In Revisiting Professional Learning Community’s at Work (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, 2008), the authors submit that there are four “pillars” around which a PLC is built: mission, vision, values and goals. These pillars contain essential questions, addressed when GCE Chicago High School students and faculty use 21^st century ingenuity to demonstrate a PLC that works. While GCE pursues global citizenship through the educational experiences it designs for its students, team members, and the world, GCE Voices (GCE’s blog) reveals an ever-expanding mélange of digital imprints that bridge the divide between writing and living the school’s mission. And while GCE peers, teachers, mentors and professionals conjure a global, choral-response to the mission—to the question, ‘Why do we exist?’—a broader context in which to achieve a shared purpose is established.

If GCE’s mission explains why the school exists, then DuFour, DuFour & Eaker (henceforth, DDE) confide that its vision should answer the question, ‘What do we hope to become?’ GCE promises to be a rigorous education platform for aspiring global innovators to explore their sense of purpose and social responsibility in a creative and engaging, college preparatory environment (-GCE website). GCE Voices persists then as a proactive, online experience that motivates a community of learners, establishes direction, and inspires an emerging standard of excellence. GCE Counselor and Coach, Claudia Hinton therefore regards a blog as successful when it promotes “well-organized ideas that encourage connected, affected citizenship, and foster deliberate acts of kindness.”

Ms. Hinton’s perspective is particularly useful because she knows that everyone can contribute something of value to society, and she knows that it is infinitely more important for organizations to show what they do, versus what they believe. GCE Curriculum Chair, Keziah De Fusco agrees. In response to the DDE question, ‘What commitments must we make to create the school that will improve our ability to fulfill our purpose?’ Ms. De Fusco writes, “Consider that the recent flurry of exceptional GCE video blogs supporting national peace movements resulted from a visit to the Venezuelan consulate downtown. When students levied pointed questions to the consulate representatives about the Venezuelan government’s stance on human rights, education, environment, and more, the resultant discourse added depth to students’ learning, and inspired them to use their blogs as vehicles for converting knowing into doing.”

Finally, DDE ask, ‘What goals will we use to monitor our progress?’ Or, how will GCE know if its blogging community has devised what James Champy refers to as an appropriate rhetoric of accountancy? GCE’s Global Connections Coordinator, Carlos Leite responds, “In just our first year, GCE students have already achieved a confident perspective, and their notion of composition—even visual composition is much improved. The blogs are milestones unto themselves, like snapshots in time, but also a part of GCE’s larger art. We have created the subtext, and soon we will dare to stimulate feedback that creates a beautiful web of commenting and group engagement.”

Wednesday morning, Northwestern University’s Kellogg Center for Nonprofit Management hosted a presentation featuring Tony Bryk, co-author of Organizing Schools for Improvement. Mr. Bryk recalled research from his book, including a study of two neighboring elementary schools in Chicago with vastly different trajectories. The case-comparison served as a catalyst for discussion about the need for schools to define and implement accountability measures while working within their communities to establish a broad and durable context to support learning.

As their instructional responsibilities near an end for the 2010-2011 academic year, GCE Chicago High School’s faculty will soon gather to reflect and improve upon a successful inaugural campaign. If Mr. Bryk’s prescriptions are any indication, GCE has built a sturdy foundation. Consider that in its first year, GCE already bears Mr. Bryk’s four essential influencers of school learning: 1) professional capacity 2) instructional guidance 3) school learning climate, and 4) parent, school, and community ties.

GCE Founder/Director Eric Davis’ hiring of master teachers with professional experience in their respective disciplines reinforces a culture of trust at GCE; peers are respected as accomplished educators who bring expert credentials and extraordinary content knowledge into the school. Of course, this matters even more in the classroom, where GCE’s juniors bring high-order questions about engineering and design to Integrated Math-Science Instructor and professional architect, James Young. Similarly, GCE’s freshmen—including an ambitious group of foreign-born students—routinely discuss experiments in language and composition with Brazil-born Carlos Leite, GCE’s Global Connections Coordinator and a curator of Fernando Pessoa’s poetic works. In summary, the credibility and commitment of GCE’s faculty enables the school to fulfill its capacity to coordinate curriculum and solve problems in classrooms.

Tony Bryk’s concept of instructional guidance focuses on curriculum organization and the advancement of academic goals of instruction. Mr. Bryk refers to these subsystems more plainly as the “what” and “how” of instruction. Concerning the former, GCE’s curriculum supports three key threads of global citizenship: 1) cultural awareness 2) 21^st century literacy, and 3) career readiness. As for the latter, GCE curriculum is designed to be global, integrated, purpose driven, project and inquiry-based, to guide students toward mastery, incorporate multiple forms of assessment, differentiate for individual learning styles and interests, and it is deliverable in-person or on-line (-GCE website).

GCE’s faculty provide a student-centered learning climate that profoundly effects student motivation and engagement. While nurturing supportive academic norms, teachers ensure that GCE is an orderly and safe environment in which to learn by sharing responsibility for classroom maintenance, as well as for the upkeep of instructional resources, recreational/lunch rooms, hallways, etc. It may be said then that GCE’s ‘all hands on deck’ approach to school leadership is an enhanced and non-threatening version of Peter Drucker’s formulation, “What gets measured gets done.” In any case, GCE’s investment in collaboration and community means “What gets supported gets done.”

Finally, GCE embraces Mr. Bryk’s assertion that schools improve when they act deliberately to secure parent-community-school ties. GCE’s small class sizes and customized, even individualized curriculum reflects an interest in providing an intimate education to Chicago’s daughters and sons. This ethos to learn and live intimately extends to parent-community partnerships, such as when Congo-born GCE students relayed their experiences growing up in conflict as part of a parent-provided, international-fare luncheon welcoming Congolese participants in Falling Whistles’ campaign for peace. Whether for peace, or simply rest, GCE has good reasons to whistle this summer.

*Postscript: For more on Falling Whistles’ daring initiative, please visit http://www.fallingwhistles.com/main/

This spring, GCE educators are preparing students to renovate their recreation room (aka: wreck room) via multi-disciplinary lessons on urban renewal. By investigating scientific and mathematical fundamentals of urban planning, drawing upon literary and historical perspectives, and exploring artistic flourishes in progressive design, GCE faculty believe that students will be more likely to contribute in creative, meaningful ways to the improvement of spaces inside and outside their school.

Borrowing from Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s Understanding by Design, this entry focuses on how GCE’s master teachers implement backward design to deconstruct-then-construct (with plenty-o’-student help…) unique paths to engaged citizenship. In UbD, Wiggins and McTighe posit three Stages of Backward Design: 1) Identify desired results; 2) Determine acceptable evidence, and; 3) Plan learning experiences and instruction. The following paragraphs demonstrate how subdivisions of these Stages are expressed in GCE’s junior-level Urban Planning unit.

Urban Planning fits the 1^st Stage of Backward Design because improving environments is a big idea…in need of uncoverage. As students work in small groups and teach each other about the past, present, and future of urban planning in Chicago, they fill knowledge gaps for each other and spark meaningful connections…genuine inquiry and deep thought, and encourage transfer in sounds and pictures that stimulate generative thinking. Their work is provocative and arguable because organizing audio and visual interpretations requires students to make editorial decisions that frequently arouse debate.

Meanwhile, GCE instructors ensure that appropriate goals (Common Core standards, plus…) are identified in lesson plans that ‘incorporate both short and sustained research, and propagate understanding by synthesizing multiple sources to tell important stories.’ The work is relevant because the class uses prior and acquired knowledge to fuel great ideas for campus beautification.

Regarding the 2^nd Stage of Backward Design, students in Urban Planning know that dramatic, local examples provide clues to where they’ve been, where they are, and where they’re going. They learn from past and present urban expressions and feel empowered to make corrections while teachers ply criterion-based scoring tools to ensure that student contributions are recorded, discreet self-assessments are obtained, and critical feedback is provided.

GCE’s students are hooked on the 3^rd Stage of Backward Design and engaged in digging into the big ideas. Classes succeed, in part, because students work as collaborative researchers to locate pieces to a puzzle that they’re all working on. It’s essential then that teachers help students define their roles and work with vigor because teammates are relying upon timely inputs. Because student-to-student learning and collaboration are imperatives at GCE, students have adequate opportunities to explore and experience big ideas…for the required performances. They are familiar with the evaluative criteria. Their in-class objectives are clearly expressed and reinforced in common language by the instructors.

Yet another UbD challenge requires a more creative response because students are not often given sufficient opportunities to rethink, rehearse, revise, and refine their work based upon timely feedback. Not within a single class. However, because GCE students create artifacts of their work that are both personal (self-assessments) and shared (classroom presentations, blogs…), they continually access, review and discuss their work with peers, and with instructors—a preferable alternative to the hyperactive temperature-taking that too often disrupts flow and prohibits substantive accomplishments in classrooms.

Throughout the term, GCE’s self-governing students evaluate their work, reflect on their learning, and set goals. They transform ideas into raw materials—building blocks. Their study of urban development becomes personal and their outcomes matter even more. Backward design works.

Although “An American Argument” is not among GCE’s spring-term offerings, this beta-version, expandable, graphic organizer (http://popplet.com/app/#/20756) reflects my interest in planning and technology, and explains how Carlos Leite, Hiu To, Keziah De Fusco, and I organized at GCE last term to deliver the goods (waka, waka…).

This  video compares GCE’s Fabric—its primary threads of interest—to elements of a layered diagram recently presented by Keziah De Fusco to her freshman and junior classes. The animation also introduces specific characteristics (Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work, 2008) that guide how GCE uses 21st century tools. Forthcoming entries will report on these expressions in greater detail. In the meantime, advance congratulations to those who locate in the video a modified version of a popular schematic that Daniel Burnham included in his Plan of Chicago (Hint: look up!).

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” –Daniel Burnham

A few months after the baseball team on the North Side of Chicago won its last world championship, Daniel Burnham famously launched The Plan of Chicago—a grand slam of a city plan that brought order and dignity to a region nearly destroyed by the ascent of the wretched Cubs. Or so a version of history goes. Never mind that Mr. Burnham’s Plan and the health of the Windy City were hardly swayed or threatened by the Cub’s ephemeral flirtation with beautiful baseball 102 years ago. What’s important here is that once upon a time Daniel Burnham cried foul and an entire city straightened its swing.

South Side (White Sox) to North Side (Cubs) slurs aside, Daniel Burnham’s Plan did indeed rescue a city in dire need of correction. Mr. Burnham’s Plan was the primary document that roused feckless politicians and galvanized civic reformers into re-imagining and re-configuring a city that poet Carl Sandburg would soon thereafter proclaim as having risen from under the smoke…under the terrible burden of destiny…laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle.

More than a hundred years, and countless battles later (*mostly mayoral and aldermanic hustles-cum-clashes—save the occasional, “shoot to kill” directive…), Chicago stands tall as a global player. Yet this city will again spend 100’s of millions more this year than its $6 billion budget allows. Moreover, on May 16, 2011 an eponymous Machine will build, break, and rebuild the City that Works for the first time in 22 years sans Daley diesel. Instead, a man brazen enough to call shotgun while a well-appointed seat was still very occupied by Hizzoner’s son—will brace for a cacophony of millions of heavily taxed and intolerant—and no longer laughing—citizens ready to fling magnetic…catcalls from the backseat: ‘Where are we going? Are we there yet? What’s Your Plan? Are we There Yet?’

“Asking Questions and Living Into the Answers” wasn’t one of mayor-elect Rahm Emmanuel’s campaign pledges, but it should be a guide to meeting unprecedented challenges on the 5^th floor of City Hall and throughout Chicago’s 50 wards. However, if sending a dead fish to a political rival remains Mr. Emmanuel’s most creative response to crisis, then Global Citizenship Experience (GCE) founder-director, Eric Davis will not have to worry about pressures from Chicago’s politically incorrect to share his rights to a winning maxim.

Capturing the spirit of Daniel Burnham’s Plan, Mr. Davis presents GCE—a secondary school thriving in its first full year—as a progressive remedy to neglected turf (Chicago-area education) in need of repair. Mr. Davis explains that while his work with Educational Endeavors and Camp of Dreams (also Davis-led initiatives) has more than capably satisfied programming interests in approximately 100 schools in the Chicago area, GCE is an attempt to give students a more complete education.

Mr. Davis, like Mr. Burnham, has assembled a team of brilliant innovators, who cannot resist the opportunity to help him fashion a more productive, and eminently more satisfying urban domain. GCE Chicago High School has thus become a living laboratory—an open answer to the question of how teenagers receive a quality education that is grander, better organized, and reflective of research promoting understanding for tomorrow.

But there are side effects: a stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth has infected many who’ve indulged in learning at the friendly confines of GCE on the North Side of Chicago, and word is spreading that the Curse (Success!) of GCE has legs, a bus pass, and no time to lose. As summer beckons, GCE—like the Chicago Cubs—will work feverishly to achieve success before taking off most of June and July.

Relax. It’s all part of the Plan.