School for Social Justice & Ecology

Request for Authorization

January 10, 2005
TABLE OF CONTENTS

REQUEST FOR AUTHORIZATION

SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE & ECOLOGY

Section Page

Vision, Mission & Outcomes 3

Parent & Community Participation 4

Identifying Student Need 7

Faculty Capacity 9

Teaching, Learning & Equity 11

Literacy 11

Math 13

Science 14

Philosophy of Instruction 17

Instructional Strategies 18

ELD & Special Education 21

Sample Lesson Plan 23

School-Family Partnerships 27

Parent Partnerships 27

School Culture 28

Conflict Resolution 29

Communication Strategies 30

Post-Secondary Options 31

School Design 32

Curriculum Map 33

Resources 34

Professional Development 35

Support Providers 38

Program Evaluation 39

Leadership, Management & Governance 40

Leadership 40

Management 41

Governance 42

Decision Tree (graphic) 43

Vision, Experience & Capacity

Vision

Mission

Our mission is to develop in today's youth the social capital and the intellectual and ethical capacity to be tomorrow's leaders in the development of a wise and just society. We will achieve this through an academically rigorous program that prepares all our students for college. We will increase their awareness of social and environmental issues, and instill in students a sense of personal responsibility that empowers them to impact change in themselves and the world. Graduates of the School of Social Justice and Ecology will be visionaries who have wisdom, integrity, and compassion, and who seek justice in human relations.

Vision

The School of Social Justice and Ecology provides a personalized, interconnected learning environment where faculty members nurture and challenge students to strive for academic excellence. An inspiring, relevant, and challenging curriculum, together with the support of skilled staff, families, and the community helps to empower each student to achieve at high academic levels.

Through the exploration of social and ecological issues embedded within a solid curriculum in mathematics, the sciences, and the humanities, students learn to grapple with pressing societal issues and explore solutions, while being exposed to different points of view and addressing serious ethical questions. This exploration includes an examination of models of equitable and sustainable societies and communities. Integrated, hands-on projects and the use of inquiry and critical thinking as tools help students to see the interconnectedness of all academic disciplines, and their relationship to the real world.

Students are challenged to assess their beliefs, to think critically about how their actions align with their values, and to become engaged members of their community. They will graduate having the academic, intellectual, social and psychological skills necessary to continue their education and to effect positive change in society.

Student Outcomes

Our Graduates will:

• have a strong foundation in math, science, and humanities.

• be strong critical thinkers and approach social and scientific problems intelligently.

• be college-ready, including UC A-G requirements, the exit exam, and SATs.

• know how to learn and love learning.

Our graduates will be proficient in the essential modes of communication, including different types of expository writing, the use of the internet, and presentation and interviewing skills. They will understand the complexity of different perspectives, and be able to transfer essential concepts to a variety of contexts. They will understand the inter-connectedness of both biological and social ecosystems, as well as the importance of their connection to their own community. They will value and respect diversity and, through self-reflection, know how to align their actions with their values.

Thematic Focus:

The School for Social Justice and Ecology exists with the understanding that there are challenging social and ecological problems facing the people of the world today, and that social and ecological issues are inextricably interconnected. These problems and the discussion of their solutions constitute the focus around which our academics are centered. We go forward with the understanding that as humans living on the planet, we each have a responsibility to live in a way that allows for the creation and maintenance of healthy societies and healthy ecosystems. The discussion of the creation of these societies and ecosystems provides countless opportunities for deep, engaging and meaningful educational experiences.

Parent and Community Participation

Believing that small school environments are beneficial to all students and with a strong desire to be one of the early small school options for students at Berkeley High, the School of Social Justice and Ecology Design Team began regular meetings in the fall of 2003. Because a formal process was not yet in place, these early meetings included teachers, parents and students only, without input from the Administration or BayCES. Understanding that the design process and curriculum design would take much thought and time, the group did not want to lose time on these important issues while waiting for a process to be put in place. Our hope was that when the formal process was implemented within the district we would then be much further along in the design work.

The initial call for interest among teachers and parents was put out in the spring of 2003. BHS teacher Joel Hildebrandt began soliciting teachers with the idea of work on a small school that would focus on the themes of social justice and ecology. The environment was very uncertain at Berkeley High during that time. Due to budget issues, many teachers received pink slips. But even in that environment several teachers came forward and expressed an interest in being involved. Our first real community get-together was held in September of 2003. A picnic was organized in Live Oak Park. Parents were contacted through the large e-tree that had been established for Common Ground, a now-defunct program with related themes, as well as notices at the High School. About 40 people attended, including around 15 students and 3 teachers. A core group of five parents came out of that group to become the founding parent component of the Design Team.

The group met regularly during the fall of 2003 at the homes of several parents. When the school district’s relationship with BAYCES was solidified, we began meeting at Berkeley High School for the BAYCES Incubator sessions. Beginning in early 2004, we were assigned a BAYCES coach and often met several times a week at the high school.

After several months of on-going work and regular meetings, it became evident during the winter of 2004 that the school was not going to be able to start in the fall of 2004. Several of our early parents, whose children had been in Common Ground, and whose children would be seniors in the 2004 – 2005 year decided that they would no longer participate given the anticipated time line. We were fortunate at that time to have a community member with experience in coaching leadership teams and who works as an organizational consultant joined our team. The community/parent group has continued to meet along with the teachers, BAYCES coaches and administrators on a bi-weekly, and now on a weekly basis, since last winter. Several meetings were also held this summer to ensure that the design process would continue and the RFA would be ready in the fall.

In addition to the teachers listed below, two other teachers have participated in the process. Until her illness resurfaced in Dec. ’03, these meetings included English teacher Jenn Dieges. She came forward very early in the process and contributed a great deal with regards to positive energy, big picture curriculum concepts and organizational skills. Jesse Williamson, a science teacher in the process of getting his teaching credential, was also an early member of the group. He was enthusiastic about our themes and added diversity to our teacher team.

In mid-March, 2004, we held a 2-day retreat at the Marconi Center in West Marin. Thanks in part to good leadership and coaching by Sandy Calvo and Daphannie Stephens, we were able to finalize our Vision and Mission statements and begin a coordinated writing effort. Again meeting several times a week, we consulted with each other, wrote individual RFA sections, and sent them to Sandy for comments. The rough draft was completed in mid-May of ’04. Concerned that we get and incorporate feedback on our ideas from administrators, we met with BHS Principal Jim Slemp and Vice Principal Matt Huxley, who offered support for the direction or our project and also encouraged us to “think outside the box”.

In order to optimize the critical science portion of our curriculum, we convened a science roundtable forum to receive critical feedback on the science education section of our proposal on Oct. 22, 2004. Scientists and curriculum specialists in attendance were Roland Otto, PhD of Lawrence Berkeley Lab (consultant to the State Department of Education for the current California Science Standards and the Science Framework), Alan Gould, PhD (curriculum specialist for Lawrence Hall of Science), Carol Balfe, PhD (science curriculum consultant to BayCES and Emery School District), and Michael Freeling, PhD (plant geneticist, UC Berkeley). Science teachers in attendance were Lisa Chan (BHS/SSJE) and Mary Murphy (BHS/CAS), Karen Bush of Longfellow Middle School and former BHS science teacher Debolina Dutta and several science curriculum experts from the Lawrence Hall of Science, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and the Community. Also present were most of the members of our design team and our BayCES coach, Sandy Calvo. Continuing discussions with these scientists and teachers has strengthened our science program. We are pursuing these contacts for community partnerships and for our Science Advisory Board. Our new science teacher, Lisa Chan, is eager to draw upon the expertise of these advisors.

In addition to our regular meetings and readings on school reform, we have also created a list of programs at other schools with similar themes as ours, with the goal of visiting those that are in our area. In May 2004, two teachers a parent visited the WALC program at Balboa High School. This program – The Wilderness Arts and Literacy Collaborative – integrates field work with Science/Social Studies/English curriculum. We had a chance to meet with the teachers and observe both field work in San Francisco parks as well as class work on site at Balboa. We believe that creating a network of teachers and programs with similar goals will aid in the process of providing on-going support to both teachers and students.

Concurrent with this research and design process, the group has been working on our RFA. Through an intensive writing and reviewing process, we developed the current document that you currently are reading. Our major review involved comprehensive feedback from administrators and BAYCES. This included Matt Huxley, Rory Bled, and four readers from BayCES. We received satisfactory comments on much of the document and advice on how to proceed with sections that needed more work or more information. Since that meeting, we have met several times during the summer and fall of 2004. The writing work has been divided among the group with the majority of it being done by the Lead Teachers – Joel Hildebrandt and Deborah Godner.

Participating Teachers: Joel Hildebrandt, Deborah Godner, George Palen, Ellen Bracken (see bios, p. 9)

Participating Parents: Barbara Chan, Felicia Woytak, Kathy Dervin, and Gina Wolley attended meetings regularly and helped with the RFA writing. Melissa Quilter and Gary Amado have also participated. (See short bios, p. 6)

Participating Students: Scott Rasmussen, Joelle Provost, Lauren Ross, and Chris Davis attended meetings and/or our retreat.

Short Biographies of Parent and Student Design Team Members

Barbara Chan is supporting SSJE development because she is a BHS graduate who wants Berkeley High School to restore its reputation as a stellar learning institution. Her studies in Ecology, Marine Biology and Psychology, grassroots humanitarian and environmental activism fuel her passion for creating a world where people love to learn and contribute their best selves. She contributes her professional skills as an executive coach, organization consultant, facilitator and mediator to the SSJE development team.

Kathy Dervin has been active in school reform and innovative student support services for over 12 years. As parent of an 8th and 12th grader she has been involved in numerous school improvement efforts-coordinating the first Healthy Start grant at Jefferson and Healthy Start planning at King, the

federal small schools planning grant (BHS), site council chair at Jefferson and King, BSEP P&O Cmt rep for 3 years, and last year served as one of 2 parent reps to the BHS shared governance cmt. As a public health professional, Kathy has numerous ties to the social justice community, and

has worked in public health advocacy for over 20 years. She has worked as a peace activist and is completing a UC certificate in environmental education, environmental policy and advocacy, water quality/water management and environmental restoration.

Gina Wolley’s involvement with Berkeley schools began in 1991, when her

daughter, Lauren, started Kindergarten at Cragmont. In the last 4 years, her work with Berkeley High School has included with School Site Council member, Writer's Room Coach, Superintendent's Small Schools Advisory Committee member, Small Schools Transition Team Member, Steering Committee Member of the Parents of Children of African Descent, and member of the Coalition for Equity and Excellence in Berkeley Schools.

Her dedication to the reform effort in Berkeley schools is based upon the data that shows that equity in education does not exist for students of color at Berkeley High or within the district-at-large. She believes that the small schools’ effort at Berkeley High is focussed on remediating this unjust learning situation.

Felicia Woytak has been a parent at Berkeley High since 1998. Her daughter graduated from the program known as Common Ground in 2002 where she was able to discover a passion for science and social justice and her son, Scott Rasmussen, is currently a senior at Berkeley High. She currently sits on the Boards of the Cross-Cultural Environmental Leadership Academy in San Francisco and Community School of the East Bay. Her work in education is to dedicated to ensuring the development and nurturance of exciting and powerful learning environments for young people from all racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds. For the last three years, she has served as an alternate on the BHS Site Council where she has been a member of the Small Schools Subcommittee. Her professional work is in real estate investment and development, owning properties in San Francisco and the East Bay. She also serves on the Alameda County Workforce Investment Board, is vice-chair of Restore Hetch Hetchy, and is a Trustee of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

Melissa Quilter was born and raised in a small community in Northern Idaho in a family of farmers, educators and environmental activists. She studied philosophy and biology at Occidental College and graduated with a degree in biology from the University of Virginia. She has dedicated her effort to working with students and teachers in Berkeley’s public schools for the past 13 years, makes quilts and operates her family’s marina in Idaho.

Scott Rasmussen is a senior at Berkeley High. He is very interested in problems relating to the achievement gap and inequities at the high school. He has served for 2 years as one of two student representatives on the School Shared Governance Committee, which is the operational governing body at the High School. For last three years, he has served on the School Site Council, where he has worked with issues such as 10^th grade counseling and the WASC accreditation. Over the last year, he has participated in the Design Team for the School of Social Justice and Ecology. During the first two years of his attendance at Berkeley High, he was enrolled in the environmental and social justice program known as Common Ground. He is an active participant in several clubs and student organizations at BHS.

Identifying Student Need

The “achievement gap” at BHS is much discussed, frequently studied and longstanding. SSJE believes that it will take daily conscious thought, practice and effort throughout our small learning community to disrupt this gap in educational achievement.

At entry: Our group has talked about what we might be able to learn from middle schools about our students either through portfolios, teacher recommendation/assessment, and traditional measures like course completion, grades and test scores.

CST - Racial/Ethnic Groups
Data reported are the percent of students achieving at the proficient or advanced level (meeting or exceeding the state standard) and percent not tested.

Performance Level	African- American	American Indian or Alaska Native	Asian	Filipino	Hispanic or Latino	Pacific Islander	White (not Hispanic)
English Language Arts
Proficient or Advanced	25	67	55	62	28	73	85
Not Tested	4	5	2	0	3	8	1
Mathematics
Proficient or Advanced	10	40	47	27	13		51
Not Tested	---	---	---	---	---	---	---
Science
Proficient or Advanced	26	73	57		21		73
Not Tested	---	---	---	---	---	---	---
History/Social Science
Proficient or Advanced	17	67	43		15		73
Not Tested	---	---	---	---	---	---	---

Source: BUSD website

Overall student proficiency:

Area % proficient or higher

English/Language Arts	57%
Geometry 1	40%
US History	58%
Biology	68%

Source: California Standards Test 2002-2003

As the CST – Racial/Ethnic Groups data shows, there is a significant achievement gap:

Language Arts: There is a 60% differential between White students testing proficient (85%) and African American students (25%)

Math: There is a 41% difference between White students testing proficient (51%) and African American students (10%) Note: this continues a trend seen at the middle schools where 8% of African Americans at MLK middle school (grades 6-8 combined) tested proficient in math

Science There is a 47% difference in White (73%) and Asian (73%) and African American students

History: There is a 56% difference between White and African American students

Latino students experienced lower proficiency (as tested) than African American students in Science (- 5% points) and History (-2% points).

The School of Social Justice and Ecology plans to spend time over the summer studying both these data and what our current teachers know about this gap in achievement in their own classes/students. The challenges reflected in this school-wide record of achievement will be discussed in our design teams, amongst our educators and with our prospective parents and community partners, and across the dimensions of the plan for the school: school culture, curriculum design, rigorous classroom and instructional strategies, parents and community partnerships, assessment, student support and opportunities for individual and accelerated-learning plans for our students. We will consult with our BAYCES coaches, read school reform research and observe leading practitioners to guide our thinking and the further design of the SSJE program. This will inform how we address our dual goals of academic excellence and equity.

School Demographics:

In 2002-2003 CDE reports that 3,221 students attended BHS. The enrollment in 2003-2004 is closer to 2950.

Large School SSJE

White 36.7%
African American 29.1%
Latino 12.6%
Asian 7.9%
Multi-ethnic 12.8%
Native American .9%
Filipino .8%
ELL students 9% (288 students)

Source: School Fact Sheet provided by Matt Huxley

Student Enrollment, by Ethnic Group BHS
Data reported are the number and percent of students in each racial/ethnic category as reported by CBEDS.

Racial/Ethnic Category	Number of Students	Percent of Students	Racial/Ethnic Category	Number of Students	Percent of Students
African-American	1,034	32.1	Hispanic or Latino	383	11.9
American Indian or Alaska Native	12	0.4	Pacific Islander	5	0.2
Asian	232	7.2	White (Not Hispanic)	1,170	36.3
Filipino	25	0.8	Multiple or No Response	360	11.2

Source: BUSD website school accountability report card 2002-2003

SSJE will reflect the demographic breakdown in the large school, based on the process being set up to balance small school student assignments. We have met twice with representatives of PCAD, and will set up additional meetings in the coming Academic Year. We will meet with representatives of Boca, as well. A PCAD leader is on our design team. This fall, we will do an outreach night to the community, which we are in the process of setting up. Parents of newly admitted students will be expected to attend an orientation and to contract to follow our processes for maintaining communication with the family and academic and emotional support of the student.

Our curriculum addresses issues of race, gender, and class equity as well as social justice. We are confident that this will appeal both to students of color and to white students.

At the core of student support is our Advisory structure. All students will be assigned to an advisor, who will coordinate academic, personal and other support for that child. The advisor will also ensure communication with the student’s family.

Students will also be assigned to “vertical families”. These families will be multi-grade, unlike the advisories. They will be key to making new students, and particularly 9th graders, feel welcomed and included in our school. At regular intervals of about once a month, students will meet in these groups to accomplish socially or academically meaningful tasks overseen by faculty.

We are looking into how to set up effective support groups for students of color, based on those described by Beverly Daniel Tatum in the Boston-area METCO program (Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? pp. 71-74) These groups will be led by appropriately trained community members of color, and will permit the students in question to effectively address racial, social, and academic concerns.

Faculty Capacity

Joel Hildebrandt has taught for 24 years, 14 at BHS. He is credentialed in Spanish, English and ESL, with a Masters in teaching ESL, and has taught English and ESL in addition to all levels of Spanish. He is currently enrolled in an administrative credentialing program at CSUH/BayCES. He has sought conscientiously to address issues of equity throughout his teaching career. In his personal life, he has many years of experience as an activist with a focus on direct action and direct democracy.

Deborah Godner has taught English/History core for 14 years in Berkeley and Oakland middle schools and more recently at Berkeley High School. She also taught an English support class for failing students. She is CLAD credentialed, and holds a multiple subject credential as well as a single subject in social science with a supplementary in English. She holds a Tier 1 Administrative Credential through the BayCES/CSUH Lead program. While at Martin Luther King Middle School (MLK), she started the Gay/Straight Alliance. She ran conflict resolution trainings both in Oakland and at MLK, and led a girl power group for two years. She is also trained in Socratic Seminar and Literature Circles. She has spent her years in education engaging students in a highly rigorous and personalized curriculum with a focus on combating society’s “ism”s.

George Palen has taught math for 11 years at the middle and high school levels. He has a Masters in math, and entered teaching to address issues of equity in the math curriculum. Before coming to BHS, he taught three years at a startup middle school formed in Bayview-Hunters point with a mission of addressing equity issues for that neighborhood. He is presently training with SF State to address algebra curriculum issues.

Ellen Bracken has taught math for 7 years in BUSD, and previously taught math, art, and science at a private middle school. She was involved in the Diversity Project's Action Research for Teachers, and met regularly with other teachers doing cycles of inquiry in the classroom. She taught in the BHS Summer Bridge and Rebound summer programs.

In addition to those teachers on the design team, SSJE Leadership has been working continuously to identify and recruit interested teachers at Berkeley High. The following have expressed a strong interest in working with us next year, and have begun to attend some of our meetings. We recognize that we will need an additional science teacher, if not for the fall of 2005 then for the following fall, and an additional social studies teacher. Our leadership will continue to work with our vice principal and the principal to recruit or hire the appropriate personnel.

Lisa Chan is a first-year teacher at Berkeley High School who chose to work at Berkeley High for its progressive small school reform. She graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a Pharmacology degree in 2002, and in 2004, she received her Single Subject Teaching Credential in Biology with a supplemental degree in Chemistry from the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at UCSB. She is currently completing her Masters of Education, which focuses on scientific literacy. In the classroom, she emphasizes reading comprehension skills in order to help guide students toward scientific literacy—the ability to comprehend global scientific issues and general scientific topics. Furthermore, she is aware of many issues surrounding ecology and the environment and understands the need to impart such awareness and knowledge to our future populace.

Jared Baird has spent the last three years developing a vision for equitable and transformative education for diverse high school students. Having taught English and History in Oakland and Santa Barbara County, he completed Stanford University's Teacher Education Program and currently holds a single subject teaching credential in secondary English with English Language Authorization, as well as a Masters in education. While at Stanford, he worked closely with Linda Darling-Hammond to design and facilitate a course on school reform and, in particular, the small-schools movement. New to BHS, he currently teaches basic literacy, English, and World History in the Special Ed. department and will be entering a credential program in special education (mild/moderate) at SF State in the spring.

Jennifer Dieges has taught English for 2 years at BHS. She is CLAD credentialed, has a Masters in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing and has also taken courses in teaching composition. She taught public health education for 2 years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa. She has additional training as a river rafting guide and in swiftwater rescue from Friends of the River, a river conservation organization, and in taking youth on outdoor trips with Bay Area Wilderness Training.

Vice Principal Mark Wolfe is the Berkeley High School administrator working with SSJE. Mark has a law degree from Cornell University and worked as an attorney in Seattle, Washington where he handled various environmental law matters. Mark has taught the Anti-Discrimination Law workshop to Oregon teachers at Southern Oregon University for the past nine years. As a teacher of twelve years, Mark devoted his professional career to serving the needs of underrepresented and at-risk students. As SSJE administrator, Mark’s professional development includes attending several small schools conferences as well as contacting and visiting administrators of other successful small schools.

Teaching and Learning and Equity

Literacy

A focus on literacy development is a critical and integrated part of our curriculum across disciplines. We strive for a balance of explicit teaching of skills within the context of meaningful, relevant, and thematically rich curriculum which emphasizes issues of social justice and ecology. These captivating issues will serve both as a vehicle for student engagement as well as valued academic outcomes for students. All students have regular access to a publicized “community bank” of literacy strategies and skills which are posted, practiced, and reinforced in all classrooms. These strategies will be aligned with the CES Habits of Mind and Heart and the California State Standards. These strategies will work to reinforce essential literacy skills by providing students with repetition through familiarity with the structures, while giving teachers of all disciplines the freedom to apply them in rich and varied contexts. Through the consistent use of rubrics across disciplines and classrooms, we challenge our students to achieve mastery of essential reading, writing, speaking, and thinking skills and take ownership of their learning.

The writing process, which focuses on fluency, revision, and editing, is integral to all Humanities classes and across the curriculum. Students will write in all classes. They will keep journals for reflection, metacogtive-awareness, and fluency development. They will revise writing until they have mastered the writing type. They will practice peer-editing. We work closely with the Writer’s Room Program and other community partners such as the Bay Area Writing Project to provide students with one-on-one coaching in the writing process. Some of our teachers already have experience working with the Writer’s Room Program, which has been quite successful in helping Berkeley middle and high school students improve their writing.

Our reading program consistently uses a variety of successful strategies, including SIR (Silent Independent Reading), Read-Alouds, Literature Circles, Socratic Seminar, and Buddy Reading. Students will read silently (with guided foci and books of their choice) in order to create and support a community and a culture of readers, to practice and build a bank of reading strategies, and to support and challenge readers at a variety of levels. Teachers will read aloud to students in order to model powerful reading strategies, using the same roles we use in literature circles to focus on reading comprehension and to guide class discussions. These literature circles reading strategies/roles can be applied across the curriculum to a variety of “texts”. For example, take the literature circles role called, Dynamic Describer, which focuses kids on images they get from the reading. Students will practice how to draw vivid scenes from a novel in an English class and how to present a word problem in a math class by creating visual images in the minds of the audience. Socratic Seminar is a powerful literacy strategy that can be used across disciplines to practice understanding “text”, providing evidence for arguments, and speaking publicly, while creating community. Students in Socratic Seminar can discuss a current events article or a scientific hypothesis.

Our students will learn to:

• Write clear, well-organized essays with solid evidence

• Design and conduct rigorous, well-documented research projects/papers

• Express themselves creatively through language

• Make written, illustrated and oral presentations through a variety of media

• Be strong readers who have a variety of strategies to comprehend and connect to the text

• Think critically and analytically about themselves and the world

In order to achieve these goals we will implement the following practices across the curriculum (Math, Science, English, History, P.E.):

Once a week students will:

1) read silently and aloud

2) practice note taking skills which reflect the diversity of note taking practices in different topics, disciplines and genres, learn and practice brainstorming techniques such as graphic organizers, mind-maps and outlines relevant to the discipline and genre (CDE English Standard Writing Strategies 1.0)

3) reflect on learning through journal writing in the form of pre– and post– reading responses (think writes and quick writes) to reflect on how they figured out a math problem or to synthesize what they learned about a history project

4) speak publicly and listen actively (CDE English Standard Listening and Speaking Strategies 1.0), through discussions, fish bowls, and presentations

5) access information by interviewing others, and using the library and the internet for research

In order to thematically integrate the curriculum and connect the core subjects, SSJE will have semester- or year-long themes or “through-lines” such as: energy, balance/imbalance, change, sustainability, and sense of place. The Humanities, Science and Math teachers will work together to develop these themes or through-lines based on the ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS and what is developmentally appropriate at each grade level. Novels will be chosen to address the themes/through-lines.

The following are examples of potential novels and other books based on the themes/through-lines:

9^th grade = SELF / Fast Food Nation (science, economics, statistics / math, social justice – labor, identity, ethnic studies, culture); City of the Beasts, Isabel Allende (ecology, modernization, destruction of indigenous cultures, global economics, medicinal plant science, teenage identity), The Way to Rainy Mountain, Scott Momaday (personal journey in nature)

10^th grade = WORLD / Savages by Joe Kane (“development”, globalization, indigenous cultures); Red Azalea Anchee Min (agricultural science & economics), Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe (colonialism / social justice, agricultural science & economics), Siddartha Hesse

11^thgrade= The Dispossessed, Ursula LeGuin,

12^th grade= Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, Walden, Autobiographies of Social Activists such as Nelson Mandela, Rigoberta Menchu, Alice Walker, Thoreau, Judy Bari.

Math

The math program for the School for Social Justice and Ecology will provide students in the school with a deep understanding of how and why mathematics works.

Mathematics is the study of the construction of models that explain how the world works. An understanding of mathematics gives insight to many areas of human life, from the understanding of scientific processes we experience in our day-to-day lives to the organization of the logical thought process we all need to understand our society. Students in SSJE will learn how to construct mathematical models, how to prove their veracity, and how to apply these models to real life situations.

Students develop math concepts through experimentations with real life situations and by modeling using manipulatives such coins, die, and colored cubes. Through these processes students discover mathematical relationships and patterns, which then lead to generalizations and predictions about the mathematics involved in an activity. Students will be confronted with curricular units that not only model mathematical ideas, but also place those models into real life decision-making situations and put the lessons in context. Examples of modeling in the Interactive Math Program (IMP) text as it is presently written include the application of trigonometry to Ferris Wheel rides and the application of algebraic equations and expressions to the real life situation of the westward expansion of the United States in the 19^th century.

The IMP curriculum draws material from a wide range of disciplines and activities such as history, sports, game theory and physics to provide a rich environment within which to study mathematics. The IMP approach lends itself to the inclusion of interesting studies of ecological and social justice issues. Population growth, air and water quality studies, public polling and voter enfranchisement issues, social welfare statistics and economic modeling are just a handful of topics that provide opportunities for mathematical inquiry. Through exposure to this variety of problem solving situations, students will construct their own understanding of the fundamental ideas within mathematics.

The teachers in the classroom will act as facilitators in this process, providing students with meaningful learning experiences and guiding students in their discovery of the mathematics. The curriculum will be organized into thematic units that make sense of the mathematics.

The math curriculum used in SSJE will support the curriculum reform recommended recently in the NCTM Standards by integrating traditional material with additional topics such probability and statistics. Students come to the high school with a diverse range of mathematical skills and abilities. In response, this curriculum is designed for and works well in heterogeneous classrooms.

In order to improve achievement in the area of math several support structures must be in place. An appropriate curriculum must be implemented, a program that allows students to access the mathematical concepts given their current skill level but simultaneously provide the necessary challenge to promote intellectual growth. A welcoming and compassionate classroom environment enables students to feel confident to take the necessary risks in the learning process and to feel comfortable seeking assistance when required.

Adult presence in the classroom with peer tutors, UC Berkeley tutors, or community volunteers will lower the adult to student ratio and provide essential in-class help. Additional support is provided with the after school math tutoring available on site at the Student Learning Center. Finally, teachers will continue their study of best practices within the classroom to continue to reevaluate and reform math education.

It is our belief that a rigorous understanding of mathematics arises from a personal interaction with concrete situations that allow for profound insight. In doing so students are confronted with the language of mathematics. In a sense mathematics is a language unto itself. Once the language is learned, the ideas within mathematics are nothing more than common sense. The goal of the SSJE mathematics program will be to enable students to understand mathematics as common sense.

The School for Social Justice and Ecology has a philosophy of instruction that emphasizes authentic teaching and learning of a rigorous curriculum based upon inquiry and problem solving. The math program will play an important role in putting this philosophy into practice.

Science

Our goal is to foster a strong interest in science that will generate deeper understanding and higher application skills. In general, students in the United States do not like science and are not performing well in science. In fact, graduating high school students in this nation fall well below other students around the world in terms of possessing science literacy. Therefore, we have a science education crisis in the United States (Morrone, 2001). One cause of this crisis is that students lose interest in the topic and therefore only work hard for the grade or become completely unconnected to the classroom. This occurs when the student sees the topic as unrelated to her/his life. When this is the outcome, we have failed the students because we are not fostering love of learning. Another cause is that students give up when tremendous memorizing and/or higher-level math is required for the course. There are numerous reasons for the difficulties with memorization and mathematic competency, and they too need to be addressed. However, we cannot wait for those needs to be met before engaging students with science. Current U.S. science education fails to meet students’ needs. Ecology based education is very experiential in nature, so it easily lends itself to learning about real life. Our small school will use a more hands-on science curriculum because it allows students to become more engaged with their education, and thus to be more successful in the subject. Teachers will provide for student-centered questioning of the ecological world surrounding them and provide the tools to answer the authentic questions. Thus it can fulfill many of the students’ needs, and enable us to address the crisis in science education. (Dutta, 2004)

The science component is essential to our small school for several reasons. The scientific method informs the Inquiry Process, which is key to both how our students learn about the world, and to how we evaluate the effectiveness of our program. It is necessary for students to have a solid science base in order to understand the full implications of both environmental challenges and social injustices and their solutions. Also, science forms the foundation of many of our community service projects and internships. Additionally, our equity focus calls us to address the inadequate representation within the scientific community both of women and of people of color.

The goal of the science program in our small school is to teach for understanding within the context of social justice and ecology. According to leading educators at Harvard University’s Project Zero program, “Understanding is being able to carry out a variety of actions or "performances" that show one's grasp of a topic and at the same time advance it. It is being able to take knowledge and use it in new ways.” (Project Zero is an educational research group at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, whose mission is to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels.)

Tasks that form true understanding (performance understanding) can be immensely varied. By definition they must demand critical thinking; they must take students beyond what they already know. According to leading education expert David Perkins, an expert on developing critical thinking in learners:

Most classroom activities are too routine to reach this goal--spelling drills, true-and-false quizzes, arithmetic exercises, many conventional essay questions, and so on. Such performances have their importance too, of course. But they are not performances of understanding; hence they do not do much to build understanding.

The science course work in our small school focuses on teaching students to think critically while meeting the state education standards for science courses and content, 9-12: Chemistry, Biology/Life Science, Earth Science, and Investigation and Experimentation. For example in 9th grade our students participate in examining the importance of water to society, the origins of California's fresh water, and the relationship between supply and need (Earth Science Standard 9c). Similarly, but in a more sophisticated manner, our 12^th graders demonstrate the relationship between the biogeochemical cycles (Biology/Life Science Standard 6d). We adhere to our goal of making learning a long-term, critical thinking process. Our science instruction provides for rich, ongoing assessment that includes portfolio assessments, long and short term projects, individual and group labs, exams, and informal assessments. Finally, we teach for transfer into other contexts. Students will learn the concepts and then be able to apply them under differing conditions. This provides evidence for actual understanding. For example, after learning the biogeochemical cycles, students will be able to create their own Eco-chambers and alter the conditions to make it favorable for life supporting conditions.

Our curriculum is interdisciplinary, drawing upon biology, ecology, and chemistry but also the resources of such environmentally related disciplines as environmental justice and ethics. Interrelationships between the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, and natural sciences are emphasized. Since ecology based education is highly interdisciplinary and draws upon everyday ecosystem relationships, students find the topics relevant to their lives. This rekindles in them an appreciation for science. As the subject sparks their interest, the students grasp science topics more readily. An increase in students’ knowledge leads to change in behavior within the classroom. Studies conducted worldwide indicate that when students are personally connected to the material taught, their vested interest motivates them to participate in the course work and so alleviates the feeling of being disenfranchised in the education process (Bradley, Waliczek, and Zajicak, 1999). The study of ecology and environmental policy connects readily to such social justice issues as environmental racism, the fair allocation of scare resources, and the disproportionate access to energy and to clean water and air. An example of this came up when Berkeley High students investigated issues of air and water quality in Bayview-Hunters Point. Scientific documentation helped to make clear the disparity between this neighborhood and other areas of San Francisco.

Our science courses integrate the diverse science disciplines at the same time as preparing our students to understand the science behind the major environmental issues of the day. Some examples of science units that work well for both of these purposes include:

Global Warming—The carbon cycle, chemical bonding, photosynthesis and respiration

Habitat Destruction—Food webs, biomes, case studies of endangered species

Energy Use—Physics and chemistry of cars, bicycles, and electricity generation

Toxics and Cancer—Cell biology, statistics, and environmental racism

Health and Diseases—Viruses, bacteria, the immune system

Additionally, we stress the scientific method and the process of evolution.

A science unit on Global Climate change may include the following components:

-We address the controversial question of how human activities may be changing Earth's climate.

-We take students on a virtual "field trip" to Mauna Loa Observatory where they see how scientists have measured carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere since 1957.

-They graph and interpret data from Mauna Loa and other observatories that led to the prediction, in 1988, that changes in our atmosphere will cause the entire globe to gradually warm up.

-They also measure carbon dioxide in the laboratory to find out how much is contained in a sample of human breath and car exhaust.

-We discuss the consensus of opinion about global climate change that finally emerged in 1995.

This lesson identifies scientific questions that still remain unanswered, and involves students in thinking about the economic, political, and ethical implications of regulating human activities to reduce the likelihood of global climate change.

We support our students’ learning by paying heed to developmental factors. During their freshman year, our students take a course in earth science. We continue to foster the growth, learning, and critical thinking skills gained in middle school by requiring this 9^th grade science course. In the sophomore and junior years, students will take biology and chemistry, respectively. This order sequence meets the developmental needs of the students. Chemistry involves more abstract thinking; juniors will have the opportunity to be more successful in chemistry as they develop the abstract thinking portion of the brain and gain enough mathematical background. In the senior year, students take an advanced environmental science course, which requires them to integrate the science concepts gain in the freshman through junior years. Through community partnerships, advisories, professional development workshops, tutoring, student skills workshops, and other means, we work with our students’ families to ensure that all students are successful in their science, math, and other coursework.

Additionally, we utilize the local community as a resource. Our students participate in internships and service learning projects with organizations and individuals who actively grapple with the tensions between social justice and ecology. Students are required to demonstrate some working knowledge as to how policy is made with respect to ecology and environmental issues and concerns at the local, state, and federal level. Many of our community service projects and internships, which are essential to preparing our students for the outside world as they prepare for college and their place in the community as adults, will be in partnership with local scientific and environmental organizations such as Lawrence Berkeley Labs, the UC’s Department of Natural Resources, the Lawrence Hall of Science, the Watershed Project, and the Oakland Community Food Project.

Science and ecology connect naturally with other disciplines. Since science is pervasive throughout all time and in all societies, drawing links to the scientific world and to historical contexts such as union workers during the industrial revolution in social studies, novels such as Ishmael in English, graphing in mathematics, or geography in Spanish, can be done with ease. Teachers from various disciplines work to make these links seamless rather than seeming forced. Overarching topics will be created for each grade level to guide the teaching in each subject. According to Lois Hetland, Ed.M., Harvard University, Overarching topics or through-lines “are important, exciting, stimulating topics that are accessible for the particular students we teach and that offer ready connections to other important dimensions of thought--other disciplines, other contexts of personal interest or concern or expertise, other ways of thinking and learning.” We use this as one of our guiding principles when developing curriculum and for working across the curriculum. Examples of through-lines include: How does energy flows through time and the ecosystem? Nothing happens just because! Students will gain a sense of fascination with the living and nonliving world through these themes.

Our science teachers will be provided with the resources to implement this piece of our program effectively. This includes not only materials, but also professional training as needed in such areas as curriculum integration and scaffolding, and the time necessary to develop the curriculum. The latter may take the form both of common prep and meeting times and of paid release time.

In order to facilitate the ongoing input of the outstanding Berkeley science community into our curriculum, we have decided to create a Science Advisory Board. This group will continue the work that we began at our Science Roundtable on October 22, 2004; that is, they will advise us on how best to deliver a dynamic, challenging, hands-on, integrated science curriculum with a social justice focus to our students. They will keep us abreast of relevant scientific and science curriculum developments, and help us to access resources outside the classroom. Such resources will include scientific exploration in the community (field work), guest speakers and presenters, and service learning/internships. They will meet on a regular basis, as determined best in their own professional judgment and by the needs of the school's leadership and science teachers. As we begin our project of integrating the sciences with each other and with other disciplines, and of applying them to real world situations, our science advisors will be an invaluable resource. As of this writing, the SSJE Science Advisory Board consists of:

Carol Balfe, PhD, science curriculum consultant to BayCES and Emery School District

Debolina Dutta, MS, science teacher at Marin Academy, credentialed in environmental science, biology, physical science, chemistry and algebra

Steve Wake, UC Berkeley graduate with 4 years of experience teaching integrated science and chemistry at BHS and background in environmental compliance and alternative fuel vehicles

We are optimistic that more local scientists will join as we continue our science Roundtable meetings.

References for this section:

Bradley, J. C., Waliczek, T. M., & Zajicek, J. M. (1999) Relationship between environmental knowledge and environmental attitude of high school students. The Journal of Environmental Education, 30 (3), 17-21. Retrieved September 23, 2003, from Wilson Web database.

Dutta, Debolina. (2004). High School Environmental Science Curriculum to Help Alleviate the Science Education and Environmental Crisis. Unpublished master’s thesis. University of San Francisco.

Morrone, M. (2001). Primary and secondary school environmental health science education and the education crisis: A survey of science teachers. Journal of Environmental Health, 63 (9), 26-30. Retrieved June 3, 2003, from Proquest database.

Perkins, David. Teaching for Understanding. American Educator: The Professional Journal of the American Federation of Teachers; v17 n3, 8,28-35, Fall 1993.

Project Zero (2004, November 14). APLS Teaching for Understanding. http://learnweb.harvard.edu/alps/tfu/index.cfm

Lawrence Hall of Science Global Systems Science curriculum: http://www.lhs.berkeley.edu/GSS/index.html

Philosophy of Instruction

The School for Social Justice and Ecology advocates a teaching philosophy that emphasizes authentic teaching and learning through inquiry and problem solving, encompassing the state educational standards. We believe that in an atmosphere of experiential learning, students will develop a hunger for the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, and can thus be pushed to achieve at a high level in ways that are meaningful to the student and are academically rigorous. Support structures will be in place to facilitate achieving these high outcomes.

We believe that students learn by doing. Students learn when the material is organized thematically, when applications to the real world and to personal experience exist, when students have personal relationships to others in the classroom, and when students are given the chance to think for themselves. Powerful learning experiences are created when students are placed in situations of discovery and are asked to construct their own understanding of subject matter.

Coinciding with an atmosphere of experiential and discovery learning will be a structure of academic rigor. Students will be pushed to formalize their thoughts and demonstrate mastery. Concrete expectations will be communicated to the students through the use of rubrics, displays of excellent student work and demonstrations of excellent practice. Assessments will be authentic, focusing on students’ exhibitions of work done and knowledge gained.

We will give students opportunities to learn through service to their community.

We understand that we will need to develop meaningful professional development opportunities for teachers in order to support our educational goals. Curricular development is an important part of the bigger picture of professional development, as is mentioned in other sections of this RFA.

Finally, we see the necessity of integrating cultural and ecological awareness into the fabric of our curriculum. We understand that a good educational system must be an integral part of a larger cultural system that is healthy and sustainable and is itself part of a larger ecosystem that is healthy and sustainable. Our teaching philosophy must come from an understanding of the problems facing the world today. Through the shared visioning of wise and compassionate solutions to the problems of today we will involve our students in relevant and meaningful educational experiences that will have a profound impact upon their understanding of the world in which they live and their capacity to affect positive change in this world.

The teachers in the School of Social Justice are committed to addressing issues of equity in education, and to bringing about authentic education in the public school system. Having common experience with the BUSD, and such a diverse population of students, we all face the same equity issues in our classroom.

Instructional Strategies

Students learn when the material is organized thematically, when applications to the real world and to personal experience exist, when students have personal relationships to others in the classroom, and when students are given the chance to think for themselves. Powerful learning experiences are created when students are placed in situations of discovery and are asked to construct their own understanding of subject matter.

Critical Thinking:

SSJE will demand intellectually challenging work from students across the curriculum. We will develop thematic units of study which require students to generate and analyze provocative essential questions (CES), while simultaneously acquiring information. These essential questions will lead students through a process of analysis, synthesis, and arrival at their own conclusions, with the ability to explain their own thinking. Students will be encouraged to be problem solvers by grappling with real-life issues through inquiry processes. Students will be exposed to discovery-based and constructivist approaches, where they will be given challenging tasks and required to construct their own knowledge in order to discover relationships and answers. They will go down multiple paths to arrive at both conclusions and further questions. Students will be required to explore point of view and perspective, with attention paid to detecting bias and putting themselves in many different “shoes”. Curriculum will be centered on the complex issues of social justice and ecology, which are perfect vehicles to engage students in critical thinking.

Instructional Strategies:

SSJE will employ instructional strategies which will focus on “teaching high” while simultaneously addressing and tackling the gap in academic achievement and basic skills. These strategies are designed to reach and challenge all students, with special attention paid to those who are “below grade level” or “behind” in academic skills without compromising the academic rigor for all. Students will “ weigh and use evidence, address multiple perspectives, make connections among ideas, speculate on alternatives, assess the value of the ideas they have studied, and present their ideas clearly with the appropriate use of convention” in all classes. (Linda Darling Hammond/Habits of Mind, 2002) Curriculum will be relevant and linked to students’ lives and interests as much as possible within the context of the California State Standards.

•Project-Based Learning- PBL is a “systematic teaching method that engages students in learning knowledge and skills (standards-focused) through an extended inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks.” (Buck Institute for Education) Some of us have already been trained in PBL and we would like more training for the entire staff.

•Teaching for Mastery/Authentic Assessment/High Standards- We want to create a culture of revision where students can rework a paper or project until they are satisfied with their graded/have mastered the skills at a higher level. Grading for us is not punitive; rather it is a chance to assess where you are and how you can push yourself to do better. We are also committed to clear, consistent and public rubrics, portfolios, and public exhibitions of work, which improve student performance and teacher accountability. All teachers will have common expectations for what students should know and common rubrics for assessing that knowledge.

•Constructivist Learning- Teacher as Coach, Guide, and Facilitator who directly and explicitly delivers mini-lessons which students identify or demonstrate a need-to-know on skills in the service of bigger projects. Literature Circles and Socratic Seminar are also effective approaches that fall under this strategy.

•Community Service/Internships- We are committed to creating opportunities for real-world experience which builds responsibility in teenagers, allows them to explore career interests, and see their role in creating a more just society for all.

•Differentiated Instruction within heterogeneously-grouped classes is an area in which we need more training. We are committed to teachers paying special attention to scaffolding- explicit step-by-step processes, checklists and timelines for project management, and “how to” mini-lessons that break down the skills needed to successfully complete a big project or paper. (Research paper = mini-lessons on brainstorming, note-taking, paraphrasing, paragraph organization, editing, etc.) The goal is to break down skills and allow for students to be challenged at a variety of academic levels.

•Equity-based curriculum- Teachers will consistently develop their own consciousness about all of the “isms” and consciously interrupt inequitable patterns both in the classroom/school community. Teachers will be committed to providing truly multi-cultural curricula, not tokenism, but curricula where all groups of people and cultures (especially those often left out of the textbooks) are highly visible and empowered. This approach creates a high level of student engagement. Curriculum will focus, not just the oppression of certain groups, but on alliances between different groups throughout history.

All student assessments will be tied directly into teaching, so that our teaching is actually supported by the assessments themselves. Units will be designed “backwards” so that the assessments are built in and the units are scaffolded to connect to the evaluations of student performance and mastery. We view assessment as an on-going process, not “the test at the end”. The assessments will give teachers, students, and families feedback about the mastery level and progress of the student as well as our own teaching. We are committed to generating clear and explicit teacher-led standards-setting within the guidelines of the California State Standards. Teachers will set internal indicators of success based on student data. This data will become a part of a feedback loop and will inform teachers about how and where to push students forward. We are committed to setting curricular objectives or “standards” in line with the CES and Deborah Meier’s Habits of Mind, Heart, and Work which focus on critical thinking and analysis. These Habits will be over-arching and tied to our rubrics and expectations across disciplines. We are also committed to developing students who are historians, scientists, mathematicians, and writers; we want them to see the world through these different lenses and be armed with critical thinking strategies to approach problems in the world across all disciplines. We will ask: What does it mean to know something or be an “expert” in the different academic disciplines? We are also committed to set our “standards” or curricular objectives to address the question: What is the heart of what we want students to know is different subject areas and how is this all connected to our vision for social and environmental justice? Students will be involved in the assessment process- developing rubrics and using anchor papers for self-evaluation practice. Student participation in this assessment process will allow students to become more autonomous . Rubrics will be posted in all classroom ; teachers and students will use a common language for the “Habits” we use. Assessment will lead to revision and re-assessment.

Students will prepare interdisciplinary or multi-subject portfolios every semester. The portfolios will consist of class projects and writings as well as community or service learning projects. Pieces from these portfolios will be revised until they are ready for Exhibition and have reached the standards set out in the rubrics connected to the Habits of Mind, Heart, and Work. Students will work with an advisory teacher and will represent and defend their Exhibition pieces to a committee consisting of the advisor, another teacher, a parent, guardian, or other important adult, and a peer. These portfolios are linked to the set of “proficiencies” that students need to demonstrate in order to graduate from high school. Students will create this set of “proficiencies” and present their work publicly in the form of Exhibitions at the end of every school year in the areas of: Social Justice; Ecology or Environmental Studies/Science; Literature and Writing; Mathematics, and Spanish.

English Language Development and

Special Education

English Language Learners:

ELL students, just like all students in SSJE, will receive an academically challenging education that will be sensitive to each students comprehension and literacy levels. To facilitate literacy, SSJE will offer a reading program that utilizes Literature Circles, Socratic Seminar, Reading Apprenticeships and Scaffolded Instruction. When giving instructions, SSJE teachers will “check in” with students to make sure they fully understand what is expected for them. SSJE English classes will take advantage of the Writer/Coach Connection tutoring service on campus and ELL students will, when necessary, be encouraged to attend the lunch-time Writer’s Café. The additional heterogeneity that SSJE ELL students present is viewed as an opportunity for teachers and other students.

SSJE teachers will either be CLAD credentialed or working on obtaining CLAD certification. At present, two of the four SSJE Design Team teachers currently hold that credential. SSJE’s lead teacher speaks fluent Spanish and has extensive experience working with Spanish speaking families. All SSJE teachers will participate in regular ELL professional development including attending an ELL scaffolding workshop in the spring of 2005 (see professional development section). The SSJE Leadership Team will meet regularly with the BHS ELL Department staff to receive feedback and additional training in providing effective, quality instruction to ELL students. These meetings will involve the SSJE Leadership Team identifying those ELL students who are struggling to be academically successful, and what strategies the ELL Department recommends for increased achievement. The Leadership Team will also do “Best Practices” visits to other small schools, both at Berkeley High and through the BayCES network, to observe academically successful programs for ELL students.

An SSJE staff member will meet with the BHS ELL Department to review the ELL student’s BUSD District Home Survey to identify the primary languages spoken at home and what accommodations and modifications are necessary to ensure student success. Some of these accommodations and modifications are: SSJE will offer a Language Mentor, an adult role model who was once an ELL student and who will act as a resource/mentor; after-school tutoring programs such as R.I.S.E. that specifically work with ELL students; access to language translation computer programs; and peer tutoring.

SSJE classrooms, hallways and other physical spaces will emphasize global perspectives and promote diversity. For example, all SSJE classrooms will have mini-libraries featuring books in languages of the world. SSJE will also actively recruit teachers of color and bi-lingual teachers. SSJE programs such as Community Events, Back to School Night and Parent-Teacher Conferences will include multi-cultural components as well as translation services whenever possible. The SSJE Leadership will solicit regular feedback from ELL students and their families on whether SSJE feels sufficiently inclusive, welcoming and academically appropriate. When SSJE teachers design curriculum, they will try to include lessons that address the environmental and social justice needs of the countries from where SSJE ELL students are originally from.

To determine how successful SSJE is at raising the academic achievement of ELL students, SSJE’s analysis will be data driven. Utilizing the SASI computer system, several variables will be analyzed. For example, SSJE will compare GPAs of non-ELL students to ELL students. SSJE will analyze the data to see if there are particular classes where ELL students are struggling. If such a problem does exist, SSJE will be ready with a remediation plan. This remediation plan will include additional tutoring in the Advisories, support from the BHS ELL department and collaborative problem-solving with parents. Using a reflective, inquiry model, SSJE staff will look closely at their own teaching styles and habits and will critique them for cultural biases. Because the existing research suggests that ELL students learn best using interactive, integrated curriculum, and worst when lectured to, SSJE teachers will minimize the use of traditional lecturing. SSJE will also use data to compare the academic success of SSJE ELL students relative to ELL students in other BHS small schools as well as the BHS large school. As SSJE students take the California State STAR tests and CAHSEE Exit Exams, SSJE will use those results to assess the quality of instruction that ELL students are receiving. Lastly, SSJE will work with the BHS ELL Department to conduct regular language acquisition assessments to make sure that all ELL students are making satisfactory gains towards English proficiency.

Special Education Students:

SSJE is committed to the inclusion model of Special Education and will have the necessary strategies in place so all students can be successful in SSJE classes. To accomplish this SSJE will start by having a full time special education teacher who will be devoted primarily to the needs of SSJE special education students. This special education teacher, working as a co-teacher with the regular education teacher, will insure that classroom instruction, activities and assignments are accessible, manageable and meaningful to special education students. All SSJE regular education teachers will know who their special education students are prior to the start of the school year and SSJE staff will read and review each I.E.P. Within the first few weeks of school, a staff member will contact the guardians of the special education student and ask if they have any particular concerns or questions. During the school year, the special education teacher and regular education teacher will meet on a regular basis to evaluate both the relevance and accuracy of the I.E.P. and to determine how well the co-teachers are doing at actually meeting the terms of the I.E.P. This will be accomplished by creating common preps wherever possible and having periodic release time for collaboration. When I.E.P. meetings occur, it will be the expectation that all SSJE regular education teachers who have that student will attend.

SSJE staff will also utilize the B.H.S. large school Special Education Department resources such as the school psychologist to strengthen SSJE special education services. The SSJE special education teacher will take the lead role in identifying community-based services that would benefit SSJE special education students. SSJE staff will regularly attend workshops and professional development in the area of special education and will devote time at each Leadership Team meeting to hear a report from SSJE’s special education teacher. The Leadership Team will also invite parents of SSJE special education students to Leadership meetings and ask for feedback, suggestions and concerns.

To further ensure the success of special education students, all special education students will be scheduled into the master-schedule first. Great care and reflection will go into setting up a daily class schedule that will maximize the chances that SSJE special education students will achieve academic success. For example, if an elective has an unusually high number of special education students, then that class’ overall size might be smaller than the average.

SSJE will also offer Peer Tutoring above and beyond the other normal tutoring options available to SSJE students. Because “Social Justice” involves participation and an active role, SSJE will offer its students several ways to make a positive impact on society. One of those options will be for 11^th and 12^th graders to serve as peer tutors for low achieving and special education students. Additionally, SSJE will not hesitate to spend a portion of its budget to hire Instructional Assistants to raise the performance level of special education students.

Lastly, SSJE will use the same data driven model as described for ELL students to assess the quality and effectiveness of its instruction for special education students. SSJE intends to maintain high academic standards for all students and expects its teachers to help students accomplish these goals.

Lesson Plan

We choose this lesson because it connects with our vision and our philosophy of instruction. It challenges students to use critical thinking skills to grapple with current social and environmental justice issues from many different points of view. It also provides students an opportunity to focus on understanding problems and creating solutions. It is project-based and engaging. Furthermore, the lesson plan lends itself to being interdisciplinary, clearly crossing over Math, Science, History, Economics, and English.

Oil, Rainforests, and Indigenous Cultures: A Role Play on Oil and the Huaorani Indians in the Ecuadorian Rainforest

Taken from Bill Bigelow in RETHINKING GLOBALIZATION, pages 286-279

Lesson Plan Description: Students portray 5 groups: The Huaorani Indians, U.S.-based Maxus Oil Company representatives, Ecuadorian environmentalists, evangelical missionaries, and poor settlers or “colonists”. The teacher plays the Ecuadorian President, who presents a plan for “development” of the Oriente- Eastern Ecuador and home to many indigenous groups and a place with more biodiversity than anywhere on earth.

Lesson Objectives/Goals: This unit gives students a glimpse of how globalization plays out in one corner of the world. Students will:

understand the basic components of globalization such as: human lives, ecological complexity, economic growth, “development”, and “progress”.

be alerted to the devastation and the resistance to globalization in this one case study.
see the complexities of the different roles and perspectives of the many players.
gain insight into their role and the role of the U.S.A. in globalization.

Materials:

Construction paper for placards and markers

Copies of roles- 1 per student in each of the 5 groups
Copies of the “President’s Statement on Development in the Oriente”- one for each student in the class.
Copies of a map of Ecuador, including the Oriente region
Optional: Copies of excerpts from the book, Savages by Joe Kane

Procedure

Day 1:

Show pictures or video clips of the Amazonian Rainforest and Amazon River so students can SEE it.
Write the following on the board:
Time: Now
Place: The Oriente (rainforests of Eastern Ecuador)
Roles: Huaroani Indians, Maxus Oil Company, “Colonists”/Workers, Evangelical Missionaries, Ecuadorian Environmentalists
Questions for the national debate on development:
Should the Maxus Oil Company be allowed to explore for oil, build roads,oil wells, and pipelines on Huaroani land in the Oriente? Why? Why not?
If not, what alternative plan do you have for developing Ecuador and The Oriente?
Should the government and missionaries build schools to “civilize” the Huaorani people? Why? Why not?
Hand out the map of Ecuador and point out the province where the Huaroani live. (on the back of the map are the debate questions) Point out the headwaters of the Amazon River and the tributaries of the Amazon River and how they finger up into Huaorani land (The ecological implications are clear- Pollution from the oil exploration will affect the environment and everyone in the area, and will ultimately drain into the Amazon River itself.
Teacher reads aloud excerpts from Savages as a hook /to pique their curiosity about the Huaorani and their culture. Read pages 3 and 4, up to the top of page 5, at the break and then from the break up to page 7 through the break at the bottom of page 8.

Day 2:

Tell students that each of them will portray one of the 5 groups on the board. They have been invited by the President of Ecuador to a national debate on the development of The Oriente. Point out the debate questions on the back of the map. Tell students that each group must arrive at answers to all the questions, but they will have a chance to meet and negotiate with the other groups.
Divide the class into 5 groups and put students in small groups at tables/desks.
Students read their roles carefully and aloud. Highlight important information that will help you answer the debate questions. Everyone in the group should have the same text highlighted. Teacher circulates and distributes placards to the groups and also check for understanding.
Students write an interior monologue – the inner thoughts- from the standpoint of their group. Invent a persona- Who are you? What do you fear? What do you hope for? What experience shave you had that make you feel and think the way you do? Group can brainstorm (web) before they write. They can each take on different personas OR they can decide on one persona and use the web to guide them. Have each group choose one interior monologue and read it aloud to the class as a way to introduce the groups to each other prior to the alliance –building/negotiating session and debate.

Day 3:

Post a sign that says:
National Debate on Development of the Oriente Region of Ecuador.

Write the process on the board.
The President of Ecuador –played by the teacher- will read the “President’s Statement on the Development of the Oriente”.
Members of different groups will briefly question and comment on the President’s statement.
Students, in their small groups, will discuss the President’s statement and arrive at tentative answers to the 3 debate questions. They each write them down.
Representatives will meet with reps. from other groups to negotiate and build alliances to the 3 questions/answers.
Everyone will reassemble in their groups and write up their final speech (position) on the development of the Oriente.

Teacher introduces her/himself as the President of Ecuador. Q & A Session. Students must stay on their viewpoints/positions! Students do not make speeches at this point.
Students discuss the president’s statement and decide on answers to the 3 debate questions. Teacher rotates to make sure that the answers area written from the point of the group they represent and that their evidence is complete and specific. You may want to give students a graphic organizer for pulling passages out of the text that they can use for argument and evidence.
Ask each group to choose half its members to be traveling negotiators. Their job is to move from group to group seeing what the different points of view are and seeing what possible alliances could be built or deals made. (15 minutes)
Negotiators come back and present info. To their groups. Groups take notes. At this point, everyone has to have their notes organized in a graphic organizer so that all members have all information and arguments written down.
Teacher delivers mini-lesson (model it!) on how to structure the notes in the format of a speech / persuasive essay (1 paragraph for each debate question) Make sure to go over counterpoint and concession.
HOMEWORK: Everyone writes a speech from the notes in the graphic organizer.

Day 4:

The groups get together, read over the speeches, and choose the speech that they think is the strongest. Groups assign roles for everyone to participate in the role play.
Students sit in groups in a circle with their placards visible. Make sure that people know that this is a role play and that people are asked to represent ideas and beliefs that they don’t necessarily believe in. Don’t make it too personal and don’t take it too personally. Play your role with passion and conviction!
Reintroduce yourself as President and tell the “assembly” that what ever plan we decided on for the Oriente, you expect 100% agreement. Allow each group to make its presentation and then field questions, challenges, and comments. People can speak from their speeches and their notes. This brief discussion after each speech works best.
AT the end of the role play, thank everyone for participating with their opinions and tell them that as President, you will be making the final decision.
FINAL THINK-WRITE- Ask students to step out of their roles to do this. Think-Write Questions:

What do you think the President should decide for the development plan? How should s/he answer the questions and WHY?
Are the Huaorani holding up “progress”? Isn’t in their own interests to become “civilized” and “modern”? Why/Why not?
The Maxus Oil Company is just trying to make a profit by selling oil that you use everyday. Couldn’t it be argued that they aren’t the problem, but you are? Why? Why not?
There are not many Huaorani living in the Oriente region. Do you agree with the President that it is selfish for them to deny the rest of the country oil and the development it could bring? Why? Why not?
What was the point of this role play? What did it make you think about or learn?

Class discussion on some of these questions.

DAY 5:

For a follow-up, we can show the video, Trinkets and Beads and use the teaching guide to that video.

School /Family Partnerships

Parent Partnerships

Our Community Building Program:

Before the School Year begins -

In the first few weeks of the school year, advisors (directly tasked with home communication) will meet with their new students and family members/caregivers, either at school or student’s home, based upon family preference; a home visit would include a tour of the neighborhood. During this session, the student will discuss their personal and academic goals and challenges, their passions and interests, etc. Family members will provide related input as well as their expectations for their child’s experience. The advisor will share information about the school and our vision; set expectations around two-way communication, family involvement, student conduct, and conflict mediation; and present family leadership opportunities. The advisor will also give a brief overview of the contract process. From this conversation, a formal school/family contract tailored to the individual student will emerge for agreement and signature.

During the School Year –

Monthly meetings will be held (on campus and in the homes of parent volunteers) to allow for the discussion of equity issues with teachers, students and family members. Family members will share information and experiences that shed light on what is and what is not working in terms of student success. We will provide child care during these meetings as well as Spanish translation as needed.

A 1-2 page bilingual newsletter discussing upcoming SSJE and Parent Resource Center events and highlighting notable successes, a “teacher’s corner”, etc. will be mailed on a regular basis to our families and a broader mailing list to include our partnering community organizations, advisory board, etc.

On a quarterly basis, the advisory topics will include family/student topics where family members will be invited to share in the advisory discussions on campus during the school day.

Family Pizza Nights will be held at least twice a year, bringing together parents, students, teachers and administrators in a fun and open format to bolster networking and teambuilding in our school community.

Through advisors, teachers, and administrators, our family members will be encouraged to participate in class (assisting teachers), on field trips as chaperones, etc. Their presence in our space and our activities (on and off campus) will be welcomed by all.

Families in Leadership Roles –

For families who are able to take on leadership roles, we will look to them to host community meetings in an effort to attract and welcome prospective students and their families, in addition to maintaining a connection with existing families who are unable or unwilling to come to campus events for whatever reason. Additionally, families of upperclassmen will be paired with families of incoming 9^th graders as family buddies to provide personal and perhaps more comfortable contact for new members of our school community. We will consider stipends for these leadership roles and/or a paid position for a Home School Liaison to ensure consistency and reliability. The Liaison position would be designed specifically to keep in regular contact with our families.

Other Outreach and Ways to Stay Connected During the School Year –

We will establish a strong and viable communication channel with the Parent Resource Center in an effort to support its programs and events and to provide much needed assistance with family/student issues that may surface.

Lastly, we will strongly encourage and support the participation and membership of our teachers and design team members in local community-based organizations, such as PCAD, BOCA, etc. in an effort to stay closely connected to the community.

School Culture

Our overall goal at SSJE is to directly, rigorously, and reflectively address the achievement gap at Berkeley High School which is closely correlated with race, gender, and social class. We are committed to providing personalized structures and support that will help assist ALL students to achieve and succeed. We are committed to transforming the ways that inequities present and repeat themselves in our schools. We are committed to: a culture of strong, personalized relationships between students and teachers, a culture of inquiry and data collection, and accountability for student growth and success.

We will identify and assess student skills (by way of middle school data and a writing & reading proficiency exam upon entry into 9^th grade or whatever year of entry into SSJE) and create a Life Learning Plan within the context of a parent/guardian/teacher/student conference. We might do this assessment during the summertime as individualized meetings.
Students will have an advisory class and an advisory teacher who stays with them for the 4 years of high school. This person will be the home liaison and will monitor student academic progress as well as support students both academically and emotionally.
We will institute “vertical families” so that older students will have connection and responsibility for helping out and connecting to younger students.
We will offer a community service tutoring elective for students to offer academic support to other students.
Teachers will engage in regular cycles of inquiry to reflect on and evaluate gaps in student learning, needs for teacher training, and to determine appropriate interventions.
Communication with the families of