Please visit http://tinyurl.com/ER-CEP-segment for the video that accompanies this toolkit and download the toolkit by clicking on the “Related File” PDF below on the right.
For over twenty years, the Coalition of Essential Schools has been valued for its ten Common Principles, emphasizing equity, personalization, and students using their minds well. The Coalition is also known for honoring local wisdom, acknowledging that no two schools are alike, and that race, class, culture, gender, geography, and experience all factor into creating unique communities and schools. The Coalition understands that context matters, and that is why Essential schools appear in the country’s largest and smallest districts, in urban, suburban, and rural settings, and serve the country’s advantaged students as well as those with few resources. The CES EssentialVisions DVD project brings the Common Principles to life with real stories and tools from today’s most successful small schools.
Each DVD captures how the Common Principles have been implemented, illustrating how students engage in their own education and how teachers develop as professionals. Focused segments provide unique perspectives on the benefits and challenges of each principle, while discussion questions, lesson plans, and school documents offer tools that educators can use to drive improvement. This segment on the third DVD, Disc 3: School Culture, captures the principle “A Tone of Decency and Trust”
The Annenberg Foundation generously funded the Coalition of Essential Schools National office (CESN) to create the CES EssentialVisions three-disc DVD series. CES contracted with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Science Media Group to videotape and edit the series.
We hope this segment will be used for interdisciplinary team meetings, department meetings, year-long staff development in schools, teacher education programs, professional development workshops, and academic and professional conferences— anywhere that school policy and classroom practice is discussed and influenced.