Official Blog of the Education Exchange Corps

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

School Profile: Hawthorn Leadership School for Girls

Prologue
For the last several years, the Education Exchange Corps has been working in the Hyde Park neighborhood in North St. Louis City.

At the end of 2016, Clay Elementary - the public school that has been serving the area for a century - was targeted for closure. Instead of being closed, the school must show significant improvement in the next three years.

Advisory board members only have a few weeks to come up with a proposal to revamp Clay into a school that will attract more kids and improve academic performance. As part of that advisory board, I've decided to visit area schools with unique programs to see what ideas we could use to improve education for even more kids in our city.


So, Episode One: The Hawks of Hawthorn!

The Hawthorn Leadership School for Girls is a newer charter school. It started in 2015 with 6th and 7th graders. Each year, it will add a new grade until it eventually serves 6th-12th grade students. All girls.

I've passed by the school building many times in the nine years I've been working with kids in St. Louis City. The school is just off of North Kingshighway. I started my work just down the street at Lexington Elementary.

Hawthorn Leadership School for Girls
The entry lobby is a good gathering spot. To the left is the office, which, because it doesn't have any doors, feels very welcoming. To the right are glass-enclosed shelves that showcase the school community and its achievements. And the path straight ahead intersects with a narrow hallway that encircles the building, providing access to large central classrooms and others off to the opposite side. 

The tour was led by students. That's part of the college prep plan. Just like you'd see students leading tours in college, at Hawthorn, you're led by middle school kids. It's pretty great. You don't get a sterilized speech from an administrator. Instead, you hear from kids who obviously love their school, and love it enough that they aren't all too shy about saying what changes they'd like to see.

That was the most impressive part of Hawthorn for me: These kids take real ownership of their school space, and staff members support it. Students spend class time planning community engagement and ways to improve their school. The kids even got together and led a protest march around their school grounds to demonstrate their frustration about our national political climate, and their school supported their decision.

Hawthorn's leadership framework is organized around five core values: Joy, Support, Integrity, Courage, and Contribution. Kids can be nominated by other students or by staff for exhibiting these values, and they're celebrated in school-wide meetings.

These values flow through the school curriculum, which emphasizes college prep and STEM education. Students have two math periods including a "math lab" which is much more individualized to the needs of each student. Kids also participate in a lot of project-based learning, and they're given engineering problems they have to solve in teams.

Language Arts and History are combined, and the school is striving to link the topics covered back to leadership. One of the classes we visited was reading Copper Sun by Sharon Draper, which deals directly with the horrors of slavery and the slave trade.

Hawthorn has resources a lot of other schools don't. They have classrooms named for some of the major corporate and family donors in St. Louis. They receive support from Washington University. They have a social worker, a dean of students, and an assistant dean of students that help tremendously with their restorative justice discipline system. Students also are assigned a "buddy classroom" they can go to if they need to get out of their class environment and calm down, a flexibility that many schools don't have.

Hawthorn also does not provide transportation to their school. Transportation is very expensive. The lack of buses requires family members to come visit the school often, which helps build community. But it likely also limits who can attend the school. The school does offer after-school services.

I liked what I saw. 
But I LOVED what I heard.

First, the feeling of family.
At one point, our tour guide kiddos were asked what they would do if they felt they had a problem they needed to talk about. Would they just go to their teacher?
Answer: They could go to any staff member they wanted to. If they connected well with a particular teacher, then that's where they would go.
And that wasn't even a knock on other teachers. It was a realistic, natural, mature observation. It was a statement made by kids who are in an environment that trusts them to do the right thing and supports them in doing it.

Second, the buy-in.
I took an unofficial mini-tour. I was straggling toward the end of the official tour, reading stuff that was on the hallway walls. A fourth kid we had met in her classroom came out into the hallway and said hi. As a joke, I asked her if she drew all of the pictures on the wall. She said, "No, but I did make this one." She pointed to a rainbow "Black Lives Matter" poster.

I asked her why she made it. She told me about the protest march the kids led, how she wanted to be valued too. We got to talking, and we soon realized that when she was a little kid years ago, she was at one of the Education Exchange Corps' partner schools. She'd bounced around a lot from one school to the next when she was a kid.

I asked her if she really liked Hawthorn. She did. A lot. A lot a lot. She liked her teachers. She liked having a voice in how her school was run. She even liked the concept of having to wear a uniform.

Hawthorn is an impressive school that can do great things for St. Louis kids. Even schools with less resources can consider adopting some aspects of their curriculum and disciplinary approach. 

But the most important lessons Hawthorn teaches are why it's so important to work together, what cooperation looks like, and how to trust others to be in positions of responsibility.

That's how kids become leaders.


Elad Gross, J.D.
President and CEO
Education Exchange Corps

24 comments :

  1. In the universe of blog composing, this blog really should be known as the best.
    www.essaywriters.us

    ReplyDelete
  2. The self assessment and the social interaction are also influenced by the help of education, as it teach us the how to use our intelligence in real life so one can access to their thinking and ideas and use them in the best way.visit the site

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice post for the students. Every school has English subject for building international communication among people. If you are given any task of writing essays or stories then best place to click to explore where professional writers are available all time for your help.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is no doubt a very nice school. I always follow your blogs as tips on how to write an essay. Thanks for sharing this article.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Grammar-checking is essential because of its accuracy and quality of this content material. A perfect punctuation checker guarantees that your articles is totally free of most of grammatical errors. visit website and it'll help you to know more about the academic papers writing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. It could be tough trying to find those grades, so to be eligible to progress into another stage of one's instruction also to find perfect feedback from the coaches. here are some writing tips for you.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Intelligent kids who made a best statement in leadership. The learning process effects on children fastly which in result create this kind of stories which is sometimes good.
    http://www.critiquingqualitativeresearch.com/how-to-write-a-quantitative-research-critique-paper/

    ReplyDelete
  8. High school education isn't just about understanding the above mentioned elements.
    It truly is also about having a good time and enjoying your youth.
    If children want to spend much time to play, they can visit papernow.org and trust these guys to write their homework for them

    ReplyDelete
  9. When you are required to submit a dissertation, it is arguably by far the longest and the most complicated piece of writing you have ever undertaken. Look at essay-company.com

    ReplyDelete
  10. Great post I must say and thanks for the information. Education is definitely a sticky subject. However, is still among the leading topics of our time. I appreciate your post and look forward to more.  Bowling Green State University

    ReplyDelete
  11. Nice post mate, keep up the great work, just shared this with my friendz bba in tourism and hospitality management

    ReplyDelete
  12. i never know the use of adobe shadow until i saw this post. thank you for this! this is very helpful. leadership books

    ReplyDelete
  13. Share great information about your blog , Blog really helpful for us . We read your blog , share most useful information in blog . Thanks for share your blog here .
    Service de Garde éducatif Montréal

    ReplyDelete
  14. Initiative School for Girls! Hawthorn is the main open all-young ladies school in Missouri. We give center and secondary school Assignment Writing young ladies a top notch, school preliminary training with a specific spotlight on STEM (science, innovation, designing and math). Hawthorn opened in 2015 with 120 sixth and seventh grade young ladies. The school will include another 6th grade each school year until 2020 when we will be completely selected with around 450 young ladies in sixth – twelfth grades.

    ReplyDelete
  15. hi, Your post is very helpful for me,finally i got exactly what I want. If you want to know more about antivirus then you can visit our site telefoonnummer Bitdefender belgie help.

    ReplyDelete

  16. hi, Your post is very helpful for me, finally i found exactly what i want , If you want to know more about antivirus then you can visit our site Kaspersky ondersteuningsnummer for help.

    ReplyDelete

  17. hi, Your post is very helpful for me, finally i found exactly what i want , If you want to know more about antivirus then you can visit our site Kaspersky ondersteuningsnummer for help.

    ReplyDelete
  18. hi, Your post is very helpful for me, If you want to know more about antivirus then you can visit our site Canon Printer ondersteuning belgie
    for help.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Very useful information. Thanks for sharing such an amazing information.
    Have you been looking Solution For How To Unblock On Cash App? If you want to unblock someone on the cash app, then you have to click on this link and you can easily unblock any person on the cash app, if you are not understanding how to do this, you can contact our Cash App Customer Service. They will give you possible guides related to your issues.

    ReplyDelete
  20. It’s really nice and meaningful. If you are looking for an ATT customer service phone number then it is the right place for you. At this place, you will get the customer service support and 24/7 helpline number of AT&T for this you just have to click on this link.

    ReplyDelete
  21. How Do I Learn To Sell Goods on eBay Through EBay Customer Service?
    Approaching a good customer support service provider will provide you with the appropriate way to sell any kind of products on eBay account without any kind of glitches. So, if you are one of those who are facing any troubles regarding the same, you have to take EBay Customer Service without making any delay from your end.

    ReplyDelete