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Public Deliberation and Community Teams
The Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) offers
resources on public deliberation and community-wide planning.
Public Deliberation: A Tool for Connecting School Reform
and Diversity offers good descriptions of public deliberation
and discusses how public deliberation can be used to bring
schools and communities with linguistic and cultural diversity
together to focus on the topic of school reform. Public
Deliberation is available on SEDL's Web site in English
and Spanish.
"Ways
We Come Together" (the last section of Public Deliberation)
is a valuable resource describing three public engagement formats
-- the forum or study circle, the focus group, and the Citizens
Jury -- with information about organizations that offer training
and technical assistance for each format.
Creating Collaborative Action Teams: Working Together for Student Success contains hands-on tools and resources to develop a partnership between home, school, community, and students, particularly in rural areas. These teams identify pressing issues in the school
community and take action to address those issues. A preview
of the toolkit is available on SEDL's Web site. The toolkit
itself is available in print version (Spanish and English) or
CD ROM for $225.
The Collaborative Action Team process entails five stages:
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1.
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Getting Started (Introduce the Process,
Gather School Community Information, Plan the First Steps)
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2.
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Mobilizing the Team (Establish Representative
Membership, Determine Communication Ground Rules, Build
Common Understanding, Support Consensus Decision making,
Identify Shared Leadership Opportunities)
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3.
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Setting Direction (Agree on a Vision,
Identify and Prioritize Issues, Develop a Mission Statement,
Set Team Goals, Communicate Your Message)
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4.
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Taking Action (Develop Strategies,
Determine Necessary Tasks, Establish Evaluation Methods,
Monitor Progress, Expand Network Opportunities)
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5.
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Reviewing and Refining (Assess Team
Effectiveness, Celebrate Your Successes, Increase Effectiveness
and Impact)
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