Every learner belongs in every classroom.
At Common Grounds, classes are not tracked. Every classroom includes both a general education teacher and a special education teacher. IEPs are tools for justice, not labels. This section of our team's design paper, authored by Vicki and Sayo, explains how we build a curriculum that is rigorous, inclusive, and college-preparatory for all students.
Curriculum — Tracking and Inclusion
Classes will not be heavily tracked as this could disserve and even harm students and their learning. Our school will not be heavily tracked because heterogeneous grouping benefits and supports all learners (Nurenberg, 63). We do AP classes for seniors to earn college credit through nearby colleges. Students must meet course requirements for the different courses.
Special Education will be an inclusive program in which each classroom will have a general education teacher and a special education teacher. Multiple of these special education teachers will be bilingual teachers and able to work with students who are learning English.
Additionally, there will be two 15:1:1 and two 12:1:4 Life Skills classrooms for students between the ages of 14-21 years-old which will focus on developing vocational and life skills and will have access to the PAES Lab; this is based on an existing structure at Albany High School. These students will be eligible for the New York State Alternate Assessment (NYSAA) and will be able to fulfill the requirements to earn a Skills Achievement Commencement Credential (SACC).
Our curriculum is college prep by our high expectations for all students, teachings of disciplinary literacies, teaching the five habits of the mind in multiple contexts for different content, and we have vocational pathways and more embedded into the curriculum in our "after high-school" class to prepare students for life after high-school.
IEP Writing
We look at IEP writing as a tool for social justice giving us ways to make sure all students have full access to the breadth and depth of the educational curriculum. IEPs provide useful scaffolds for individuals like assistive technology or modified texts to help them be able to learn skills being taught. The amount of instructional scaffolds, varying texts, and product complexity are different ways teachers can teach for different levels in the same classroom (Nurenberg, 76).
We want to focus on making all students independent learners so we will make sure to fade scaffolds when students no longer need them to avoid issues of over-scaffolding (Athanases, 1351). We want to prepare students for their plans after high-school such as college, to do this teachers need to transfer control of learning to students (Athanases, 1346).
References
Athanases, S. (2018). Locked in sequence and stuck on skills in a college-for-all culture for urban Latinx youth. Urban Education 56(8), 1328-1359. https://doi-org/10.1177/0042085918806944
Meier, D. (2005b). The power of their ideas: Lessons for America from a small school in Harlem. Beacon Press.
Nurenberg, D. (2016) Honoring all learners: The case for embedded honors in heterogeneous English language arts classrooms. English Education, 49(1) 63-98.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.