Classroom Partnership Best Practices
Effective classroom partnerships involve implementation with:

1. Academic rigor
   
2. Culturally enriched activities -- grounded in the Principles of Learning.

Principles of Learning

1. ORGANIZING FOR EFFORT

Everything is organized in a clalssroom partnership to evoke multi cultural experiences and support efforts to send the message that partnerships are expected to be geared to standards.  All students are involved in a rigourous curriculum, matched with standards, along with time and financial support that creates a meaningful, culturally enriched experience.

2. CLEAR EXPECTATIONS OF PARTNERSHIPS

If we expect all students to achieve at high levels, then we need to define explicity what we expect all partnering teachers and students to learn from the partnership experience. .

3. FAIR AND CREDIBLE EVALUATIONS

If we expect students and teachers to put forth sustained effort over time, we need to use assessments-as well as curriuclm-aligned to standards. Assessments that meet these criteria provide parents, schools, and communities with credible evaluations of what individual students know and have experienced through the partnership collaborations.  Partnering teachers are expected to complete a brief web survey upon completion of the partnership and are encouraged to provide copies of partnership lesson plans, outcomes and by-products, so that future partnerships can benefit from earlier experiences and lessons learned.

4. ACADEMIC RIGOR IN A THINKING CURRICULUM

Partnerships must engage students in active reasoning about major concepts that students are expected to experience deeply. These concepts, at every grade level, instruction and learning, must include commitment to a knowledge core, high thinking demand, and active use of knowledge.

5. ACCOUNTABLE TALK

Talking with others about ideas and partnership goals is fundamental to learning. For classroom partnerships to promote multi cultural learning, it must be accountable to the learning community, to accurate and appropriate knowledge and to rigorous thinking.  Accountable talk seriously responds to and further develops, goals that create value-added benefit for a successful partnership(s). Teachers should intentionally create the norms and skills of accoutable talk throughout their partnership.

6. SOCIALIZING INTELLIGENCE

Intelligence is a set of problem-solving and reasoning capabilities along with the habit of mind that leads on to use those capabilities reguarly.  Intelligence is equally a set of beliefs about ones right and obligation to understand and make sense of the world, and ones capacity to figure things out through the partnership experience(s).  Creating a respectful appreciation of diverse cultures (both self and others) can be learned through the daily expectations put on learners particpating in a partnership.  By calling on students to use the skills of intelligent thinking-and by holding them responsible for doing so--teachers can teach intelligence. This is what teachers should do with students they expect much from; it should be standard practice with all partnerships.

7. SELF-MANAGEMENT OF LEARNING

If parnterships are going to be responsible for the quality of student thinking and learning, they need to develop--and regualry use--an array of self-monitoring and self-management strategies. These metacognitive skills include noticing when one doesnt understand something during an activity and taking steps to remedy the situation, as well as formulating questions and inquiries that let students explore deep levels of meaning.  Partnering teachers need to help students manage their own learning by evaluating feedback they get from each other, bringing their background knowledge to new learning, anticpating students having learning difficulties and helping them judge their progress while moving toward the goals of the partnership.  Thus, partnerships should create learning environments designed to model and encourage the regular use of self-management strategies and socilzation.

8. LEARNING THROUGH PARTNERSHIPS

Much of the power of partnerships is learning that can be brought into schools by organizing environments so that complex thinking is modeled and analyzed, and by providing mentoring, staff development, and coaching by Diversity Leaders. As teachers, you may undertake extended projects and develop partnership(s) both in and beyond the classroom


NOTE: Descriptive criteria in the partnership format and examples of partnerships that meet standards are available through the Classroom Partnership Coach.  Teahcers can refer to these plans to help them analyze and discuss their work