A COMMUNITY including business leaders, college leaders, state and district school administrators, students, parents, teachers, academy leaders and the principal and city mayor welcomed 5 teams of academy leaders, school and district administrators, and Advisory Board members  from districts across the country. This new "community of learners"  shared promises and challenges surrounding Internships. Comments from Dr. Lupe Diaz, Miami Dade Public Schools:

Why did M-DCPS participate in the Design Studio process?   These two schools participated in order to learn and take back to their schools what was seen so that new practices can be implemented at their schools as a direct result of this Design Studio experience. Miami Beach and Southwest also shared best practices with the host school and other participants from California, North Carolina, and New York. It is our hope that these two schools can then serve as models for hosting our own Design Studio process with other NAF programs in the district.

This three-day session gave us an opportunity to see a Smaller Learning Community (AOIT NAF program) in operation and how they engage their community in the internship process.  We saw accountable leaders:  the principal of Carencro High School was so involved that she even drove the bus that took the participants to the hotel from the airport and even loaded and unloaded our luggage!  She empowered her educators by giving them opportunities to lead the reform efforts at their school.  The 9th and 10th grade teams have common planning time and they all play a role in the student internship efforts.  The students were well poised and they gave testimonials about their internships, even showing examples of their work and about how the Academy has provided them with opportunities to determine their future career paths. 

As the focus of this design studio process was engagement of the community, it was obvious that Carencro High School involves its parents and the business community.  Although one might say, it's easier to do because it's a small community and not as diverse as Miami, it was refreshing to see the level of involvement of business and community stakeholders and parents.  We saw parents every day that we were there, from serving us food, carrying our luggage in their cars, greeting us each morning, serving us breakfast, to even driving 45 minutes across town to get us our orders of pralines to take back home! 

We were able to visit classrooms, participate in an Advisory Board meeting, meet with the local college Chancellor and meet representatives of their State Education Department and local politicians.  The last day of the conference was the highlight where we got a chance to visit the school and experience an interdisciplinary project that the 9th and 10th grade classes were working on with local business representatives involved in the teaching of the lesson. 

Who participated from M-DCPS?  Two well-established NAF programs with an excellent track record on student internships were selected to participate:  Southwest Miami SHS, the Academy of Finance program and Miami Beach SHS, the Academy of Hospitality and Tourism program.  Representing these programs were:  Southwest Miami SHS--Giovanna Blanco, Assistant Principal; Patricia Iglesias, SLC Coordinator; and Patricia Fleri, Student Activities Director; Miami Beach SHS--Dr; Rosann P. Sidener, Principal; Patrick Simmons, AOHT Math Teacher; and representing M-DCPS were:  Ann Fields, AOHT Facilitator, Alina Puentes, AOF Facilitator, and Lupe Ferran Diaz, Director.  These two schools were also represented by members of their Advisory Boards:  Eric Sussman, John Hancock Financial and Cheryl Carter, Hospitality Professor, Florida International University

I tip my hat off to a school that allowed members of the NAF network to visit and critique what they are doing.  We learned from this experience and hope that both Miami Beach and Southwest Miami will be able to host a Design Studio for our own folks in M-DCPS.    Pictured right:  Professor Carter and Ann Fields wink at alligator found at the famous Prejeans Restaurant in Lafayette Louisiana.

Design Studio News

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Design Studio Planning session at the Summer Institute in Phoenix.

California teams shared the ongoing Internship work that is occurring at their schools and San Diego began planning for an exciting Design Studio that will be hosted at the school in the winter.

The 5 sites participating in the Carencro Design Studio met to begin the planning process for that event. The focus of the meeting will be Involving the Community in the Internship Process. Please stay tuned as these teams begin to post their promising practices in this area

The Promising Practice documents from all three design Studios, focused on Internships will be accessible at this site. Please note that tools and materials from the Galileo and Academy of Hospitality and Tourism are already available in the Internship Getting Started Guide. Please take a few minutes to review that guide. There are several excellent tools to help plan and debrief the Internship experience.

Moving Forward

A program for the ASPIRE cohort that will support academies prepared to move from Leader to Distinguished Academy in the new Network Development Model is being developed. Many of the ASPIRE/Design Studios participants from  the last two years will be asked to participate in the development of the program. This will be a very exciting process that will yield a strong and rigorous program for academies to reach this status.

Academies qualifying as Distinguished Academies will be asked to participate as leaders within the network and their academies will become host sites for Design Studios.

This year's Design Studio participants and host schools are invited to a P re-Conference Day event from 9:00-1:00 on July 8. The purpose of the working group is threefold:

1. Teams share updates regarding changes going on in academies resulting from the Design Studio events at Galileo HS and The Academy of Hospitality and Tourism HS at Erasmus Campus.

2. Teams continue post-planning activities and receive assistance from NAF staff and other academy participants.

3. Carencro Design Studio participants will consider this work time for pre-planning the event. This is a important opportunity to meet each other and to have a preliminary discussion concerning the issues and concerns that we want to focus on while we are in Carencro. The team at Carencro has been working on this event for 6 months and has a wonderful agenda planned that they will share with you at that time as well.

Look forward to seeing all of you and continuing the important work of improving Internships in our academies and sharing that information with the network.

Cordially,

Patt Smith

In March, two Design studio events occurred, one at Galileo HS in San Francisco and one at the Academy of Hospitality and Tourism at Erasmus HS in Brooklyn, NY.

The focus of both Design Studios was Internships. The highlight of both events was hearing from students both those who have experienced internships and those who are preparing for an internship experience this summer.

At Galileo, each of 5 visiting schools brought students to participate in the event. The students expressed surprise at how much work goes on behind the scenes to find meaningful internship experiences for them  Students suggested that the process should be more visible at their schools and that they should be more familiar with the work of Advisory Boards and community groups that are working to find internship experiences for them. Students from San Diego participate regularly in Advisory Board meetings so they felt more informed about the process and suggested that student participation on Advisory Boards is an important aspect of being involved in a NAF academy. Some students explained that they were not familiar that NAF was a national network of schools across the country. Being at this event and sharing experiences and practices with other academies opened their eyes to this fact. Students agreed to return to their schools and report about the experience and the value of the NAF academy experience.

Another highlight of the Design Studio was the student resume DVD created by Eleanor Marbeshears. View a copy of this below in the Galileo Design Studio folder.

In addition to schools from CA, the Design Studio included the hosts of upcoming Design Studios, Adam Breier, principal Brooklyn and Kit Bechnel, academy director, Lafayette,  LA. Their participation was extremely valuable and will serve to improve the development of Design Studio events. Kit Bechnel brought an IT partner, Kris Wotipka, who videoed the event to share with participants at the event that will occur at Carencro in October for advanced academies.

At the Academy of Hospitality and Tourism in Brooklyn, the students were the stars, sharing information about the many varied work based learning opportunities they have throughout their school experience. IN addition, Paul Halperm, an Advisory Board chair from Middletown NY spoke about creating and sustaining academies.

In addition to schools from CA, the Design Studio included the hosts of upcoming Design Studios, Adam Breier, principal, Brooklyn NY, and Kit Bechnel, academy director, Lafayette, LA. Their participation was extremely valuable and will serve to improve the development of Design Studio events. Kit Bechnel brought an IT partner, Kris Wotipka, who videoed the event to share with participants attending the Carencro event in October for advanced academies.

At the Academy of Hospitality and Tourism in Brooklyn , the students were the stars, sharing information about the many varied work based learning opportunities they have throughout their school experience. In addition, Paul Halpern, an Advisory Board chair from Middletown, NY, spoke about creating and sustaining academies. His advisory board finds internships for 100% of the eligible students in a community about 90 miles from NYC.

Ed Donnelly, principal Brook Farm Academy host of last year's Design Studio on Advisory Boards, was also at the event to share his expertise with participants and to learn new skills and strategies to bring back to his school.

For more information, please search below and see the materials that were shared at each event.

Two Design Studios will take place in March. The first will occur at Galileo HS in San Francisco, CA. This event will be attended by academies throughout CA and will provide members of the NAF network throughout the state an opportunity to share promising practices and challenges concerning Internships and work based learning.

All 5 participanting academy groups will include the school's principal, two teachers, 2 students, and at least one advisory board member. Academies from San Diego, LA, Malpitis, and San Francisco will be in attendance. In addition, leaders from the other two  Design Studios that will occur this year will also be in attandance. Docments connected to this event are posted and more will be available soon. Stay tuned and join us by reading NAFconnect.

The second Design Studio will take place in Brooklyn,  NY, at the Academy of Hospitality and Tourism at Erasmus HS. Several CA schools will participate as well as academies from NY, and NJ. Students are helping to prepare for the visitors and will participate on site by conducting panel discussions, preparing food, and providing NYC hospitality to the guests.  Network Leader, Ed Donnelly, host of one of last year's events will also be in attendance.

The final Design Studio will take place in October at Carencro HS in LA.   Academies from Miami and New Orleans are currently scheduled to participate. If your academy is in the Mid-atlantic region and you would like to apply to participate, please do so by sending me an email.  Julie Oster, Network Leader, host of one of last year's events will also be in attendance.

These three events are designed to amass successful tools and strategies currently being used to ensure internships and work based learning options for students and to share them with the entire network through NAFconnect. In addition, NAF will learn about the struggles and supports needed by our network members  so we can develop  new improved resources to serve our academies.

Now that school is underway, I would like to take a few minutes to describe our plans for working with you this year.  Thanks for your input over the summer, which certainly influenced our current agenda.

Please join me in welcoming Steve Markbreiter to the ASPIRE team. As you know, Sara Dingledy was accepted into the New Leaders for New Schools Program and she is now an assistant principal at the Brooklyn: Latin School . Steve will be working with us this year as the NAF Design Studio concept continues to emerge.

Collaboration Network

Welcome to the collaboration network. We hope you will join a group as we continue to strengthen our relationships.  Instead of convening three groups, as we originally suggested, we have decided to host two groups, one on the value of the Design Studio and ongoing impacts and one on Work-based learning, Internships and personalization.

For those of you interested in pursuing conversations and collaborations concerning integrated curriculum and advisory board development, we suggest you join the Charile Katz blog on Advisory Board development or Andy Rothstein’s blog on curriculum.

This year ASPIRE will focus on Work-based learning, internships and how personalization is achieved through these activities and others. We will also explore the value of the Design Studio as a means for providing support to the network. Your help in helping us to develop this program will be greatly appreciated.

Work-based Learning, Internships and Personalization

At your request, we will not limit one group to Internships, but will broaden the topic to include all work-based learning opportunities for students and how these experiences support personalization. NAF is laser-focused on improving these options for students both during the year and in the summer. We want to significantly increase the number of students participating in internships and other meaningful work-based learning experiences. This group will be a good conversation for those of you who want to discuss this area of academy development.

In addition, this will be the central site where the groups participating in this year’s Design Studios will communicate.

Design Studio Host Sites

We are pleased to announce that Carencro High School in Lafayette , LA will host a Design Studio for academies in their district and in their region. Galileo Academy of Science and Technology in San Francisco will also host a Design Studio for selected academies in CA interested in improving work-based learning and internship opportunities so more students in the academy have access to these experiences. The Academy of Hospitality and Tourism at Erasmus in Brooklyn will also host a Design Studio for several academies in the metropolitan NYC area interested in increasing internship and work-based learning options for students.

The dates of these events are not yet firm, but we will post them as soon as they are available.

Leadership Summit

ASPIRE will meet on November 13 to begin to develop the Design Studios for this year. In addition, to the teams that are hosting Design Studios in 2008-09, NAF is grateful that host site representatives from last year’s Design Studios will be on hand to assist the new teams in their preparation.  Team members from Apex High School , the Bronx School of Law and Finance, Brook Farm Academy , and A.J. Moore Academy will be invited to join us as “Design Studio Leaders” that day.

NAF is NOT sponsoring travel, housing or registration for schools involved in the ASPIRE program last year. Should you be interested in attending to learn more about hosting a Design Studio at your school in the future, you are more than welcome to join us on November 13.

Summer Institute

Plans for the Summer Institute are not finalized yet. We hope that those of you who continue to participate as thought partners in developing Design Studios and in improving work-based learning and internships will co-create the offerings to the network form our group.