Mozart Elementary School 2200 North Hamlin Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60647 773- 534-4160 Philip Yaccino, Principal

Introduction

The partnership between Northeastern's Chicago Teachers' Center and Mozart Elementary School has existed since 1989. A grant from the Chicago Community Trust provided for a variety of professional development activities and experimentation with connecting College of Education activities with the life of an urban classroom. The Collaborative Learning Centers Project allowed for more focused work by teachers at the Middle School level and created additional opportunities for NEIU students and faculty to form productive relationships with Mozart teachers and students.

Mozart Middle School

Mozart's Middle School was originally formed through the Chicago Community Trust initiative and an Urban Partnership grant co-written with the Chicago Teachers' Center staff. This allowed for staff development activities, university consultion, student connections with community agencies and organizations, and promoted the idea of teachers and university faculty presenting their work through professional conferences. Through the Collaborative Learning Centers Project, Mozart Middle School teachers have strengthened as a professional team and the "middle school within a school" has became an institution that helped to develop yet another proposal to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge which funded a network of Middle Schools

In the three years of the CLC, the Mozart Middle School team has restructured grades 6 through 8 to reflect a more comprehensive Middle School perspective, including adopting an interdisciplinary approach to instruction. They have developed thematic units which align instruction and assessment with standards. These have been compiled into books to be shared as models of interdisciplinary instruction. In addition, the team pooled the resources from its various grant initiatives, including CLC to develop a three-day after-school

program,small group advisories, a school-community newspaper project staffed by parents and students, and family outreach. Changes in the middle school curriculum include a shift to literature-based reading instruction and to students' use of a variety of sources for research in thematic units. Students have a higher interest level now that they are choosing their own books and have more exposure to mature levels of reading material as they research topics of interest to them in the context of thematic units.

Additional grants which have been received by Mozart Middle School include a small schools grant for a mini-computer lab, a professional development grant from the Dewitt-Wallace Foundation and funding for parent education from the MacArthur Foundation.

Jill Leffler, with students, in her classroom at Mozart

The Mozart/Preservice Education Connection Mozart faculty and students have participated extensively in the Preservice Teacher Preparation program at NEIU. Many NEIU students who have expressed an interest in Middle Level Education have been placed with teachers in Mozart Middle School. These students have consistantly expressed how much they have benefitted from being included in Professional Development Team meetings and the professional development opportunities provided to them through this "school/university partnership" connection.

Shirley Woodley and Susan Rosenthal co-teach a university course on-site at Mozart with Professor Elaine Koffman

Two current Middle School Team members (including Jill Leffler,the Science Team leader) are recent NEIU graduates whose clinical and/or student teaching experiences were at Mozart.  Middle School Team Leader, Marilyn Koulogeorge and NEIU faculty member, Dr. Jo Ann Karr co-taught a course in Methods of Teaching Language Arts. A video titled, "Students as Teachers," documents this experience and describes the extent to which this partnership has benefitted the teacher education program and the Middle School curriculum. In addition, an Educational Foundations course taught by Northeastern's Dr. Elaine Koffman has consistently included Mozart teachers who provide insight into the relationship between theory and practice

through their sharing of classroom experiences. This class has often been taught at Mozart allowing for NEIU students early in their coursework to begin to get a feel for life in a Chicago Public School.

	Mozart's Science Team Mozart's Science Team was started in the third year of the grant and started meeting in February of 1997. The team consisted of Jill Leffler, team leader, Margie Neal, Kelly Novello, Tammy Kretzman, and Dr. Harvey Barrett, the NEIU partner on the team. There were six other teachers who expressed interest in participating on the team, but for a variety of reasons, time not the least of them, the team remained small.
	Initially, there was discussion about whether to meet as an entire team or have Harvey Barrett assume a consultant role and work with teachers on an individual basis in their classrooms. Scheduling meetings was difficult, but the team met and planned for hands-on science activities to integrate into their unit.
	The Science team was also interested in finding out more about the "Dialogue Process" which is used by the Chicago Learning Collaborative, Chicago's "other CLC" project. The team invited the project's director, John Simmons to one of their team meetings where Mozartstudents' work was used as the basis for a focused dialogue among the teachers and Harvey Barrett. The team has integrated many activities into their science curriculum including Butterfly Farms, River Tank Ecosystems, as well as many literature-based science resources.

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