Highland Park High School Course Teams

The Clear Purpose of our Work:

Our ultimate goal is to create highly effective, highly collaborative Course Teams that work to increase academic achievement and promote greater equity for all students. This work will bring cohesion to the many efforts we have begun to better serve our students.

Through the process of Course Teams we will:

• Create a school wide focus on student learning
• Develop systems for actively monitoring student assessment results
• Encourage responsive teaching
• Promote a collaborative working environment.

The Strong Foundation of our Work:

The curriculum work at Highland Park High School will be built upon three agreements:

1) All faculty will serve on a course team that focuses upon analyzing student learning and developing equity. An outcome of this work will be to insure that a "guaranteed and viable" curriculum is created which each student will be expected to learn.

2) All course teams will work collaboratively to address FIVE Guiding Questions:

• What do we want our students to know and be able to do?
• How do we know if our students are successful?
• How do we respond when students are not successful?
• How do we provide our students meaningful feedback?
• How do we create effective learning environments for all of our students?

3) Course teams will answer these guiding questions by moving through a series of Working Phases:

• Phase One--developing core targets
• Phase Two--creating high-qualtity formative & summative assessments, some of which are common assessments.
• Phase Three--developing interventions
• Phase Four--examining feedback provided to students.
• Phase Five--developing student ownership of targets

Resources to Support our Work:

Be sure to visit the Course Team Resources Page to access important documents, including:
Course Team Norms template
Course Team Meeting Log
Course Team Collaboration Planning Guide
HPHS Collaboration Calendar

The District 113 Strategic Plan:

The District 113 Strategic Plan clearly communicates the District's vision and goals.
Click on the image below to see the District 113 Strategic Plan

Course Team Meeting Dates (2013-2014)

Collaboration Dates:
The following dates have been designated as "Course Team Collaborations" on our 2013-14 Late Start Calendar.
Course Teams may choose to meet more frequently, but these Wednesday mornings have been reserved exclusively for Course Team work.

First Semester (11 meetings over 16 weeks):
August 28, September 4; September 18;
October 2; October 16/17 (1/2 day in-services);
November 6; November 13; November 20;
January 8; January 15

Second Semester (9 meetings over 16 weeks):
February 5; February 12; February 19;
March 5; March 19;
April 23/24 (PSAE);
May 14; May 21

HPHS Inservice dates:
Course Teams will be given some time to meet during our school inservice dates.
These inservices will occur on:
October 16&17; February 17; April 23&24

For the complete 2013-14 Staff Collaboration Calendar, click on the link below.