Tag Archives: Richard Carranza

Eagle Rock Participates in the CES Fall Forum: The Recap

The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) Fall Forum was held last month at Mission High School in San Francisco, and Eagle Rock was well represented with a total of eight staff members and two students attending this annual event.

The theme of this year’s three-day forum was the 30-year Celebration of Common Principles and Uncommon Schools. CES remains at the forefront of creating and sustaining personalized, equitable and intellectually challenging schools. Essential schools are those where all students have the chance to reach their fullest potential. With a focus on the ten common principles, CES works with educators to support and promote innovative and effective teaching and learning.

The first day of the forum saw our six Professional Development Center team members co-hosting a school visit at MetWest High School, a Big Picture school that we support. MetWest is one of the first “new small autonomous schools” in Oakland, Calif., designed to foster student success through experiential learning and an extensive internship program.

Educators from Southern California and Ohio joined us on the visit and we had the opportunity to sit in on student exhibition presentations. Afterward, we facilitated a two-hour CES Affiliate Center directors meeting where we reconnected with other CES centers and shared what we face at our own locations. Later we broke up into small groups to discuss potential improvements.

In addition, a pair of our Eagle Rock students participated in a student leadership forum held at the Boys and Girls Club in the Mission District, where they met with 20 students from around the country for a discussion about, “What can students teach their teachers about what works when they are teaching them?” Meanwhile, two Eagle Rock School staff members participated at other school visits at Arise High School in Oakland, Calif., and Oceana High School in Pacifica, Calif.

Keynote speaker Pedro Noguera (the Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University) kicked off Day 2 of the Forum, speaking to participants from Continue reading…

Eagle Rock an Active Participant in Recent CES Forum

Nine of our staff members actively took part in the recent 2013 Fall Forum hosted by the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES). The conference was held earlier this month at Mission High School in the heart of San Francisco, with this year’s theme titled “Making the Invisible Visible: Stories and Counter Stories for Educational Equity.”

Our Eagle Rock staffers got the long weekend off to a good start by facilitating a two-hour meeting with directors from about a dozen CES Affiliate Centers — including our hosts, the San Francisco Coalition of Essential Small Schools — at the Clift Hotel.

That meeting presented a great opportunity for directors to check in with each other and explore the nature of their collaboration.

In addition, Eagle Rock staff members led three of the longer workshops on Saturday afternoon, including Michael Soguero and Dan Condon co-presenting “The Ten Principles as the Lens for Implementing the Common Core.”

CES is celebrating more than 25 years of what it terms “creating and sustaining personalized, equitable, and intellectually challenging schools.” The 2013 gathering saw representatives from schools and organizations from as far away as the Netherlands and Japan — all eager to explore how the CES 10 Common Principles apply to their practice.

Each year, the fall forum presents an opportunity for educators to continue “a conversation among friends,” as CES founder Ted Sizer once said.

Richard Carranza, superintendent of San Francisco’s Unified School District, started Saturday’s sessions off by addressing the need for Continue reading…