Liberty Common School (K–6)

Liberty Common School—the first school to achieve official status under the Core Knowledge Foundation’s rigorous new certification process—is a model for how a coherent curriculum can foster meaningful collaboration. The school shined throughout a full week of classroom observations as well as interviews and surveys with students, parents, teachers, and administrators.

The school’s dedication to continuous, collaborative improvement was evident even in its reaction to the Foundation’s 44-page certification report. Casey Churchill, the principal, stated: “It is nice to have an outside entity such as the Foundation observe our school and point out areas that we are excelling in and areas that need improvement. The IFR [Implementation Feedback Rubric] report was thorough and spot-on in regards to feedback. We are excited to dig deep into the report, and celebrate our successes and make necessary improvements for our next steps.” In addition to serving as principal, Churchill is a Core Knowledge consultant who provides professional development to schools across the country using Core Knowledge materials.

Located in Fort Collins, Colorado, Liberty Common is a charter school serving about 600 students in kindergarten through sixth grade. It has a 10 out of 10 rating from Great Schools, is a nationally recognized Blue Ribbon school, and is a John J. Irwin School of Excellence. According to its website, Liberty’s mission is “to provide excellence and fairness in education for school children through a common foundation by successfully teaching a contextual body of organized knowledge, the skills of learning including higher order thinking, and the values of a democratic society.” Its motto is Commvnis Scientia, Virtvtes, et Prvdentia: Common Knowledge, Common Virtues, Common Sense.

During their certification review, Foundation staff found great enthusiasm for and commitment to Core Knowledge. As one teacher stated, “I’ve taught in other schools, but wouldn’t want to go back to teaching without Core Knowledge.”

Meaningful Collaboration

Such commitment comes from more than just the rich, diverse materials Core Knowledge provides—it emerges from a school-wide dedication to using such materials as a foundation for growing together. Each Core Knowledge school extends and enhances the Core Knowledge Sequence in its own way. At Liberty Common, Latin is one significant addition to the curriculum—but it is not an add-on. It is fully integrated with the grade-level domains. In K–3, teachers infuse Latin into their lessons. One of the teachers noted, “It’s fun to make connections for students and to watch them make their own connections with domain vocabulary and topics that we cover in this grade level.” In grades 4–6, more formal instruction is provided twice a week by a Latin teacher who consistently makes connections to previously learned vocabulary and domains as well as ancient world geography. Teachers report a positive effect on vocabulary acquisition. 

When all educators embrace a shared curriculum, instructional capacity grows exponentially. Teachers can plan lessons together, brainstorm when an activity does not engage the students as intended, replicate each other’s successes, and fully support new teachers.

At Liberty Common School, the following four practices are used to make collaboration standard operating procedure:

1. Read and Study as a Community: Teachers and administrators select and read books together to deepen their pedagogical and content knowledge. They also hold themselves accountable for implementing what they learn in the classroom. This was clearly evident in the many practices Foundation staff witnessed in action from their two summer 2012 readings: Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College by Doug Lemov and Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom by Daniel T. Willingham.
2. Plan Together: The school schedule contains two, 45-minute planning periods for teams each week. Teachers are serious about continuously refining their curriculum within and across grades. There is a fine line between building on content that was previously taught and simply repeating content. To ensure students are appropriately challenged, teachers work out the details of what different grade levels teach in the domains they share. The teachers meet both by content area (e.g., history) and by domain (e.g., The American Revolution). In addition, after the first day of Meaningful Instruction training, they immediately began collaborating on lesson alignment and considering where they might take advantage of common objectives, common questioning strategies, common assessments (informal to formal), and common criteria for success when scoring student work. 
3. Observe One Another: All teachers have three or four peer observations a year. In the first observation, teachers are matched to others in their grade level. In the second observation (and in the third, if there will be a fourth), teachers observe one grade-level above or below them. The final peer-observation is one of choice. Teachers report that the peer observations give them ideas for their own practice and spark collaboration around specific domains.
4. Collaborate for Student Success: To ensure that all students experience success with the rigorous curriculum, grade-level teams collaborate to discuss ways to support students who are new to Core Knowledge and students with gaps in their learning. In one team meeting, teachers share how they collaboratively develop supplementary lessons to fill knowledge gaps for students during the intervention time that is built into the schedule. Teachers use specially designed assessments that allow them to see where the gaps are, create small groups for targeted instruction, and, as needed, refer individual students for additional intervention help.

Comments from parents clearly showed that these interactive, ongoing support and professional development procedures are working. Parents with children who need additional support and those with children who are zooming ahead expressed great satisfaction with Liberty Common School:

My children have been involved with the Core Knowledge program for some time, however, never so successfully as with Liberty Common. The school seems to hold itself accountable for each and every student in all core subjects. They seem dedicated to an effective, successful education. My children have some remedial issues and I continue to be indebted to the school for the extra care and consideration they have shown when dealing with these problem subjects. My children are progressing and overcoming their learning difficulties, rather than being shoved ahead with little consideration to their academic foundations. Since coming to Liberty, they have received the extra help and attention that they so desperately need.

We have been very pleased with the Core Knowledge curriculum and have seen it work from kindergarten through 5th grade. We like the layering from one year to the next, building on previous lessons. Our children have excelled…. They read several years above grade level and test at [the top]... in math, reading, and writing. The Latin offered has enhanced their vocabulary. We are advocates for our school and for Core Knowledge in general. The teachers at Liberty are amazing at what they do and have a vested interest in their students’ learning and succeeding in life while having good character, as well. We love the school!

Love of Learning

Love of learning was evident throughout the school. If you are fortunate enough to visit, just look up; students have depicted their domain knowledge in paintings on the ceiling panels. But students aren’t just given panels to paint—panels must be earned. Student groups submit proposals in which they speak to why their chosen domain ought to be included.

The teachers’ dedication to refining their curriculum is key to this love of knowledge. The domains are sequenced such that students always have the prerequisite knowledge they need. In addition, sayings and phrases, science biographies, and geography are taught in an integrated fashion. Here are a few examples: 

• Dimitri Mendeleev is studied in conjunction with the periodic table in chemistry 
• Sayings are tied to instances where they occurred in novels, such as Pollyanna
• The geography of Central and South America is addressed in the context of Early American Civilizations. 

More indirect cross-curricular connections are being made too. For instance, in the study of sound, one science teacher connected the concept of sound travel to how Roman soldiers tapped messages to each other through pipes while standing guard at Hadrian’s Wall. 

Connections are even made in physical education. With fifth graders, for example, the physical education teacher has an ongoing activity called “Walking the States.” This involves students walking distances over time that are equivalent to walking from one state capital to the next. A map tracks their paths, nicely tying into the study of the fifty states and capitals. For kindergartners, the teacher makes learning vocabulary related to physical movement (e.g., hopping, skipping, galloping, etc.) into a race in which team members run to gather a letter, see if they need it to spell their vocabulary word, and run back with their contribution. 

Students’ love of learning is also fostered by teachers’ well-chosen read-alouds. The beauty of a read-aloud is that students’ listening comprehension typically outstrips their reading comprehension until roughly seventh grade. So by reading aloud, teachers can engage students in thinking about and discussing far more challenging content. A third grade teacher that Foundation staff observed read aloud from the book Alexander Graham Bell, pausing strategically for students to write down a thought, discuss understanding with their partner, consider the meaning of words, or make connections to their science unit on sound. Similarly, a sixth grade science teacher read aloud a newspaper article on Death Valley in conjunction with the study of deserts. 

Last but certainly not least, high expectations are evident in the phrasing teachers used. Several were observed encouraging students to “think like a scientist…historian…or detective” as they approach their work. Teachers used a mix of direct and inquiry-based instruction that ensured that students had the support they needed when tackling new knowledge and skills, and also provided time for independent and small group work.

Liberty Common School (K–6) is an inspiration to the entire Core Knowledge community. To learn more about Liberty Common, please visit their website.