The Coalition of Essential Schools, Eagle Rock School, Colorado Children_s Campaign and Public Education & Business Coalition invite you to join us for our Summer Institute July 10-14, in Denver, Colorado.
This institute will include workshops, discussion groups, and facilitated planning time, organized around the following essential theme: The Essentials of Small Schools: Principles and Practices for Equity and Achievement
Presenters and speakers include some of the most effective, renowned small school educators in the country. Workshops and roundtables will be led by CES Mentor Schools including: Eagle Rock School, Urban Academy, Boston Arts Academy, Quest High School, Wildwood School and Fenway High School.
Participation is open to individuals and teams of educators interested in small high school design. The Institute will provide powerful professional development for large high school teams interested in converting to small schools, as well as teams creating or improving new small schools.
Key features of the Institute include:
Workshops by Small Schools Network Members: There will be two types of workshops: one series of 6 hour intensive and 2 mornings of 3 hour workshops.
Daily Team Planning and Design: Teams will set learning and design goals for the institute at the beginning and will have time each day for planning and design work. _Teams_ will include paired mentors and new schools (or new school design teams) and/or coaches.
“Ask a Mentor” Roundtables: This will allow all attending to get a sense of what a range of small schools look like when they _work well_ and are implementing the Common Principles. Attendees will have some dedicated access to the expertise of the Mentor Schools during this time. We will arrange a gallery of portfolios and information on each of the mentor schools and allow for participants to sign up for a roundtable session where they may ask questions and speak with staff from the Mentor Schools about _what has been essential_ to making their schools powerful environments for learning.
Networking and Relationship Building _ There will be a series of events providing opportunities to network and team build. These include a special welcoming dinner and reception on Monday, and a special dinner event on Thursday night.
Youth Led Workshops & Youth Leadership Development_We are hoping to have a significant number of youth-led workshops during the week along with some dedicated time for youth to meet together and discuss their role in small school design and transformation.
Small School Design_While the whole institute is centered around issues related to small schools in particular, the design of small schools, whether from the ground up, out of large school conversions, or redesign, will be a focus of the week.
High School Conversion Planning_In addition to the symposium described below, there will be a series of workshops about challenges specific to the conversion of large schools into small schools.
Special Event — Lessons from the Past; Solutions for the Future: An examination of the Manual High School conversion — This symposium will take place on Wednesday afternoon and will be open to both summer institute participants and people in the Denver community who are interested in looking closely at what happened at Manual and what conditions need to be in place for conversions to be successful.
For more information including registration details please visit: http://www.essentialschools.org/
Reprinted with permission©2006
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