Preparing for the School Year Ahead
Dear District Leaders, School Leaders and ENL Coordinators,
As we transition to a new school year, we’re sending heartfelt congratulations for your unwavering dedication and your students’ successes last year. Your commitment to excellence and the inclusion of English as a New Language (ENL) learners has made a significant impact in shaping a brighter future for our communities.
In our work this year and our tour of nearly a dozen schools in our network these past few months, we have identified trends facing public education overall, and propose some strategies to consider as your plan the upcoming school year.
TIP #1: ENL
Gaining proficiency among new English learners begins with creating safe spaces for learning.
Let ENL students, especially newcomers, know that they belong and are wanted in your classrooms. Communicate with them and their families your conviction that they can and will learn. As you perpetuate a sense of belonging, your ENL students will feel more confident and less stressed, which will provide a conducive learning environment. Stay tuned for our blog post this Fall on creating belonging in your school.
Enrollment for our ENL Consortium is now OPEN. Serving over 30 NYS schools, our consortium offers fully-customized live coaching, embedded professional development, CTLE-eligible* courses, and more through eligible Title III funds. Here’s our FAQ.
The Consortium is a boon for LEAs who can’t access those funds because your allocations are below the federally-mandated minimum. To sign up, fill out our form or schedule a virtual meeting. The deadline is end of August.
*Pending NYS approval.
TIP #2: ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Address educator burnout by creating meaningful spaces in the calendar for engagement, and rest.
As you finalize your 2024-25 schedule, use a well-known charter school strategy and build in time every 4-6 weeks for teachers to attend professional development days free of students, or during common teacher prep periods. Make this a sacred time for individual and group opportunities to reflect on professional growth, teacher input on school improvement, and joyful decompression.
You can also use some of this time for our Holding Space initiative launching this Fall. Research has shown that improved teacher morale, still near all-time lows, does impact student proficiency in various ways that we describe in our FAQ. We have designed Holding Space to provide a supportive environment for teachers while also supporting your teacher retention goals through all of our ENL Consortium programming.
Holding Space is included in our ENL Consortium and also available for additional customization for your school/district. For more info, register for our information sessions on Tuesday August 20, at 1pm EST or Wednesday, August 28 at 4pm EST, or schedule a meeting with us.
TIP #3: STUDENT RECRUITMENT
Maintaining enrollment begins with building significant inroads with families.
Families and students remember schools that make efforts to show they belong. Multiple touch points over the summer, beginning before the year ends with welcome BBQs and invitations to year end events and continuing throughout the summer with home visits, small care packages, and even summer meals can reduce enrollment churn. And worst case, your swag will be seen in the community. If you need support in building out a recruitment and retention strategy, send us a note.
Sense a theme here? As experts of community-based schools and districts in New York and beyond, we have seen students and teachers thrive in schools with cultures and systems that meet them where they are, and also welcome and faithfully incorporate their perspectives and feedback.
Thank you for your dedication. If you’d like to reach out over the summer to strategize, drop us a line or send an email reply.
Lastly, we have a paid opportunity for your high school juniors and seniors…
Create your own national platform -- like a podcast, blog or online talkshow -- on education issues you care about and that impact you! Our Energy Convertors initiative is looking for opinionated students who want to build informed and agentic platforms to advance education. We cover the costs and supply students with coaching, professional editing and feedback. There are only a limited number of spots available, so please forward this to any student who fits the bill! The deadline to apply is September 15, 2024.
Photo credits: Choice Charter School, f/k/a NYC Montessori Charter School is a pre-K-5 school in the South Bronx, where their team proudly serves nearly a third of their population in special education settings, including 12:1:1 and a quarter of their population as English as a New Language Learners. Stay tuned to our blog Great School Voices for a profile of their school in the fall.