BelovED's Three Pillars
BelovED's school model wraps powerful values and character education protocols, rooted in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s concept of the "Beloved Community," around the most sustainable and scalable best-practices of America's top-performing charter school operators and a proven education program that is exceptionally effective without over-stressing school leaders and teachers.
In the Proven Success section of this website, we highlight the OUTSTANDING SCHOLAR LEARNING and the SCHOLAR & PARENT HAPPINESS that our school model produces. We hasten to add here that it also produces JOB-ENJOYING TEACHERS, as underscored by our year-to-year teacher retention rate, which has averaged 95%.
A "High Expectations" Culture Made Sustainable
Critical to the success of America's top-performing charter schools has been their development of a "High Expectations/No Excuses" school culture - a culture centered upon the expectation and a commitment by school leaders and teachers that every student will succeed. BelovED combines a "High Expectations" culture with teacher supports that keeps educators from getting burned out and makes the model more scalable. Examples of our teacher supports include:
- The professional development assistance we provide teachers and the professional learning communities in which they participate;
- The field-tested curriculum, lesson plans, curricular materials, and formative assessment resources we provide teachers (instead of expecting them, after a full day in the classroom, to spend additional long hours at home developing all of their lesson plans, curricular resources, and assessments from scratch);
- The reading and math specialists we employ to help students struggling to master an essential skill, and the social workers we employ to help students struggling with outside problems (instead of expecting teachers, all on their own, to be able to help every individual child overcome every individual hurdle);
- The Academic Tutors we use to staff our afterschool program, so we can limit the length of our instructional staff's work-day and keep teachers charged throughout an entire career at BelovED (instead of draining teachers in a way that causes them to lose enthusiasm for the job);
- Planning periods that we provide so teachers can prepare for up-coming lessons during the regular school day.
An Education Program That Is Effective Without Over-Stressing Educators
New Jersey makes public schools accountable for teaching specific core curriculum content standards (i.e., skills and knowledge that every high school graduate needs to master in order to be college or career ready). But exactly when during a school year should each academic standard be taught? How should it be taught? What assessments best measure whether a standard has been mastered? What do you do when a student has not mastered a standard, such as a reading skill, that is needed for the student to make further academic progress? How can teachers help individual students without ignoring the needs of all of their other students - all in a sustainable work day, that doesn't burn teachers out? At some truly excellent schools, teachers are left to answer these questions, and prepare most of the resources and materials they will need in class, all on their own. This can be thrilling, but it also puts huge burdens on teachers that can lead to early burn-out. At BelovED, reflecting our team approach to schooling and our desire to keep our teachers charged-up over an entire career, we answer these questions as a school and provide educators with supports, systems, and resources that empower them to be effective, without becoming over-stressed.
A Caring Climate Rooted in Martin Luther King's Concept of "Beloved Community"
When children feel themselves welcomed and cared about at school, it not only makes children enjoy school more, it also increases learning - because children open themselves more completely to instruction when they trust that their teachers have their best interests at heart. When children are also given opportunities to serve others, they further learn that caring about and serving others can provide one a rich sense of meaning and purpose. For these reasons, at Beloved Community Charter School, our school leaders and teachers strive to make children feel welcomed and cared about, and to engage our students in service to one another. Our protocols lead students from being the objects of our educational mission to becoming partners in it , as they learn for themselves that caring about and serving others leads to happiness, and as they increasingly desire to fully develop their minds and potential to positively contribute to every community of which they are a part. You can read more about our vision for education - inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s concept of Beloved Community - by clicking here. After you do that, ask yourself, can any work be more meaningful than striving to develop the whole child? Can any workplace be more satisfying than one where people truly work as a team to achieve that worthy mission?