On a recent morning at Flushing HS, Demetra Fasolakis’ 10th- and 11th-grade English students — all English language learners with rudimentary English — are discussing the relationship between the poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke and a military officer, Franz Kappus, who wrote him letters asking for advice. They read aloud and annotate a paragraph …
The Scaffolded Apprenticeship Model (SAM) is a team-based school improvement and leadership development program in which participants earn graduate-level credits and school leadership certification[1]. One key component of the SAM program is peer coaching, where SAM participants, or “coaches,” partner with colleagues, or “peers,” in their schools to examine the peers’ instructional practice. In SAM, the term “peer coaching” is used …
Developing school capacity to continuously improve student achievement is essential to the success of New York City’s strategy to empower schools and hold them accountable for results. The Inquiry initiative is the New York City Department of Education (DOE’s) approach to developing this capacity. Its goal is to develop school administrators’ and teachers’ skills in …
Last week I was looking all over the house for a book called Strategic Inquiry: Starting Small for Big Results in Education by Nell Scharff Panero and Joan E. Talbert. I’ve been a fan of their work for quite a long time, and Nell gave me a call a few weeks ago to catch up and talk …
Professional learning communities that center on students, use data effectively, distribute expertise, and enjoy district-level leadership and investment are proving to have a powerful impact on school culture, instructional quality, and student outcomes. Professional learning communities (PLCs) have gained increasing attention from researchers over the last twenty years or so and have been present in …
The purpose of this handbook is to introduce members of Inquiry Teams, or anyone interested in understanding New York City’s Inquiry Teams, to the basic concepts and processes related to this work. It describes the thinking behind the choice to implement Inquiry Teams as a key element of New York City’s strategy for school improvement, …
