The New Mexico Center for School Leadership [the Center]
The Center will provide high quality technical assistance to educators that can be a catalyst for change in New Mexico. It will host the first and only visitation and replication program in the state and it will be supported by the services of a network of highly knowledgeable national school reform experts.
Technical Assistance
The Center will host school visits with educators from other communities (primarily in New Mexico) who can observe the ongoing practice taking place at the school. All visits will have the benefit of pre-conferencing to ensure that the visitor’s time is maximized. These site visits include, classroom observations and critiques, text-based seminars, and “Ateliers” or design studios that can enhance the formative thinking of school founders.
In depth, place-based assistance will also be available from a network of national consultants contracted by the Center. We will also offer a one and two week leadership seminar at our site that will include consultation from the following experts:
- Leadership and institutional development—Education Resources Consortium
- Positive Youth Development and Community Engagement—New Mexico Forum Foundation
- Project-based Learning (PBL)—The Buck Institute for Education
- Professional Development Systems—Eagle Rock PDC
- Industry Partnerships—NM Center for School Leadership
Replication
The Center will create a four school network in New Mexico based on the ACE Leadership High School model. The network would include schools based on industries that are complementary to ours (Health Care, Information Technology, etc.). The network would provide two benefits:
1. A pipeline of talent that can keep each of the network members strong,
2. Partners that can propel the institutional development and practice of the members.
The program would be based on the mentorship model. Each school would be incubated from the Center beginning with a year-long internship with the founding administrator. The Center would assist in writing the charter and establishing the critical structures for success (Learning by Doing, Community Engagement, and 360 Support). Over time, the Center would create a network with these schools to provide a learning platform for growth. Also, we envision that the schools would broaden the learning opportunities for students through collaboration on curriculum (see the Health Care High School description).
The New Mexico Center for School Leadership’s future scope of work will be:
