This is the remarkable story of the creation of a new kind of high school that truly aspires to educate all students to high standards. Believing that a deeply personalized culture can prevent the senseless violence that has invaded many public schools, educators at Souhegan High School in Amherst, New Hampshire, set out to create a safe, caring, and academically rigorous school. In this volume, Silva (a teacher) and Mackin (a principal) chronicle their experiences as they worked through the many challenges that ultimately resulted in this extraordinarily successful school. Featuring their honest reflections and the voices of other participants, this book: Portrays a real public high school (not a small alternative school) that is successfully implementing most of the reform practices recommended by national reform models.Demonstrates how schools can strike a balance between the need for stricter safety measures and the social and emotional needs of each student, thus avoiding violent outbursts in schools.Details the school’s structure, curriculum, professional culture, and systems of accountability for all students in a heterogeneous, inclusionary setting.Describes the use of teaming, advisory groups, exhibitions, and senior projects.Provides a working model of the “Breaking Ranks” recommendations, including the importance of “personalization” and democracy in education. “An important book. Souhegan High School proves that consequential and imaginative change from ordinary routines can happen in a suburban school serving middle-class students. Standards of Mind and Heart demonstrates that sensible and sensitive reform can happen anywhere. There can be no excuses.” —Theodore R. Sizer, Coalition of Essential Schools “This book reflects the best thinking in secondary school reform literature and demonstrates how it has been enacted in a real high school. This is an important example of what works.” —Gerald N. Tirozzi, Executive Director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals
Featuring engaging narratives, this “how-to” book delves into reflection as a concept and provides specific, replicable tools for professional practice. Each chapter draws on a particular school situation demonstrating the value of teacher reflection and describing the nuts and bolts of the process, including protocols for handling many different circumstances. “At the end of each chapter I was dying to go back to the classroom and adapt a new idea into my practice. But probably more importantly, I saw my own practice in a new light as I read these engaging accounts of the work of other teachers. They ring true and honest to what schooling is about and how and why good teachers never give up—and why they love their work.” —Deborah Meier, Co-principal of Mission Hill School and author of In Schools We Trust “Typical professional development fare will rarely take us close to the particulars of our own practice. . . . As I read through these chapters, finally, it’s that sense of thoughtful becoming, that possibility of action in the midst of uncertainty that, at the end of the day, is the promise of this book.” —From the Foreword by Mike Rose
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