New School Development

Inquiry Schools was born out of the founding of two brick-and-mortar institutions: Science Leadership Academy, in 2006, and SLA@Beeber, in 2013. As a result, the Inquiry Schools team has extensive hands-on experience with every single aspect of bringing a new learning environment into the world.

Projects: SLA-Beeber; SLA-Middle School; Lab Atlanta

Topics unique to new school development include:

Administrative Planning: Designing and implementing all of the foundational work that goes into opening a new school, from the big-picture proposal to the quotidian minutia.

Faculty Development: Identifying, hiring, and cultivating the best educators who not only shine individually, but collaborate in a way that makes them greater than the sum of their parts.

School Culture from the Ground Up: Planning authentic activities to grow an environment that inspires students to be thoughtful, wise, passionate, and kind, from freshman orientation to senior graduation (and everything in between).

School Transformation

Schools do not have to be built “from the ground up” in order to successfully transition to the Inquiry Schools model.

Projects: Henry County; Griffin Spalding; SRI

Schools seeking to make the shift can benefit from involvement at several stages of the transformation, including but not limited to:

School Visits: Getting a deep look into the current learning environment in order to to determine what kinds of work would be most useful for students, faculty, and administrators

Administrative Guidance: To advise, assist, and troubleshoot the creation of new procedures and protocols

Professional Development: Extensive training and support for educators of all experience levels and backgrounds.

Services can be provided both in-person and electronically, ensuring that your learning environment gets the consistent support needed to work through a successful pathway to transformation.

 

School Based Professional Development

In many schools and districts, professional development is not where educators expect transformation to happen. Fortunately, we know how to turn PD from a top-down training into an authentic, generative process.

Examples: North Kansas City Schools; Liberty Public Schools; Bunker Hill Elementary

Just a few of the professional development activities we can design and aid with include:

  • Year-long professional learning communities, with cross-discipline observations and quarterly goal setting.
  • Committee-based PD design based on the needs in your environment: academic standards, attendance, classroom culture, curriculum design, diversity, teaching practices, etc.
  • Introductory and team-building activities to move beyond icebreakers
  • Technologically streamlined processes for reporting and management of IEPs