In the EL Education model, the physical space of the school reflects and supports the learning environment and the values of the school. When people enter the school, they are immediately aware of being in a place that celebrates learning. The walls are filled with high-quality student work showcased in common spaces and classrooms. Student work is displayed in a way that honors the work, giving parts of the school a museum quality that inspires student and community pride. Work is often supported by explanatory text that includes student voice and reflection. The mission of the school is evident to guests, students, and teachers throughout the building.

The spirit of courage and adventure that permeates the EL Education model is a clear expression of EL Education’s roots in Outward Bound. Leaders and teachers encourage students to work on building their courage across multiple aspects of their academic and social lives, to develop, for example, “fractions courage,” “poetry courage,” or “friendship courage.” Similarly, adventure can be any physical, artistic, or academic experience that involves risk, challenge, and discovery. Adventure bolsters student engagement and strengthens students’ courage.

Student-engaged assessment is a hallmark of the EL Education model. When assessment is done with students instead of to them, students take responsibility for and lead their own learning. They see themselves as the key actors in their own success. This creates a culture of engagement and achievement in which all students and adults believe that effort and reflection lead to academic growth and high-quality work. Teachers use multiple methods of formative and summative assessment to track students’ progress toward academic learning targets and Habits of Scholarship (e.g., perseverance, collaboration, responsibility). Teachers continually analyze quantitative and qualitative evidence of student performance to inform their instruction. Students learn to reflect deeply and concretely on their own performance data, assess their own learning, use feedback from peers and teachers, and set goals for achievement.

Learning targets are the foundation of a student-engaged assessment system. Teachers translate required standards into learning goals for courses, projects, units, and lessons in language that students can understand and own. Teachers refer continually to learning targets during the lesson, check for understanding of learning targets, construct formative and summative assessments that match learning targets, and track students’ progress toward targets. Students demonstrate their ownership of their learning by articulating the connections between learning targets and the work of the lesson and by showing evidence of their progress toward meeting them.

The EL Education model promotes student-engaged assessment strategies that help students reflect on and lead their own learning. Teachers use these strategies so that students understand what they know and can do at the outset of learning and as they progress toward learning targets. Students are able to articulate their understanding and set meaningful goals for applying their learning and improving their work.

In the EL Education model, teachers and school leaders collaborate to ensure that schoolwide, standards-aligned curriculum maps act as the foundation for all planning, instruction, and assessment. Curriculum maps describe a vertical sequence of academic and character targets that are to be addressed at each grade level and within each discipline. These targets become increasingly more sophisticated and rigorous as students progress through the grades. Curriculum maps also provide a year-at-a-glance view of what’s being taught and assessed across disciplines. They guard against unnecessary repetition of content across grades and ensure appropriate repetition of knowledge, skills, and Habits of Character as students move up through the grades.

In the EL Education model, teachers and leaders use a variety of assessment types to measure students’ mastery of standards and regularly involve students in understanding and analyzing their own assessment data. (See also Core Practice 29: Checking for Understanding in Daily Instruction.) Teachers use high-quality assessment data, both formative and summative, to reflect on the effectiveness of curriculum, instruction, and schoolwide structures such as schedules, academic groupings, and intervention programs. Finally, assessments provide a body of evidence for grading, reporting, promotion, and graduation that must be communicated to the community, district, state, and other stakeholders.

In the EL Education model, student achievement is communicated in traditional ways (e.g., report cards) and also in ways that allow students to take the lead in speaking about their own learning. Leaders and teachers create structures and procedures that support students to create, maintain, and present portfolios demonstrating growth and achievement during student-led conferences, passage presentations, and celebrations of learning. They also implement standards-based grading systems that communicate academic outcomes relative to specific required standards and, separately, outcomes on Habits of Scholarship. Teachers involve students in the dialogue about assessment and communicating achievement. Students can articulate what they have learned and speak to their own strengths, struggles, goals, processes of learning, and preparation for college and career success.

In the EL Education model, leaders unite staff, students, and the broader community around an inspirational vision of student success rooted in EL Education’s Dimensions of Student Achievement: mastery of knowledge and skills, character, and high-quality student work. This vision transforms schools into places where students and adults engage in purposeful, challenging, and joyful learning. School leaders align resources to support all domains of the school—Curriculum, Instruction, Culture and Character, Student-Engaged Assessment, and Leadership—to this vision.

In the EL Education model, school leaders carefully set priorities and then keep their focus squarely on those priorities until they are achieved. To do this, they engage their school community in a strategic improvement process that identifies a limited number of high-priority goals, strategies, and a clear timetable that will guide actions as they work toward the vision. Leaders then deliberately and creatively align available resources (people, time, money) to fulfill the vision.

In the EL Education model, leaders cultivate a professional culture among adults that parallels the empowering culture they foster for students. (See also Core Practice 23: Building the Culture and Structure of Crew.) School leaders build trust so that educators can take risks, show vulnerability, and explore new practices that lead to increased student achievement. School leaders support this growth-oriented and impact-focused professional collaboration by creating professional communities where adults bring their whole selves to work and where they continually improve their ability to work productively with each other. This means leaders invite and facilitate honest, direct feedback, and, when needed, candid and courageous conversations. They prioritize growth more than the status quo and implement an asset-based orientation toward all members of the school community. School leaders embody the school’s values and exemplify the positive and professional character they want all staff to demonstrate. Leaders foster an environment where all staff members feel safe, valued, and productive in a culture that respectfully challenges them to do more than they think possible.

In the EL Education model, leadership is a collaborative, dynamic effort toward a common vision for teaching and learning. Thus, in addition to creating the conditions for all staff to learn, school leaders create the conditions for all staff to lead. Leaders articulate and uphold clear decision-making processes, as well as roles and responsibilities for decisions that impact the learning community. Leaders strategically build the leadership capacity of others; they set up structures for staff and other members of the school community to take responsibility for school improvement efforts and empower these individuals to lead the work. High-functioning, data-informed, impact-oriented teams of educators drive improvement across the school.

School leaders using the EL Education model respect teachers and other staff members as creative agents in their classrooms and as professionals continually seeking to improve their craft. The EL Education model supports leaders to demonstrate a growth mindset and a commitment to continuous professional learning in themselves and all faculty members. School leaders build capacity in teachers in order to improve student achievement and to sustain teacher commitment, motivation, retention, and performance. Leaders establish and communicate high expectations for learning in the classroom. They conduct classroom learning walks to ask “what’s working?” and use evidence from their observations to inform professional learning, formal coaching cycles, and evaluation systems. They conduct regular walk-through observations to assess whether professional learning is being applied effectively and continually improve professional learning systems to impact student achievement.

In the EL Education model, school leaders support teachers to use curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices that meet high standards for student achievement, including required district and/or state frameworks. School leaders engage teachers in a collaborative process for curriculum mapping that identifies assessments associated with standards-based learning targets. School leaders allocate the resources teachers need to provide the materials, accommodations, interventions, and extensions that ensure all students can and do access the curriculum. After putting adequate plans and resources in place, school leaders carefully and consistently monitor implementation of agreed-upon curriculum, instruction, and assessment through frequent classroom visits and feedback to teachers. Supervision and evaluation structures are designed to support teacher growth and learning while also maintaining high expectations for follow-through and instructional effectiveness.

The EL Education model prepares all students for college and career success by providing a college-bound curriculum with high expectations for all students, fostering a schoolwide college- and career-bound culture, and setting up structures that allow time for the post-graduation search and application process.

In the EL Education model, leaders and teachers recognize that they must prepare students for global citizenship in an increasingly complicated and interconnected world and that multilingualism is a key tool and a vital global skill that deepens understanding of other countries and cultures. Curricula that prepare students for global citizenship are cross-disciplinary and include developing knowledge of diverse cultures, languages, and political systems, as well as knowledge of the physical terrains, ecosystems, and natural forces of the planet. Fully integrating global skills and knowledge into the curriculum is tied closely to environmental stewardship and social justice as students are challenged to grapple with the most complex problems facing the world (such as climate change, structures of economic inequities, and international terrorism and conflict). Teachers also ask students to discover and attend to how others see themselves, their histories, and the world’s problems that is, to hear and analyze multiple perspectives along the way to determining what young people can do to make a difference.

The EL Education model promotes social, emotional, mental, and physical health and wellness throughout the curriculum and schoolwide culture. Schools choose curricula that promote character development through social and emotional learning, a healthy relationship with the outdoors, and physical challenge. Healthy relationships, growth mindset, intellectual courage, exercise, stress reduction, sleep, spending time outdoors—the key elements of physical and mental health—are all included in a school’s wellness approach.

In the EL Education model, the term “case study” means two things. First, it is an approach to research: using a narrowed topic as a window into big ideas and concepts. This kind of case study is usually incorporated into projects and learning expeditions. Second, a case study can be a structure itself, outside of a project or learning expedition—a focused investigation that does not require (as a project does) a culminating product.

The EL Education model connects students to the world beyond school through meaningful fieldwork, collaboration with experts, and service learning. In addition to learning from text and classroom-based experiences, students use the natural and social environments of their communities as sites for purposeful fieldwork and service connected to academic work. They collaborate with professional experts and community members with firsthand knowledge of events and issues to ensure accuracy, integrity, and quality in their work.

In the EL Education model, teachers engage students in skills- and knowledge-rich learning experiences (projects) that result in high-quality products or performances for audiences beyond the classroom. EL Education defines a project as not just the tangible product resulting from learning, but as the series of classroom lessons, discussions, labs, work sessions, student research, and fieldwork that provide an in-school structure for teaching core skills and content. Projects are used to teach literacy, mathematics, and other disciplinary content and skills, as well as collaboration and problem solving.