Lausanne Collegiate School is proud to announce that it is the recipient of a $50,000 challenge grant from the Edward E. Ford Foundation which is based in Portland, Maine. The Foundation is supporting the establishment of the Lausanne Teacher-to-Teacher Institute under the auspices of the newly formed Lausanne Collaborative. This peer-to-peer exchange is a natural outgrowth of the collaborations which characterize the highly successful Lausanne Laptop Institute which since its founding in 2003 has become the largest and most far-reaching independent school technology peer-to-peer forum in the world.
“The Lausanne Collaborative is built on the foundation of Lausanne’s student-centered teaching and peer-to-peer professional development,” comments Lausanne Headmaster Stuart McCathie. “We are grateful to the E.E. Ford Foundation for recognizing that school-to-school resource sharing is the logical next step. That’s why we’ve formed the Lausanne Collaborative.”
The Lausanne Collaborative has been formed using the principles that successful schools and teachers model practices that can be emulated by others, and schools must be active and energetic participants in local, regional and global communities. Partnerships with other schools will be created for the purpose of strengthening schools’ identities and visions and providing peer-to-peer mentoring to faculty in order to invigorate their work in the classroom. Lausanne will seek partnerships with both public and private schools.
Continuous implementation of and support for strategic planning, strengthened admission requirements, highly-qualified faculty, the use of technology as an essential tool for teaching, the inauguration of the International Baccalaureate Programme and the construction of new facilities that emulate a collegiate atmosphere have resulted in steady enrollment growth at Lausanne throughout the recession. Lausanne’s globally diverse student body of 850 students (47% are people of color and 30% of students or their parents come from 53 countries other than the United States) continues to distinguish itself in college placement, academic achievement, arts and athletic performance. The 68-member class of 2012 was accepted to 135 different colleges and universities, matriculated to 51 and received over $10.4 million in scholarships.
Sharing best practices, The Lausanne Collaborative will include: workshops in identity and vision development, strategic planning, technology assessment and planning and curriculum alignment. In all cases, the services will include site visits for initial assessments and workshops, telephone and Skype consultations and critically important site-based, faculty-to-faculty consultations. Fees, scaled for the school and set to retrieve expenses and supplement Lausanne’s professional development budget, will be charged to private schools. All public schools will be offered these services at no charge, unless the school or district can assist with travel expenses.
Two critical components of The Lausanne Collaborative include creating opportunities for Lausanne’s faculty to connect with faculty at other schools while also providing aid to the area’s public school system. While the relationship will be one of mentor to mentee, Lausanne’s faculty will gain insight into their own teaching through observations of other classrooms and conversations with teachers from a wide variety of schools and backgrounds. Such valuable professional development cannot be replicated at a workshop or in a college classroom and will benefit students across both private and public school sectors.
In order to receive the $50,000 grant from the E.E. Ford Foundation, Lausanne Collegiate School must raise the additional $100,000 through donor gifts. To learn more about The Lausanne Collaborative or how to lend your financial support to this effort, please contact Assistant Headmaster for Advancement Michael Christopher, mchristopher@lausanneschool.com or 901-474-1045.
