When developing the learning program for this year’s Winter Meeting in San Antonio, the teachers on our local planning team was adamant about offering the opportunity for school visits to participants. We wanted to not only showcase the diversity of schools in our city but also to showcase the SRI work that is being done here. We all agreed that the chance to visit other schools is rare, especially for teachers, and that the potential for participant learning was great. The teachers and school leaders were also interested in using the visits as an opportunity to get feedback for their schools and to use this as an authentic learning experience for all participants, including the presenters. So school visits were a sine qua non.
The six schools chosen for visits included San Antonio schools where the SRI mission, practices, principles, and/or processes are part of the school life and culture – or where this experience could help support that emergence. Participants were able to choose from among the following schools: Olmos Elementary, Serna Elementary, Lee High School, the International School of the Americas, Toltech T-STEM Academy, and the Winston School. Each visit had a different focus and a unique agenda particular to that school’s inquiry question and/or experience. There was also an effort to include a range of school “types”: public/private, elementary/secondary, in-district magnet/non-magnet, lottery/selective/open enrollment, thematic/non-thematic, and bilingual/dual language.
Before setting out to visit the schools, participants were able to hear from Dr. Christine Drennon, Director of Trinity University’s Urban Studies program. She provided an overview of significant demographic, sociological, and historical features of San Antonio, giving a context for the school visits in San Antonio and more broadly for schooling in the US (urban, suburban, rural dynamics). After her presentation, participants loaded into yellow school buses and headed out to schools in various parts of the city.
Lee High School
Lee High School is a comprehensive high school just north of downtown San Antonio. Lee houses two magnet programs, the STEM RAM Academy and the North East School of the Arts (NESA), and also hosts a small magnet school, the International School of the Americas. The 2,400 students on this campus make Lee one of the city’s most diverse schools, not only in terms of its demographics, which closely reflect those of the city of San Antonio, but also in terms of the classrooms and learning experiences students have access to. Critical Friends Groups have been a part of Lee since 2001, and SRI protocols and practices are often used in both student and adult learning.
The ten Winter Meeting visitors to Lee High School were welcomed by principal Rick Canales, who gave an overview of the school and the various programs housed there. Participants then had the chance to visit Lee, NESA and STEM classrooms. After observing in classrooms, visitors participated in a series of roundtable discussions with students representing these three groups (Lee, STEM, NESA). Students spoke eloquently and honestly about their school, what distinguished it from other schools, and about what student life is like on a campus with some many different programs and schools. They also fielded the curious visitors’ many questions. Finally, participants were treated to a delicious Tex-Mex lunch cooked and served by Lee’s culinary arts students. Over lunch, participants had a chance to visit more with Rick, as well as to process their visit with fellow participants.
The International School of the Americas
The International School of the Americas in San Antonio’s North East Independent School District is a magnet school on the campus of a larger comprehensive high school (Lee High School). The International School of the Americas (ISA) is one of Trinity University’s professional development schools as well as a member of the Asia Society’s International Studies School Network. ISA offers a demanding curriculum where students, teachers, and parents come together to challenge themselves to learn and grow with the support needed to be successful. Teachers at ISA strive to use best practice and to incorporate 21st century skills and technologies into their classrooms. For the last eleven years all faculty members have participated in Critical Friends Groups as part of their regular professional development.
Kathy Bieser, principal of ISA, welcomed ten visitors to her campus. She gave a context for the visit, including the background and history of ISA, its demographics, and how SRI protocols and processes are a part of the school culture and can be seen in classrooms with students as well as in the adult learning on her campus. Participants were then able to observe in ISA classrooms. Afterwards, participants met with a group of ISA teachers, among them CFG coaches, who talked about the work of CFGs on their campus, the impact on student and teacher learning, and how the work influence/shapes and is a reflection of school culture. Over a lunch prepared by the Lee culinary arts students, participants debriefed what they saw and heard during the course of their visit.
Serna Elementary
Winter Meeting participants first came to know Serna Elementary when they found welcome cards hand-drawn and written by Serna students in their welcome bags; these cards described “the best thing about San Antonio” from students’ perspectives. Serna Elementary is a Title I, Pre-K-5 school serving approximately 600 students and is located in northeast San Antonio. The campus is home to the Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities (PPCD). Serna serves a small neighborhood of homes with the majority of the students coming from a community of about fifteen apartment complexes. Serna is one of the schools recently featured in Leading for Powerful Learning (Breidenstein, Fahey, Glickman, and Hensley, 2012) (as are ISA and Lee). For the past four years, Serna has maintained an active, voluntary Critical Friends Group which meets monthly after school. SRI processes and practices have also been integrated into professional development sessions campus-wide.
Fifteen Winter Meeting participants from a variety of states and a variety of roles in education visited Serna Elementary. Visitors met as a whole group in the library as Principal Jeff Price shared the school’s background information and demographics. Then smaller groups of 3-4 based were formed based on participant’s area of grade level interest (pre-K, K,1), (3-5), (K,3,5). Everyone participated in an general tour of the campus and then visited grade levels of their choosing, keeping in mind an overarching focus question framed by Jeff and the leadership team: “How can we transition the use of protocols from adult learning to student learning in the classroom?” The local campus CFG group had previously met to discuss this dilemma with Jeff as the presenter, but wanted outside voices to help them move their thinking forward. The group of visitors and Serna teachers reconvened as a large group and engaged in an Issaquah Protocol together over lunch. Visitors were able to share a wealth of ideas, suggestions, and observational notes on what they had experienced in the classrooms. Serna teachers appreciated that they were able to participate in a great conversation in which visitors to their school shared outside, honest perspectives. Pairing that with their own discussion from their CFG meeting, teachers at Serna were able to come up with ideas to enrich kids’ learning through the use of protocols.
Olmos Elementary
Olmos Elementary is a PK-5 school tucked back in to a residential community north of downtown San Antonio. Opened in 1956, Olmos Elementary is rich with the history and tradition of San Antonio. Olmos Elementary is home to three different types of classrooms: bilingual one-way (only native Spanish speakers), bilingual two-way (mixed class of native Spanish and English speakers), and general education classes. The culturally and historically rich community, various language learning environments, and dedicated staff help to make Olmos an interesting and wonderful place of learning for young students.
Visitors to Olmos Elementary were provided with an opportunity to experience a “Chalk Talk” to prime their thinking around three key questions: What is learning? What is student voice? What is language development? Then, participants visited classes through the lens of those same three questions. The “What, So What, Now What” protocol was adapted to share ideas from the class visits with the campus. Of course, no visit to San Antonio would be complete without a delicious meal of fajitas, beans, and rice. SRI guests should have experienced a sense of the issues and challenges facing Olmos Elementary while framing their learning in the context of protocol-driven conversations.
The Winston School
The mission of The Winston School is to provide a personalized, college preparatory education for students (K-12) with high potential and identified learning differences. The school strives to provide an academic setting in which each student may learn in an age-appropriate program that focuses on applying students’ strengths to address variations in learning. Administrators and faculty work hard to create a school atmosphere which fosters mutual respect, self-confidence, psychological support, and acceptance of differences. It is their goal to serve as a national educational model for teaching children with learning differences.
Sixteen Winter Meeting participants took part in the visit to the Winston. They were welcomed by the Headmaster, Cha Karulak, in the school library. Purposefully, there was little formalized preparation before beginning their School Walk Protocol; all participants reconvened in the library after about an hour observation period in lower, middle, and upper school classrooms. The questions for the School Walk Protocol were: What do you see? What don’t you see? What do you wonder about? and What do you think this school is working on? Participants debriefed as a large group, and by design notes from this conversation were later shared with the school leaders and the Board of Directors. During and after the debrief, participants also had the opportunity to meet with faculty and students while on campus to discuss the school’s unique mission of Advocating for Minds that Learn Differently.
Toltech T-STEM Academy
The Winter Meeting visit to Toltech T-STEM Academy at Memorial High School in San Antonio’s Edgewood ISD began with a drive through the historic West Side of San Antonio, highlighting the neighborhood described by Dr. Christine Drennon for its color, persistence, and deep and rich cultural traditions and entrepreneurial spirit. The Toltech T-STEM Academy offers a project-based, STEM focused curriculum with emphasis on 21st century learning skills and preparation for college. The name “Toltech” is an amalgam of the Aztec word, tolteca, meaning “people of knowledge” and technology symbolizing one of the most important tools that students use to investigate problems and design solutions. Demographically, the school’s portrait includes a student body with 95% Latino ethnicity and 80% free and reduced lunch and an special education population of about 10%. The small, structured, and focused nature of the school allows Toltech students to keep their roots firmly in the ancestry of their families, while becoming skilled and successful creators and sustainers of a bright future.
Upon arrival, visitors were greeted by the principal, Dr. Eddie Rodriguez. Students shared the Mace Ceremony, a ritual that marks important occasions which honors the cultural roots of the Toltec peoples who were known as “the people of knowledge.” Students explained that the name of their school was inspired by these ancestral people who built an empire that inspired other cultures, including the Aztec and Mayan peoples.
Visitors were then divided and matched to student guides for personal tours of the school and its classrooms. Thus, Toltech students and teachers were able to share with the visitors what makes their school unique. Visitors were able to continue the conversation with Dr. Telford, principal of Memorial High School and Dr. Rodriguez over a fajita lunch from a local favorite restaurant. Participants learned more about the students, the history of the STEM Academy, and the vision for the Academy’s first graduates who will cross the stage in May of 2014.
Conclusion:
In all, 78 winter meeting participants took part in the school visit experience, and many others learned of the work of the schools and format of the visits by sharing their experiences in their home groups and with school colleagues at the school and back at home. Each of the schools had participants in the Winter Meeting as well. Thus, in 2013 – while the majority of the formal SRI Winter Meeting took place in a downtown hotel, and while many informal learning and cultural experiences happened in San Antonio as participants made use of their free time to explore San Antonio – the planning team made sure that SRI Winter Meeting participants had the opportunity if they desired to go out into schools – to build shared experiences and knowledge between and among SRI participants and local educators – not just for the meeting participants but also to leave an imprint on San Antonio schools – “the international SRI was here.” We believe this will help us continue to build transformational learning communities and work for educational excellence and equity around the world – including in San Antonio.
These visits could not have happened without the dedicated effort of volunteers from each of the schools and many others from schools we were not able to visit who helped line up busses (literally), plan and tune agendas, guide groups, and support the overall vision.