PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

The CHIME Charter Elementary School is an inclusive learning community serving children from kindergarten up to 5th grade where all students, their parents, and the school’s staff appreciate and value diversity. The rationale for inclusion is based on the belief that important academic, social, and ethical skills and attitudes are developed when students with various abilities, needs, and backgrounds learn together. A well-established body of research that is supported by federal and state law indicates that inclusion of children with disabilities benefits both students with and without disabilities alike.

The CHIME Charter Elementary School is a collaboration among three important entities that include the CHIME Institute, a nonprofit organization with over a decade of experience in providing inclusive education, California State University, Northridge (CSUN), and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

A. Description of the Educational Program

The mission of the CHIME Charter Elementary School is to provide an inclusive learning community where all students, parents, and professionals appreciate and value diversity in all its forms. It educates students to become conscientious, responsible citizens, whereby they assume the role of life-long learners as they reflect upon and contribute to the cultural and civic life of the community. All students, kindergarten through 5th grade, are supported to achieve high standards in both their academic and personal development through an educational program based in constructivist approaches and designed to engage students in problem solving activities at levels appropriate to their individual needs. In collaboration with California State University, Northridge (CSUN), and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), CHIME Charter Elementary School serves as a laboratory in which faculty and students investigate how children learn, and as a resource on inclusive education for educators, parents, policy makers, and others. It serves as a demonstration site for student teachers, supervisors, practicing educators, policy makers, and parents.

B.   Practices Specific to CHIME Elementary school

1. Co-Teaching
   At CHIME Elementary School, the general education and the special education teacher work together. In a co-teaching model, special and general education teachers are partners in planning, teaching, and assessment. All children have two teachers, just as all faculty members have a responsibility to every student. This team brings a variety of strengths to the classroom and addresses curricular adaptations. While no one has all the answers, we remain available to each other. Together we are better.
   
   High quality instruction is based on scheduled planning embedded at the beginning of each day. Teachers meet to share plans in advance of teaching to address curricular extension and modifications. It is never a surprise that those adaptations lend themselves to all students.
   
   
2. Related Services
   The services and expertise of additional professionals such as occupational, physical, and speech and language therapists are brought to the classrooms. By embedding supports in general education classrooms, related service staff provide targeted support for students with disabilities which benefits all students. Picture a language and speech pathologist in a heterogeneous reading group providing therapy in strengthening oral motor skills. What if that same therapist worked on social and pragmatic language during natural turn taking events like a conversation over lunch or during a handball game? The results are targeted, less artificial and provided with role models who themselves learn during these processes. These experts train our teachers how to provide customized therapeutic support throughout the school day. Again, the adults keep learning.
   
   
3. Paraprofessionals
   In segregated settings, we too often see that a hovering one-to-one assistant can isolate students from their peers and inadvertently foster a classroom within a classroom. When students are supported daily by different adults, we remove the perception that a peer is so disabled that they need the same adult at all times. These valuable partners become a component of the team as a whole, and all children see them as a source for help with learning.
   
   
4. Family Partnerships
   We look to families to provide leadership as the experts on their children. Families provide love and are the keepers of hopes and dreams. They look to us to provide leadership in instruction, individual students' learning needs, and developing students’ long-term educational careers. CHIME families not only trust us with their children’s education--they help us make it happen.
   
   
5. Schools Attuned Methodologies
   In partnership with the Center for Teaching and Learning at California State University, Northridge, and All Kinds of Minds, developed by world-renowned learning expert Dr. Mel Levine, CHIME teachers have been trained in the Schools Attuned program. Schools Attuned helps struggling students measurably improve their performance by providing training for teachers that integrates our understanding of variation in learning with a model for promoting student success.