November 2019 Educational Leadership Grants
The Nightingale-Bamford School
New York, NY
This will enable Nightingale and its partner schools to become leaders in sustainability striving to make an effective, meaningful, and lasting contribution to the future of our planet.
Grant Amount: $250,000
Match: 1:1
St. Andrew's Episcopal School
Potomac, MD
For more than a decade St. Andrew’s Episcopal School has been committed to advancing Mind, Brain, and Education Science (MBE) as a catalyst for improving teaching, learning, and leadership. The E.E. Ford Educational Leadership grant will support St. Andrew’s Episcopal School and its Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning (CTTL) in designing, building, and launching Neuroteach Global Student (NTGS). Neuroteach Global Student, the next phase of Neuroteach Global, is a digital-learning experience which, through eight micro-courses, will enhance student’s understanding, retention, and use of promising MBE strategies through storified scripts that include embedded videos and real-world ‘classroom missions.’ NTGS will transform the teaching of ‘study skills’ by using MBE strategies that align with research about how the brain best learns, works, and thrives, explicitly connecting students’ academic habits and mindsets to their learning. NTGS evolved from Neuroteach Global, the first online micro-learning experience for teachers and school leaders, which St. Andrew’s and the CTTL launched in 2019.
Using in-house expertise and existing partnerships in academic and software design, St. Andrew’s and the CTTL will design, build, and share Neuroteach Global Student with thousands of private and public school students in the United States and abroad by 2022. NTGS will be designed based on the latest principles in learning science, using lessons packaged as stories, embedded videos and real-world ‘classroom missions.’ Neuroteach Global Student will be designed to be highly connected to each child’s classes and assignments, and will be effective in both blended and virtual learning environments, honoring the teacher-student relationship while being accessible to a global network of schools. The application and practice of MBE strategies will transform ‘study skills’ instruction, leading to more confident, empowered students who possess greater autonomy over their academic experience.
Grant Amount: $250,000
Match: 1:1.2
San Francisco University High School
San Francisco, CA
The E.E. Ford Foundation leadership grant will support San Francisco University High School in developing a unique model for school research, self-assessment, and strategic decision making that leverages existing faculty and staff while also expanding leadership and professional growth opportunities.
During the creation of our Strategic Design, it became clear that to be a strategically nimble school, we needed to develop a greater capacity for more tailored, in-house self-study. Motivated by that need, we have created a new institutional self-assessment model that leverages existing faculty and staff talents while also expanding leadership and professional growth opportunities. The internal research team is charged with building reliable tools, habits, and practices that enable us to make informed decisions and provide metrics to assess and guide programmatic change. The team consists of a permanent technical arm and a rotating strategic arm to develop tools for analysis of UHS-specific research agenda. This model not only provides opportunities outside the scope of typical responsibilities, but also builds institutional thinking among a broader portion of our community, generating more effective insights, analyses, and trust-worthy recommendations.
Since its inception, our internal research team has undertaken a longitudinal study on student identity and connection, built a tool for tracking student feedback for teacher professional growth, and is in the process developing a tool for assessing and measuring student thriving. We know that this model and these research queries addresses an emerging need and priority in the NAIS community, and we are optimistic that many like-minded independent schools will seek not only to replicate the research project team model of self-study and growth, but also to build a network of shared learnings and practices generated by each school’s research exploration.
Over the next two years we will continue to build the team’s capacity, institutionalize its role in our school, support ongoing training for team members, present this work at various conferences and meetings, and build a community of interested peer schools with the eventual production of best-practice workshops.
Grant Amount: $250,000
Match: 1:1