Tag Archives: Holy Heart of Mary High School

Eagle Rock’s PDC Checking Off Items on its “To-do” List

Once again, a quick look at our “to do” list here at Eagle Rock’s Professional Development Center (PDC) shows we’re running in all directions to get things done. And by get things done, we mean working hand-in-hand with educators who seek us out for our expertise and thoughts in retaining, reinvigorating and re-engaging the students in their particular areas of the country.

In February, we hosted researchers from the University of Michigan to study our approach to personalized learning. Researcher Jeremy Golubcow-Teglasi heard of us through his study of the Big Picture design and connected to our work.

Later that month, on Feb. 25 and 26, Opportunity Nation heard from our very own Dan Condon (Associate Director of Professional Development) at a conference in Washington, D.C. (read: Eagle Rock Participates in National Opportunity Summit).

During that same week, Innovations High School in Reno, Nev., invited Sarah Bertucci from Eagle Rock and Eunice Mitchell from Big Picture Learning to collaborate on supporting staff as they shift into Year Two of their Big Picture journey. They have a well-established student culture in Year One and we are working to help them sharpen their focus on instructional practices going into Year Two.

In mid-March, we hosted representatives from Holy Heart of Mary High School (St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada) and New Village Girls Academy (a Big Picture School) from Los Angeles. New Village was working on integrating outdoor education more seamlessly into their school, while Holy Heart was working toward more fully engaging their disengaged young people.

Later that month, we began a search for a new Public Allies Director to replace Mark Palmer, and that search resulted in the hiring of Christi Kramer from Family League of Baltimore.

Dan Condon was at MetWest High School on March 26 and 27 and we have been providing ongoing support for them around their strategic plan and making data-based decisions as they work toward achieving their goals.

At the end of March and into April we conducted observations of competency-based systems for the Iowa State Department of Education. We also visited a pair of school districts in Collins-Maxwell and Van Meter near Des Moines. This is all part of a larger project where our team is developing a cohort of trained student observers and interviewers to look at schools through the eyes of students. Our professional development center fellow, Kelsey Baun, has contributed significantly to the design and delivery of the student trainings and will soon accompany students to Iowa. Her efforts are part of her contribution as a Public Allies fellow to build Eagle Rock’s capacity to better use students to extend our national reach.

Also in early April, representatives from Innovations High School in Reno, Nev., and Big Picture Learning came to Eagle Rock for a leadership retreat focused on sharpening focus for the year ahead.

The second week of April saw Kelsey Baun travel with Eagle Rock students to conduct focus group interviews of students at four schools: Health Leadership High School, ACE Leadership High School, South Valley Academy and Amy Biehl High School (all in Albuquerque, N.M.). The intent here is to assist our partners at New Mexico Center for School Leadership to better understand personalized learning.

Below are some of the activities scheduled from now through the next several months. If you would like to know more about our work or how your school or organization can work with our Professional Development Center, please contact our associate director of professional development, Dan Condon, by emailing DCondon at EagleRockSchool dot org.

April 20 — 24, and May 27

Eagle Rock’s professional development associate, Anastacia Galloway, is leading our work in Bronx, N.Y., at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School (FLHFHS). There, Anastacia is following up on two previous FLHFHS visits focused on deploying Fred Newmann’s Authentic Intellectual Framework. This time around Anastacia is Continue reading…

Update From the Eagle Rock Professional Development Center

If our recent level of activity is any indication, Tolstoy was right… Spring is the time of plans and projects. And while the first day of spring is still 30 days away, as you’ll see, we’ve been hard at work tilling the soil, so to speak, so that the seeds we plant these next few months will bear significant bounty along the education landscape for quite some time to come.

To start things off, we recently played host to Xylem Larla Day, a graduate student in education from Cal State-Chino, who visited our Estes Park, Colo., campus to research teaching and assessment methods. In addition to pursuing a Masters degree in Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Xylem is in the midst of starting Earth Arts Academy – a community-oriented movement that aims to open an environmental high school in Nevada City, Calif., by fall 2016.

Eagle-Rock-Professional-Development-Center

Next up, our staff recently collaborated with IDEA (The Institute for Democratic Education in America) to design a tour in New York City for a group of 30 educators, youths, parents and community leaders from South Burlington, Vermont. Lead by former Eagle Rock Math Instructional Specialist, Jason Cushner – who now works with Big Picture South Burlington, a school-within-a-school at South Burlington High School – the group from Vermont was in search of tips, insights, strategies and tactics that may help in their efforts to shift their approach to graduating students from a seat-time requirements basis to a more proficiency-based system. Once the tour began, our role was to facilitate key reflection meetings and debrief the learning from the visits so that immediate action could occur back home in Vermont. And to help support the effort even further, a group from Eagle Rock will travel to South Burlington in mid-March to follow up with the Vermonters (more info on that trip appears below).

Moving on, upcoming visits we’re looking forward to hosting here at Eagle Rock under the auspices of the Professional Development Center (PDC) include:

  • A staff member from Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning (Washington, Heights, NY) will be visiting with our PDC staff as he explores ways to start up his own Expeditionary Learning School (i.e., a school that inspires the motivation to learn and transform urban, rural, and suburban education by empowering students and adults to become leaders of their own learning).
  • Staff from Holy Heart of Mary High School in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, will be on campus this spring to learn how Eagle Rock works with ‘opportunity youth’ (i.e., young people who are both out of school and not working).
  • Staff from the Donnell-Kay Foundation will also be visiting Eagle Rock soon to learn about work with ‘opportunity youth.’ The foundation, which is committed to reforming and improving public education in Colorado through research, creative dialogue and critical thinking, is based down the road in Denver.
  • Staff from the Los Angeles Small Schools Center in California – a Coalition of Essential Schools member since 2006 – will be paying us a visit to learn about how they can support us in our work with the Los Angeles Unified School District.
  • Staff from North Carolina’s Voyager Academy return to Eagle Rock this spring to work on strengthening their internal professional development systems that are aimed at supporting their project-based learning high school.