Four Focus Areas of Service
LACES support focuses on four comprehensive areas of whole school change: school design and culture, leadership, classroom practice, and community connections, through which schools explore the CES Ten Common Principles and define and enact new practice. LACES assists schools in this process through the exploration of essential questions that place the student and the life of the student's mind at the center of the work.
School Design and Culture
- Establishing a clear vision, focus, share values, and purpose
- Surveying current programs, results, readiness and capacity
- Engaging stakeholders in collaborative inquiry
- Inquiry-based, data-driven strategic planning
- Redesign of physical space usage: facilities, learning environments
- Aligning budgets and funding
- Expanding roles of school personnel and faculty
- Rethinking use of time and scheduling
- Creating systemic professional development connected to school focus
- Developing new approaches to personalization and powerful teaching and learning
- Building commitment to inclusion, and equity
Leadership
- Forming smaller learning communities of teachers (cohesive core and grade level teams, staff meetings, focused on student learning)
- Connecting and coordinating with district personnel (personalization/ autonomy/ accountability)
- Building the capacity of teachers and principals to lead continuous school renewal centered on student learning and achievement
- Strategies for understanding and leading transformational change
- Capacity building and support to create participatory leadership
- Ways to develop a culture of reflection and inquiry
- Data-driven analysis, planning, and decision-making
- Tools for effective meetings, team-building, and communications
- Creating strong internal accountability systems
- Strengthening teacher and community leadership
- Sustaining a culture of equity and inclusion
Classroom Practice
- Creating collaborative teams of teachers (Critical Friends Groups, inquiry teams, study groups, grade level teams, departmental teams)
- Learning tools for working with colleagues: protocols, backwards planning, powerful standards
-
Building a repertoire of responsive teaching strategies:
- Authentic standards-based learning tasks
- Student-centered inquiry learning, integrating student voice
- Project-based experiential learning
- Differentiated instruction
- Cooperative learning teams
- Multi-aged classrooms
- Team teaching
- Integrated curricula
- Habits of mind and responsibility
- Literacy across the curricula
- Standards-based assessments, rubrics and exemplars, portfolios, exhibitions, performance-based assessments, and public accountability
Community Connections
- Community organizing to develop leadership capacity and agency
- Parent and family involvement strategies to enhance student learning
- Opportunities for community service learning
- The community as a source of knowledge and expertise
- Creating climates of equity, inclusion, and access