Education Commons^™

Using Learning Walks To Improve Collaboration And Charter School Performance – A University/ P-12 School Partnership: Year One, Paul Thomas Bole, Ken Farizo

Paul Thomas Bole

Many universities exist apart from their community’s public schools. A New Orleans area public university took measures to facilitate collaborative partnerships with four public schools. Those schools were taken-over and converted to charter schools by state officials for poor performance. The partnerships created simultaneous opportunities and challenges, especially in the aftermath of the infamous Hurricane Katrina. One challenge involved replacing damaged school buildings. Another challenge involved forging productive relationships. This article explains how the university utilized ‘Learning Walks’ (Resnick, 1996) to facilitate stakeholder collaboration, which blossomed into partnerships facilitating school and student improvement and professional development opportunities for both entities.