We recently spoke with Carlos Beato, leader of Internationals High School at Langley Park (IHSLP), about the process of designing his school. IHSLP opens today in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and it is centered on the needs of English language learners in the area.
Springpoint: What made you want to start a high school?
Carlos: Growing up, I always envisioned myself in the classroom. I was an ESOL student growing up. I wasn’t in a monolingual class until fifth grade, and when I was, it really inspired me to do more and expect more of myself. Later, as an adult, it taught me to expect more of my students.
One of the things that really turned it around for me was when I realized, in the midst of my classmates in fourth grade, that I was the only one moving on to monolingual class. I knew there was something more that needed to be done. I remember the day my teacher announced that I was moving on without any of my friends. It was a very intense experience, and it marked me. Since then, I’ve always strived for more, and that’s why I wanted to open a school specifically for English Language Learners.
I know that, in our country, ELLs are one of the populations with the highest dropout rates. I think a lot of this has to do with how the school communities have been designed. Schools are not really tailored to these students’ needs. Because this work is about implementing innovative approaches to learning, and because the school I am opening is going to be 100% English language learners, I felt this is where I have to be.
What’s most exciting is we’re starting a program with international students in mind, and it’s not an afterthought. It’s about creating a mastery-based learning environment specifically for English Language Learners, which hasn’t really been done before.
Springpoint: Why do you think a mastery approach will be especially beneficial for English Language Learners?
Carlos: Because failure is not an option. A mastery approach is about having a growth mindset. It’s about acknowledging the fact that we all have different pathways, and you can get there in a million and one ways. The mastery-based approach allows us to see students’ growth in skills. It’s not about merely handing in assignments or completing work, but it’s about the different skillsets that we’re developing across their high school experience. These skills will enable students to be ready for colleges and careers of their choice.
Springpoint: Tell us a bit about the Internationals’ overarching approach to this work.
Carlos: The main piece of Internationals’ approach is that classrooms are heterogeneous. You’ll see students who have just arrived in the country in the same space as students who have been here for some time. They may be at very different levels of accessing English. The model really hinges on collaborative spaces for students to build English language proficiency alongside one another.
We differ a bit from this traditional Internationals model in that we also understand the importance of personalization. We’ve designed mastery-based projects that will involve collaboration as well as personalization. For example, if a student is working on a lab in the sciences, they may have to work on coming up with a hypothesis together. Then they would apply that collaborative work on their own, and they could do that at their own pace. So, at any given time, you may have a student who is engaging in a collaborative process, but also working on their independent work.
Springpoint: Let’s step back a bit and talk about your model overall. What are three unique aspects of your model?
Carlos: One important thing to note is that we are implementing our asynchronous model in stages. We are starting with one asynchronous day per week, while the other four will look a little more traditional. But that one day per week will allow students to experience choice when they’re sitting in their humanities advancement period. They will have a choice there, of working with their English or Social studies or ESOL teacher. The same goes for STEAM class, were they will have an opportunity to sit with math and science teachers. They will have choice as to what they’re working on during that time.
This asynchronicity will evolve as students grow. In year two, we would do at least two days a week, moving on to three days a week. Hopefully, by year three we will be at a place where students are able to do it for the full week. It all depends on the students. Once students are fully engaged in asynchronous learning five days a week, they will have more time for extracurricular activities outside of the school building. These opportunities may include courses at University of Maryland or Prince George’s Community College, or online courses.
Another unique part of our model is our partnership with CASA de Maryland, which enables us to give our students wraparound services that may go beyond what we offer in the school building. For example, we will be able to offer English classes for parents, so they are able to reengage with their child’s education. We’re also working with Prince George’s Community College and sending parents there so they can gain access to the education system. Empowering our students is one thing, but empowering our parents takes it to another level.
The last thing that makes us unique is that once a week, on Wednesdays, our students end the day at 12:30. From 12:30-2:30 they engage in cultural enrichment programs through our partners. For example, one of our partners is the World Lens Foundation. They study social justice through a lens of photography. Through this partnership, students will go into the community and study social justice through photography.
Springpoint: How you plan to onboard students to this model, given that it’s so unique and your students will probably be coming from more traditional middle schools?
Carlos: We’ve planned a first week that will immerse our students in the different processes they’re going to be engaged in. Everything from mastery to what advisory looks and feels like. The first week is going to be really instrumental to us. It will be about getting students to understand what it means to be in a mastery-based system.
Over time, our students will become part of our instructional design and iteration after school once a month. They will engage with the teachers and our partners in conversations around what’s working, what’s not working, what they’d like to see done differently.
We actually started that process with them when we went into the middle schools to present on the model. During those presentations, we began the conversation about how failure is not an option, and that it’s all about growth.
Springpoint: Shifting topics a bit, I’m wondering if you could tell us about your teachers. How did you recruit them? Was there anything you looked for during the recruitment and hiring process that might be surprising to other school leaders?
Carlos: Yes! I was looking for culturally competent teachers—teachers who understand that the world is a big place. I was looking for teachers with a growth mindset. They needed to be willing to grow with us as a school.
An important part of the process, for me, was a Lego activity we led for applicants. We had teachers come in in groups of twelve, at most, and then we divided them into smaller groups. There were six teachers in a group at any given time.
During the Lego activity, each group was tasked with building a Lego robot. There was a model and a pamphlet with instructions on how to build the robot. We had strict parameters around how long team members could have the model and/or pamphlet. Then we took both resources away and put the robot on one side of the room and the instruction manual on the other. Team members were only allowed to send one person at a time to each station to bring information back to the group.
The activity allowed us to see candidates’ abilities to truly collaborate, which is very important to us as a school. It allowed us to see who was not going to be a great match for us, in terms of overpowering the conversation or what they said about how students would approach the activity.
It’s important to note that we support a restorative justice model. In many traditional school environments, that’s not the case. A lot of punitive measures are taken for students who are not able to follow school regulations. Through the Lego activity, we were able to see how open candidates were to that approach.
Springpoint: How did you come up with that activity?
Carlos: I’d seen a version of the activity through the Posse Foundation. (Huge shout-out to Posse!) Much of what I’ve learned about team-building, and some of the structures I’ve put in place, are things that I experienced through the Dynamic Assessment Process (DAP) when I was interviewing for the Posse Scholarship.
Springpoint: TNTP published a paper recently (The Mirage) about teacher professional development, specifically about how a lot of teacher PD is ineffective (according to TNTP’s research). They studied three districts over a two-year period, and they saw that a lot of the professional development programs districts were investing in weren’t actually paying dividends in teacher skill. All that is to say, good teacher professional development is rare, and lots of people are thinking about how to do it well. I’m wondering how you are going to approach that? How are you thinking about designing effective professional development for teachers through the year?
Carlos: I know that, often, a lot is pushed on teachers. As initiatives come through and schools try to implement them, professional development often comes from a very unnatural place. What I’m trying to do is take all of these different initiatives that we’re trying to do as a county, and the different initiatives we’re trying to build in our school culture, and to combine them into something coherent that makes sense for what we are trying to do as a school and community.
I think it’s important to build on the skills teachers bring, so they can eventually lead their own professional development experiences. An optional position I have listed for teachers is “professional development coordinator.” This person would be in charge of collaborating with teachers to make sure professional development opportunities respond to teacher needs. A very important part of the process is putting the onus on teachers to decide what they want and need out of professional development. Just as we’re giving students choice in a lot of different ways, teachers also deserve to have that choice.
We will eventually reach a point where we have enough staff for professional development to become a rotating cycle. I learned this from my previous school principal, Julia Chun, who was good at taking data and analyzing where teachers needed the most help. From there, she advised a number of different groups, like a new teacher group and an ESOL group. Thinking about professional development in that sense, we have the flexibility of having two hours on a weekly basis where we’re together as a team while students are in academic and cultural enrichment. We can use those two hours for meaningful, need-driven PD.
One Wednesday per month will be teacher choice PD. So, throughout the year, teachers will get around ten PDs per year catered to a stated need. So if a teacher says, “I’m having trouble managing my classroom,” then that’s one of the PDs we will offer. If we create a new teacher group once we have enough teachers at the school, that will be one of the options as well.
Having the two hours helps a lot, because we can dedicate one solid hour per week to actual PD, and we can concentrate on operations during that other hour.
Springpoint: Lastly, what is keeping you up at night, as you think about the beginning of the year?
Carlos: I think a lot about how to ensure that even in this temporary space [IHSLP will open in a temporary space, with modular classrooms] we create a school culture that mirrors what we’re trying to build inside the classroom. I think about who my students will be, but that’s exciting to think about, more than anything. I’m really eager to see the design work come to fruition. I’m looking forward to putting it to work, seeing if it works, and if it doesn’t, iterating on the model to make sure it serves our students.
Springpoint: Thanks so much for sharing all of this with us—we really appreciate it. Best wishes for the beginning of the school year!