954 W. Washington Blvd.
Chicago, Illinois 60607
Tel: 312-738-0022
Fax: 312-738-0044
Programs
Scaling Up Best Practice
Scaling up Best Practice is a four-year program to implement a research- based model for strategic school improvement. The model demonstrates how to accelerate school improvement in a large urban district and delivers significant quantifiable results for its participating students, teachers, parents and schools.
Scaling Up Best Practice builds networks of neighborhood schools that focus on accelerating student learning. The networks do this by improving the quality of instruction through professional development; focusing parent engagement on student learning; and expanding shared leadership within and across schools.
SLI provides teachers with professional development support and training of the highest quality, drawing on nationally recognized models for excellence in strengthening teacher skills. The overall goal of SLI’s work with teachers is to provide them and their schools with both new skills and a core-group of trained faculty members who can help lead ongoing professional development within each school and network, especially after their direct work with SLI has ended.
Teachers participating in SLI’s Professional Development Component receive New Strategies & Tools for Teaching; In-Classroom Coaching & Modeling; and Facilitator & Peer Coach Training. Teachers from our network schools also make Site Visits to other classrooms to see in-action the ideas and practices they are learning from SLI.
Shared Leadership
In addition to working with teachers and parents, SLI’s model for strategic school improvement centers on building and developing Shared Leadership among each school’s parents, teachers and principals, both within individual schools and throughout each neighborhood-based network. Focusing these key stakeholder groups on coming together as an effective team, SLI encourages them to develop and implement a common vision for their schools and share responsibility for making positive change.
The fundamental team of the principal, the SLI teacher coordinator, and the lead parent facilitator at each school learn how to instill increased mutual trust, build better relationships, and continue the lessons they learn from SLI. Taking the shared model further, SLI also gathers each school’s leaders together as the Leadership Team for each neighborhood network. These monthly meetings and summer planning retreats establish goals and objects, evaluate activities and results, and guide planning for each school and the whole network.
SLI provides teachers with professional development support and training of the highest quality, drawing on nationally recognized models for excellence in strengthening teacher skills. The overall goal of SLI’s work with teachers is to provide them and their schools with both new skills and a core-group of trained faculty members who can help lead ongoing professional development within each school and network, especially after their direct work with SLI has ended.
Teachers participating in SLI’s Professional Development Component receive New Strategies & Tools for Teaching; In-Classroom Coaching & Modeling; and Facilitator & Peer Coach Training. Teachers from our network schools also make Site Visits to other classrooms to see in-action the ideas and practices they are learning from SLI.
Parent Engagement
SLI staff and parent volunteers deliver a year-long series of workshops to at least 30 percent of families in each network school. The parent facilitators are graduates of the SLI program. Parents learn educational games and other activities that help their children with schoolwork, both in-class and at home.
Parents also learn about the importance of their positive attitudes and behavioral modeling about learning for their children's long-term success.