The Galef Institute Joins National Coalition of Adolescent Literacy

Different Ways of Knowing School Selected as School to Watch by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform

Galef Institute Receives Grant to Improve Student Learning through the Arts

$100,000 William Randolph Hearst Foundation Grant Supports Middle School Initiative

Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Awards $100,000 Grant for School Improvement in New Jersey

The Rose Hills Foundation Supports Efforts to Improve Student Achievement

U.S. Department of Education Awards the Galef Institute $1 Million to Continue High-quality Arts Instruction Implementation in Different Ways of Knowing Schools

U.S. Department of Education Awards $1 Million to Different Ways of Knowing and Los Angeles Partners to Strengthen American History Instruction

Ana Tilton, Ed.D. Joins the Galef Institute as Executive Director
Dr. Ana Tilton, a public education leader with over 30 years’ experience in educational policy and administration, public school administration, and teaching, has joined the Galef Institute as Executive Director. In this newly created position, Dr. Tilton will oversee all operations of the Institute’s school improvement services.

“Public, private, and charter school communities will all benefit enormously by working with the Galef Institute and from Ana’s vast experience, deep knowledge of education issues, and strong management skills,” said Linda Johannesen, President and C.E.O. of the Galef Institute. “Ana’s professional commitment to educational excellence will be a tremendous asset to the Galef Institute as we expand the scope of our efforts to serve more schools struggling to attain adequate yearly progress.”

Prior to joining the Galef Institute, Dr. Tilton was Senior Vice President, Systems Redesign for New American Schools, where she provided executive coaching and coordinated services for school superintendents in support of improved teaching and learning for their traditionally underserved student population. Serving in the role of intermediary for the Bill and Melinda Gates and Carnegie Foundations, she provided operational oversight and technical assistance to create small, distinctive new high schools in the San Diego School District. Previously, as senior vice president for the New York–based Edison Schools Inc., she successfully managed all operations and services for over 52 charter schools across the nation, exceeding corporate academic and financial targets annually.

Dr. Tilton has held numerous positions as a California public school administrator, including Superintendent; Assistant Superintendent of Instructional Services; Director of Curriculum, Assessment, Research, and Projects; Principal; and Assistant Principal. She served as an Instructional Leader in Denver in the roles of Curriculum Specialist; elementary, middle, and high school teacher; and Arts in Education Curriculum Resource teacher. Her professional affiliations include the California Association of Latino Superintendents; the American Association of School Administrators; the Urban Superintendent’s Association; the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents; and the Association of California School Administrators.

“I am pleased to have this opportunity to work with an organization committed to improving teaching and learning for underserved students through effective and innovative school services,” said Dr. Tilton. “I was attracted to the Institute’s fifteen-year track record of success in multiple school environments and with students at all levels of ability and look forward to helping the Institute continue its mission of helping educators develop all children to their full potential.”

Dr. Tilton received a B.S. and a Masters in Education from the University of Colorado and a doctorate in Educational Policy and Administration from the University of Southern California.

• Experiencing and expanding what we already know about the arts: bringing together educators and arts practitioners in the community for workshops and professional development seminars leading to the creation of five classroom demonstration protocols.
• Public engagement on the arts: raising awareness of arts learning and increasing effectiveness of arts advocacy through structured community conversations and dissemination of arts-enhanced district climate surveys.
• District-wide arts planning team: multi-stakeholder teams will create a strategic plan for arts education in each school district, developed with a view to securing further private funding of the arts in each area.

American Honda Foundation is making significant contributions to the work of the Galef Institute in support of the Institute’s mission to dramatically improve classroom teaching and learning.

As part of its efforts to raise mathematics and science achievement in the middle grades, the Institute has received a $250,000 grant from American Honda Motor Co., Inc. to help develop the Different Ways of Knowing Middle Grades Mathematics and Science Initiative—a set of research-based, field-tested tools and practices that accelerate student learning in mathematics and science, especially for middle grades students most at risk of academic failure and in low-performing middle schools.

The grant provides for the development, piloting, and implementation of innovative mathematics and science modules that will engage students and increase achievement in these subjects as required by No Child Left Behind legislation. The modules will be used in conjunction with a three-year course of professional development for teachers—including on-site coaching, study-group meetings, peer classroom observation, and planning meetings—so that educators can learn the principles of teaching and learning on which the modules are based and the practical aspects of their use.

“The Galef Institute has met Honda’s criteria, including that the project be ‘dreamful, scientific, creative, youthful, foresightful, and broad in scope,’” noted Linda Johannesen, Galef President and CEO. “This unique mathematics and science training program brings together research findings in mathematics and science standards, adolescent development, adult learning theory, intelligence, learning theory, and the role of the arts in learning in order to meet the needs of young adolescent students and their teachers.”

In keeping with its commitment to improving the lives of children, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. has awarded the Galef Institute $5,000 to fund the participation of mathematics and science teachers at Corvallis Middle School in Norwalk, California in the Different Ways of Knowing school-improvement initiative. Beginning in July 2004, the Institute will engage teams of mathematics and science teachers in the planning, training, and implementation of research-based and tested strategies for teaching diverse students rigorous mathematics and science content in ways that will highly motivate and engage all students. Specifically, these strategies will help teachers learn to integrate the visual, performing, and media arts to enhance and accelerate student learning and achievement in algebra, geometry, earth and life sciences, and physics.

“Since 1989, Different Ways of Knowing strategies have supported Los Angeles teachers in creating nourishing and academically rich classroom settings that enable poor and minority students to achieve to high standards,” indicated Johannesen. “Different Ways of Knowing shares Toyota’s commitment to improving the lives of children—all children—by providing teachers with strategies and tools that build on the diverse strengths and talents of diverse children and young adolescents.”

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Different Ways of Knowing has joined ten whole school reform models in the formation of a new coalition designed to help districts and schools meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind legislation. The new Coalition for Comprehensive School Improvement (CCSI) will help schools and districts select services from the member models in an effort to customize their needs and help them build their capacity to meet No Child Left Behind requirements.

According to Sally Kilgore, president and CEO of Coalition member Modern Red SchoolHouse, “The Coalition is responding to districts’ needs by developing innovative market-driven solutions for some of their toughest educational challenges. We are collaborating to provide districts more options in building the capacity schools need to become bastions of academic excellence that support the success of every student.”

“Partners in the effort will work more collaboratively to respond to the growing number of schools cited as needing improvement and to help districts mix and match essential tools and services,” noted James McPartland, director of Coalition member Talent Development High Schools and director of the Center for Social Organization of Schools and professor of sociology at the Johns Hopkins University. “Schools cannot claim victory by solving their learning challenges piece meal. Working on improving school attendance or professional development without better literacy and math coaching, school leadership, curriculum mapping, and data analysis and collection is a recipe for failure.”

The goals of the eleven-member Coalition are to:

• Develop partnerships and align efforts with other organizations interested in increasing academic achievement district wide
• Coordinate timely reports on student achievement gains at schools implementing comprehensive school improvement
• Support districts and states seeking to coordinate district-wide improvement with specific model adoptions at the school level
• Support annual reports on changes in classroom and school practices linked to federal funding of comprehensive school improvement
• Help researchers track the evolution of school improvement strategies used by members of the coalition
• Increase pathways and connections between elementary, middle, and high schools that build professional learning communities and increase student performance
• Assist school districts in building a staff development strategy that can create and sustain self-improvement practices
• Inform the national conversation about best practices in teaching, learning, and leadership development.

Different Ways of Knowing joins Coalitions members Accelerated Schools; ATLAS Communities, Inc.; Co-Nect, Inc.; Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound; High Schools That Work; Talent Development High Schools, Johns Hopkins University; Modern Red SchoolHouse; National Turning Points; Success for All Foundation; and Quality Educational Systems, Inc. The Coalition anticipates including other members in the future.

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The Galef Institute Joins National Coalition of Adolescent Literacy

In an effort to bring effective adolescent literacy practice to middle grades educators, the Galef Institute has joined leading educators, researchers, and policy makers in the establishment of the National Adolescent Literacy Coalition (NALC).

Building on the Institute’s success in elementary education reform over the last twelve years, and a five-year $13 million federal research and development contract dedicated to expanding the elementary initiative into the middle grades, the Galef Institute supports middle schools and schools with middle grades students in their efforts to transform teaching and learning and improve literacy gains across the curriculum.

According to Susan Galletti, Galef’s Vice President, School Services, “The opportunity to network with major organizations dedicated to advocating for research-based best practices for young adolescents is a first—and should go a long way to advancing the literacy goals of the Galef Institute to ensure that all students in all groups achieve their lifelong goals.”

The Coalition’s goal is to provide information, portraits of best practices, and training and/or technical assistance in support of adolescent literacy work to Title I directors and other educators and organizations whose mission is the improvement of literacy skills among middle grades populations.

NALC’s efforts are in response to the latest results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which indicate that only 31 percent of eighth graders read at proficient levels or better, and 28 percent are reading at “below basic” level. Among children of low-income families, 15 percent read at proficient level or above and 44 percent—close to one-half—are reading below the basic level.

The Coalition cites current research, which “provides conclusive evidence that activities to promote adolescent literacy at the secondary level should be a major priority of the nation’s policy makers and educators,” to help position adolescent literacy as a major priority of the nation’s policy makers and educators.

Among the essential elements of an effective literacy school identified by NCAL are:

1. High expectations and access to rigorous curriculum and instruction for all students, regardless of background and prior achievement.
2. Committed, collaborative leadership, which includes administrators and teacher leaders working with staff to implement a well-defined literacy program that meets the learning needs of students
3. Research-based instructional strategies in literacy, taught across the content areas, that support students’ reading, writing, thinking; promote understanding; and help students internalize the strategies. Literacy instruction that is embedded in content area classes should focus on discipline-specific strategies that foster deep understanding.
4. Multiple forms of assessment to identify strengths and weaknesses of student’s literacy competencies, instructional strategies, and professional development activities. Learning opportunities should support students’ diverse literacy learning needs, including the struggling reader, ELL students, average and above average readers.
5. Accelerated intervention plans for individual students based on the results of reliable diagnostic measures. In the case of reading, these intervention plans may take into account a variety of student strengths and needs, including motivation and engagement, basic word recognition, reading fluency, vocabulary, prior knowledge, and the ability to make inferences from text.
6. Research-based, job-embedded, and on-going professional development opportunities that provide teachers and administrators with instructional strategies that support literacy across the content areas. To build a professional learning community, teacher teams need the opportunity to meet regularly to learn, plan, and reflect on their teaching and students’ learning, with a special focus on looking at student work.
7. Expert teachers (content teachers and literacy coaches) who know how to model explicit strategies to support the professional learning needs of other teachers. These experts should themselves have intensive professional development and ongoing support.
8. Teacher preparation programs that specifically address literacy development in the individual content areas. These should include strategies for helping students with varied literacy needs.
9. Literacy strategies that take into account the cultural and linguistic diversity of the students, including use of multi-media, the arts, hands-on activities, real-world experiences, and culturally relevant materials. Multi-lingualism should be a valued goal for all students, not just some.
10. Access to a variety of engaging literacy materials to support the multiple reading levels and interests of students, and that are sufficiently academically rich so that weaker readers will accelerate their performance while advanced readers will still be challenged. In addition, professional books, videos, and other materials are necessary to support teacher professional learning needs.
11. Special attention to the transition years (e.g., sixth and ninth grade), with accelerated courses in academic literacy and other strategies to significantly boost academic achievement.
12. Adolescent literacy instruction that fosters active engagement of the family and community in their children’s education.

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Different Ways of Knowing School Selected as School to Watch by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform

Auburn School, a Different Ways of Knowing school in Auburn, Kentucky, was selected as a School to Watch by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform. Highland Middle School, a Different Ways of Knowing middle school in Louisville, Kentucky, was selected as a finalist. Both schools are part of the Different Ways of Knowing for the Middle Grades research and development project, developed under a $13 million contract with the U.S. Department of Education.

For the past three years, Different Ways of Knowing has provided professional development services, including coaching visits and leadership conferences, to Auburn School. Mike Hurt, the principal of Auburn School, notes, “Different Ways of Knowing has been instrumental in spurring on our staff's professional growth and expertise in best practices for educating middle grades students. The Different Ways of Knowing coaches have provided on-going professional development opportunities, which have served to equip our teachers with strategies that motivate, engage, and challenge our middle grades students to achieve at high levels. Through monthly coaching visits, professional development institutes, and the assistance of an on-site facilitator, our teachers (and our students) have been provided with high-quality resources and strategies that we have collaboratively ‘tailored’ to meet the needs of our students, our teachers, our school.”

Schools to Watch are selected after a rigorous process conducted by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, which evaluates three criteria characteristic of high-performing schools: academic excellence, developmental responsiveness to the needs of early adolescents, and social equitability. After the initial nominations, schools complete applications including extensive quantitative and qualitative data. Then, in one- and three-day site visits, the Forum evaluators observe classrooms and interview students, teachers, community members, and principals, as well as gather additional data. After this comprehensive process, the Forum selects Schools to Watch.

Susan Galletti, Vice President of School Services for Different Ways of Knowing, comments, “We are extremely proud that schools implementing Different Ways of Knowing for the Middle Grades have been selected for recognition as Schools to Watch. We believe this is evidence of the results we are producing in middle schools nationally.”

Learn more about our services to middle grades schools.
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Galef Institute Receives Grant to Improve Student Learning through the Arts

The Galef Institute's Different Ways of Knowing, in partnership with the California Academy for Liberal Studies (CALS) Charter School, has been awarded a grant from the Department of Education's Professional Development for Arts Educators Program. The grant enables the Institute to provide a professional development program focusing on the development, enhancement, and expansion of a standards-based arts education program, as well as the integration of arts instruction into other subject area content.

The two-year professional development program for arts specialists at CALS is based on the Galef Institute's Different Ways of Knowing approach to the arts in service of school achievement for all students, in which arts strategies are used to

• Accelerate students' understanding by differentiating instructional strategies that enable them to access and assess prior knowledge; deepen learning and higher-order thinking through metaphor and analogy; and use multiple symbol systems to represent new knowledge through products of learning
• Enhance and accelerate literacy development and mathematical thinking
• Celebrate and honor diverse cultural heritages and express cross-generational voices
• Maximize community assets, such as museums and local artists, to enhance academic goals

The rigorous program will train arts specialists in ways to improve standards-based teaching and learning in their content areas; to use standards-based planning protocols to effectively integrate the arts across all curricular areas; to understand research-based instruction and assessment; and to integrate the arts to reflect the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation. It will also position them within the school and community as leaders and mentors in arts-based learning; as collaborators with classroom teachers; as designers and recorders of student work that meets standards in the arts and other content areas; and as collaborating partners with community artists.

The intensive training consists of two strands—classroom implementation of arts standards and arts integration across the curriculum—and will be delivered through professional development workshops, job-embedded coaching, study groups, on-line training, and ongoing support and networking.

"This grant award enables us to work with the arts educators at CALS, position them as leaders in the school, and build their capacity to help classroom teachers integrate the arts in service of learning as a way to make non-arts content accessible to all kids," noted Susan McGreevy-Nichols, the program's Project Director and National Director of Planning and School Support at the Galef Institute.
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$100,000 William Randolph Hearst Foundation Grant Supports Middle School Initiative

Through the generosity of the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the Galef Institute has received a $100,000 grant in support of the Different Ways of Knowing middle grades initiative.

The initiative brings professional development and a course of study to teachers, principals, administrators, and specialists in the fifteen Different Ways of Knowing pilot middle schools and ten additional schools. Facilitated by a team of coaches—all former classroom teachers and school principals steeped in content knowledge and Different Ways of Knowing instructional, literacy, and arts-in-learning strategies—the initiative's professional development services focus on the teaching skills needed to ensure that today's diverse students will be successful learners and will be challenged to learn at high intellectual, social, and creative levels.
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Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Awards $100,000 Grant for School Improvement in New Jersey

In recognition of Different Ways of Knowing's "extraordinary work on behalf of schools, teachers, and the children they serve," the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation has awarded the Galef Institute a grant of $100,000 to recruit and train a team of instructional, artist-educator, and leadership coaches to assist in implementing the Different Ways of Knowing framework in four New Jersey schools.

"In spite of daunting challenges, your efforts to elevate the profession of teaching, and to embed the arts into every aspect of K-12 curriculum, are fostering educational values that may, in the words of our own mission, 'help make society more humane and the world more livable,'" said Executive Director David Grant. "The arts-rich curriculum along with an approach to organizational development that relies on substantial one-on-one coaching, leadership development, and artists-in-residence, is what inspired us to support this work."
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The Rose Hills Foundation Supports Efforts to Improve Student Achievement

The Galef Institute has been awarded a $55,000 grant from The Rose Hills Foundation to support the implementation of Different Ways of Knowing at Julia B. Morrison Elementary School, a K-5 Title I school in the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District in Southern California.

As mandated by the No Child Left Behind legislation adopted by the State of California in January 2003, Morrison Elementary School must demonstrate adequate yearly progress in student learning and achievement. With funding from The Rose Hills Foundation to help meet this goal, the school has committed to pursuing a three-year partnership with the Galef Institute and will implement Different Ways of Knowing as the school's improvement initiative.

The three-year grant, which spans September 2003 to September 2006, will enable the Galef Institute's coaches to work with Morrison Elementary School to build teacher capacity, develop school leadership, and create nourishing and academically rich classroom settings that allow all students to become deeply engaged in the curriculum and achieve high standards. The intensive professional development activities inherent to the Different Ways of Knowing model will provide teachers with the knowledge, strategies, and tools needed to help students raise their academic performance and achievement levels.

Morrison Elementary School serves 733 students in a highly impacted urban area. Ninety-three percent of the school's students are non-white, and 33 percent are English language learners. And of the total number, 67 percent are from families with income levels low enough to qualify students for free or reduced meals.
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U.S. Department of Education Awards the Galef Institute $1 Million to Continue High-quality Arts Instruction Implementation in Different Ways of Knowing Schools

The Galef Institute has been awarded a $1 million Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination grant from the U.S. Department of Education to further develop the Different Ways of Knowing model in strengthening students' academic performance by providing professional development for teachers in arts-integration strategies and arts education in the classroom. Awarded on the basis of project need, significance, and the quality of the project design, management plan, project personnel, and project evaluation, the three-year grant spans October 2002 through September 2005.

"This grant allows the Galef Institute to increase the number of artist-educator coaches and enhance their role in their work with teachers," said Galef President Linda Johannesen. "It enables the Institute to further design and develop training materials for artist-educator coaches that will become a tested model for national dissemination."

A key objective of the project is to integrate the visual, performing, literary, and media arts into the core elementary and middle school curricula. A majority of the sites that will participate in the project are inner city and rural schools that serve Title I eligible students. "Different Ways of Knowing's experience and field studies show that a focus on integrating arts into the core curriculum helps teachers increase their ability to successfully meet the many different learning needs of students at risk of educational failure," explained Johannesen.

Activities supporting the program include the recruitment and training of artist-educator coaches, the creation of a three-year in-service training for artist-educator coaches, and outreach to local artists, arts community organizations, and families. "The primary goal for this project, like that of Different Ways of Knowing, is to improve the quality of teaching and learning for all students and to ensure success within a rigorous, joyful, arts-infused learning environment," said Johannesen.
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U.S. Department of Education Awards $1 Million to Different Ways of Knowing and Los Angeles Partners to Strengthen American History Instruction

Constructing American Identities in a Pluralistic Society, a $1 million grant, is a collaboration between District J of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the National Council for History Education, Different Ways of Knowing, and Loyola Marymount University. The grant provides a group of forty American History teachers in District J three years of ongoing, substantive professional development in the content and teaching of their academic subject. This core group of teachers will be trained and supported in mentoring more than 200 other American History teachers within the district to bring about district-wide improvements in both the quality of instruction and student subject knowledge.

During each year of the three-year project, teachers will participate in a weeklong history institute and six, one-day seminars with historians and master teachers of history to deepen their content knowledge. This intense work on the content and teaching of traditional American History will be extended through ongoing connections with historians at local universities and scholars, curators and archivists at other local cultural institutes, including the Skirball Cultural Center, the Huntington Library, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Different Ways of Knowing will provide to participating teachers curricular and pedagogical support that will strengthen their ability to teach American History to students in an engaging manner.

District J serves a predominantly Hispanic population of 62,000 students in twenty-six elementary schools, three middle schools, three high schools, and one K-12 school. In an urban area with a median family income half the statewide average, District J is equivalent in size and challenges to other large urban districts across the country. "Constructing identities as Americans is vitally important for our students, vitally important for our community as a whole, and vitally important globally," said Linda Johannesen, President of the Galef Institute. "If the students in District J—residents of impoverished inner city communities—are to accomplish this and thus prepare to fulfill their role as citizens, they must have a deep and thorough understanding of American History," Johannesen said.
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