Small Learning Communities

Small learning communities (SLCs) allow students, school staff and families to form closer relationships. Teaching staff can work together across disciplines in their SLCs to take on new ways of teaching and can engage students in rigorous, high quality learning. Families participate through a Family Advocate System. FTF small learning communities share core characteristics that research indicates will help produce positive results for students.

Keep Them Small and Keep Them Together

FTF schools create SLCs with no more than 325 students, and most are smaller.

• Students in high schools and middle schools remain in the same community all the years they are in the school. Elementary school students stay in the same SLC for at least three years. This continuity in their relationships promotes collective responsibility among students and adults - at school and at home. SLCs can still vary the ways younger and older students are educated and create meaningful "rites of passage" as students enter and leave high school.
  
  
• SLCs strive to keep students in their communities for all of their core classes and at least one thematic elective. Often, teaching staff take on more levels of instruction or teach a variety of courses to achieve this goal, all within their areas of certification. The goal is to keep the SLCs small enough so that all students and their families are visible and in the minds of all SLC staff.

Mix Grade Levels of Students

Middle schools include sixth through eighth graders; and high schools, ninth through 12th graders. Elementary schools generally create SLCs for three or more years. SLCs at all levels replenish themselves with new students annually as older students leave. These mixed-grade communities have enough qualified staff to teach all grade levels in core subjects and provide maximum flexibility in student grouping and pacing.

Give Communities an Identity and Provide Choice to Staff and Students

In FTF, small learning communities gain their identities from themes without tracking students by academic performance. Students and staff - including those who work with special education students and English Language Learners (ELL) - choose which thematic community to join and work together toward school-wide, high standards in core curricular areas.

Thematic SLCs integrate elective teaching staff with the rest of the staff and provide opportunities for students to connect their learning to the world outside school and to their intellectual interests. In high schools, SLCs also help students relate their studies to career goals. Some schools have transitional communities where students stay for no more than a year before they move on to a thematic community of their choice.

• In middle schools and high schools, "newcomer" communities focus on building the literacy skills of students entering with little or no English language proficiency.
  
  
• In high schools only, "opportunity centers" serve the needs of incoming or returning students who are up to two years over age as freshmen and need to recover significant numbers of credits before joining the thematic SLCs.

To hear Susan Engelmann, coordinator of career and technical education in the Kansas City, Kansas Public School District, talk about thematic communities, click here.

Equip and Expect SLC Staff to Work Together

IRRE works with schools and districts to create schedules that permit teaching staff in the SLCs to meet at least three hours per week as a group. During this common planning time, teaching staff discuss the academic and behavioral progress of the students they share, study and improve their instruction and conduct the business of their community.

Flexible Allocation of Resources

For SLCs to fulfill their potential, they must be able to allocate key resources - staff, time, space and money - to meet their students' needs, individually and collectively, whenever needs arise.

Collective Responsibility

In SLCs, students, their families, teaching staff and other staff share responsibility for student outcomes. SLCs set annual targets for behavior and academic achievement. Progress toward these targets, both by individual students and by the SLC as a whole, becomes a primary focus of the SLCs' work. SLC leaders and staff regularly receive data that allows them to track each student's progress in real time.