1. Critical Friends Protocols: This protocol is developed by the Annenburg Institute for School Reform (Univ. of Penn.) and is used by the Coalition for Essential Schools. It brings teachers together 6-10 teachers in a school to seriously look at their own classroom practice and explore ways to make change and strengthen what is working well. Teachers bring to the table student work, case studies of students, curriculum plans, and classroom dilemmas. Specific protocols are used to explore issues and to create a strong sense of solidarity among teachers committed to this work. (I have done this work with elementary, middle and high schools throughout NYC over the last 6 years & was trained by the Annenburg Institute).
2. Curriculum Mapping: This approach to planning engages teachers in curriculum design by keeping 'the end in mind' as they work toward creating a course of study for the year. Teachers begin working on designing essential questions and then work on curriculum that cultivates enduring understandings and uses assessments that have meaning for both students and teachers. Multi-genre units are emphasized as is keying the curriculum for the Regents exams without allowing 'high stakes testing' to drive the curriculum in ways that compromise its academic integrity.
3. Landscaping Literature: This approach to teaching literature emphasizes the use of the visual and performing arts as well as music to bring literature to life. Teachers are introduced to practical and economic ways to integrate the arts into the English/ ELL classroom without exacting tremendous costs with respect to time and financial resources. Rather than slotting students as 'kinesthetic learners, visual learners' and so forth, the work of landscaping a literary work of art calls upon all students to enter the text-world through practices that tap into the seven habits that have been associated with highly proficient readers (see Kean, et. al., 1999; Pressley, 1998; Pradl, 2000).
4. Socratic Seminars: This approach to working together in the classroom cultivates the capacity to critically engage both fiction and non-fiction and to listen to members of the class as engaged, interested and respectful participants. SS usually range from 40-50 minutes long, once a week and encourage dialogue about literature rather than debate. This approach to discussion about literature also emphasizes students as active participants who pose questions and explore multiple points of view about the literature they are studying.
5. Study Groups: This model offers faculty opportunities to read recent studies pertaining to adolescent literacies, assessment, learning communities and school reform that clarify misconceptions about what effective reform in middle and high schools requires and how the needs of adolescents differs from the needs of struggling readers at the high school level. Materials are read 1-2 x a month and discussed in small groups during PD sessions. Teachers spend time becoming familiar with the research available on curriculum and developing criteria for assessing the curricula needs of their students. Resources are taken, for example, from the Hoover Institute, the Annenburg Institute for School Reform, Best Practices, Coalition for Essential schools and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Web Site.