A New Partnership Between ATLAS and New Horizons for Learning

The ATLAS experience over the past ten years has been a truly remarkable one! Our new partnership with New Horizons for Learning is but the beginning of what the entire ATLAS community hopes will be a continuing conversation framed by our emerging partnership and our mutual commitment to providing hope and opportunities for all children.

The ATLAS Communities design unfolded as the product of a collaborative effort among three school districts and four of the nation's most respected educational organizations. The task was not only to draw the best from each enterprise, but to create a coherent design in its own right, more than the sum of its parts. Currently, ATLAS is in use or in development in over 100 schools in 14 states, serving 72,000 children across the country, in large and mid-sized urban as well as rural areas.

The ATLAS framework for change is comprehensive, a full pathway from pre-school through high school. It involves complete communities, not only the schools themselves, respecting the differences among these communities and the individuals in them. We attempt to accommodate and nurture those differences within an adaptive design, one that assumes that all children can succeed even if the paths to success must vary.

When we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. --Wendell Berry

These words capture the beginning of the journey for so many ATLAS schools. Many "to be" ATLAS schools had tried multiple things, some successful and some not. Principals and teachers were looking for something to pull disparate individual efforts together not only within single schools but across multiple schools – something that would truly be greater than the sum of its parts. The ATLAS pathway whose purpose is to bring coherence to a child's educational experience has remained central to the ATLAS vision. Every new school that joins the ATLAS network brings a new set of hopes and dreams towards the realization of this vision.

Much of the effective schools research attributes success to 'strong [reading] programs', a 'safe and orderly environment', or even 'effective teaching' but the research gives us little notion of how a school gets from here to there. I would argue that a strong reading program or dynamic school culture is not what makes a school effective. A school, however, in which the staff working together, examines itself, decides that the reading ability of the students is within its power to change, and sets about to design a program to do just that, will undoubtedly become an effective school.

A school will become effective not just because of a strong reading program, however, but because the school community possesses a set of beliefs that causes them to value the following ideas: reflection, working together, power to effect change, unwillingness to believe that certain students can't learn, continuous improvement, and the importance of leadership. A healthy school culture and successful readers result from finding ways to translate these beliefs and ideas into action.

And action many of the ATLAS schools have taken! Sometimes I wonder if they know how much they have accomplished. The beliefs and ideas described above are put into action daily in ATLAS school/pathway teacher study groups; in the efforts of ATLAS Pathway Leadership Teams to promote the vision across the pathway and the larger community; in the performances of understanding designed in and across ATLAS classrooms; and in the leadership modeled by principals who "walk the talk"! In order to succeed, ATLAS requires changes in beliefs, behaviors, and relationships within and among all participants in the educational process.

Over the past few years, we have learned much about the factors that surround and impinge on any change effort. In most cases, change involves tough choices. ATLAS is an acronym – Authentic Teaching, Learning, and Assessment for All Students. The descriptor "authentic" is resonant with a long history of progressive education in which school activities have always been designed and judged in terms of their meaning to the child and in light of the child's relation to the broader life of the community. In this context, the ATLAS design helps school communities build and sustain the capacity to:

• focus on longer term projects designed to satisfy specific curricular goals

• embed the habit of looking at student work to understand what children know and are able to do

• incorporate regular reflection on the part of both students and teachers

• help teachers be versatile, supportive, and willing to reveal areas in which they are not experts

· Support principals as leaders and learners

• build a high level of support on the part of parents and community members.

ATLAS is a complex endeavor, still in its early years. The effort continues to be informed by every partner with whom we join, providing examples of best practices and thereby reshaping and refining our collective work. The learning happily continues.

About the author

As Executive Director of ATLAS Communities, Inc., Linda Gerstle provides overall leadership and management for the implementation of the ATLAS design in districts nationwide, ensuring a range of organizational assistance for their continued success. She has been responsible for all facets of the program's design, outreach, implementation, and evaluation. In other positions, Ms. Gerstle has directed multiple and diverse initiatives in both public and private agencies, working with key leaders to build strong communities of practice and citizenship.

Contact Information

ATLAS Communities, Inc.
222 Third Street Suite 1320
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone 888-577-8585
Fax 888-577-8686
lgerstle@atlascommunities.org

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