming a School of Collaborative Excellence is a commitment to intense professional development, structural change, reflection, discussion and ongoing attention to developing and sustaining productive relationships at all levels of the school environment …
Let us know if you are interested in learning more about Schools of Collaborative Excellence.