 |
|
|
|
 |
Faculty Support to Ensure Student Success
Faculty at UPCS are stubborn in their demands that all students meet the academic and behavioral standards of the school. When Donna Rodrigues founded UPCS, she based the school on prep school model - there would be no tolerance for street talk, fighting, or misbehavior, and students and teachers would work hard to prepare every student for college. Faculty adopted and stubbornly uphold those core values, refusing to let excuses substitute for learning.
Whatever It Takes | | All of the adults at UPCS are willing to do whatever they can to support students, whether it is in their job description or not. One year an eighth grader entered the school in the middle of the year and lacked the basic skills that the other students had developed in thier math class. During his free period, a social studies teacher tutored her in math to help her catch up.
|
Faculty Commitment to Motivate and Inspire Students:
The role that faculty at UPCS have internalized is not simply teaching students, but inspiring and motivating them to achieve. Teachers are deeply passionate about their disciplines and motivate students to join them in their excitement. An English teacher might share the books she is reading for pleasure, or a science teacher might share the research she has done over the summer.
The small size of the student body (231 students), looping by teachers, and collaborative culture of the faculty ensure that no student can slip through the cracks. Personal relationships between students and teachers flourish. Every student knows every teacher in the school and is assured to have a deep personal connection with multiple adults to whom he or she can turn for support.
Teachers Bring Passion to Their Classrooms: All teachers at the school are deeply passionate about the subjects that they teach and share this with the students. They are truly lifelong learners, and by showing this, they encourage students become the same. Not only are the teachers experts in pedagogy, but they are scholars in their academic disciplines as well. The biology teacher for example recently spent a summer working in a microbiology lab at Clark University and shared the result with her students the next fall.
 Faculty Commitment to "Break Down" Complex Material:
While it is the student’s responsibility to put in the effort to learn new material, teachers take on the responsibility to make difficult concepts understandable for every student. In UPCS classrooms you will often hear students asking teachers to “break it down.” Teachers are constantly searching for new ways to make the analytic methods of the various academic disciplines clear to students. Teachers never send students away with homework they do not understand. Rather, they carefully explain each assignment so that no student leaves feeling lost or frustrated.
Because of the faculty commitment to reach each child, students at UPCS feel success as learners and are motivated to continue in the face of challenges and struggles.
Multiple Modes of Academic Support:
By keeping a running record of formative assessments, teachers recognize when students are struggling before they have a chance to fall behind. They don't just wait for students to ask for help. Teachers strongly encourage students to attend before- and after-school homework sessions, having some sign "contracts" to attend and talking with parents to ensure they can make it. Faculty also frequently try creative new ways to reach out to students having academic difficulty. One middle-school math teacher, for example, invited a handful of students whose skills were significantly behind the rest of the class to join a “breakfast club” for extra help and bagels before school.
Clark undergraduates and UPCS upperclassmen add to the supportive culture by serving as tutors. Students also assume a collective responsibility for the success of their peers, supporting each other informally in class and at home.
Culture Modeled by Faculty:
The core values that UPCS strives to instill in its students – pursuit of excellence, passion for learning, persistence until success, and support for others – are modeled by adults in the building. Teachers instill their passion for their disciplines in their students. At UPCS, veteran teachers mentor their younger colleagues, and all faculty members continually support each other. When students see staff questioning and supporting each other, they are empowered to ask for help as well.
The school's embedded professional development program provides a structure through which teachers challenges themselves and support each, just as they ask students to do in class.
|
|
|
|
Teacher Reflections on the School Culture
|
| "Dedicated teachers work as hard as they can to help students achieve what we know that can." - Social Studies Teacher |
|
Student Reflections on Teacher Support
|
"The teachers set the bar high for us and we know we are bound to reach it." - Freshman
| | "The teachers make us do our homework and if they don't get it, they will help us until we do." - Seventh grader | | "The teachers really push you. They want you to succeed." - Junior | | | | | | | | | | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
