Parents continue to pressure private-independent schools to introduce foreign language in the curriculum of their elementary grades—or to increase the languages offered in an existing program. This would add yet another special (a class that students attend with a specialist outside their homerooms) to students’ hectic schedules. A typical list of specials might also include music, science, library, computer, art, and physical education.

Schools often turn to ISM Scheduling Consultants to help design student-centered schedules that support 21st century teaching and learning. The proposed schedule options are always different because of the particular combinations of time, people, space, and program unique to each school. However, certain best-practice recommendations are made to every school; one is the elimination of exam periods (those days when classes stop exclusively for the administration of exams that students take simultaneously and en masse). The traditional exam structure favors the 20th century modality where time is the constant and achievement is the variable. In the 21st century, achievement is the constant and time is the variable.

A well-planned introduction to the school’s policies, processes, mission, culture, and values helps new faculty members get off to a good start. Many private-independent schools put much time and energy into carrying out upbeat, friendly, and informative “new-teacher orientation” programs each fall. Effective induction, however, must be more far-reaching in scope than simply having an engaging orientation meeting. This article provides a framework for an induction effort that has long-lasting effects on teacher performance and career satisfaction. In this way, a broadly conceived induction process will benefit not only the new teacher, but also your students and the life of your school.

Now, while this summer’s experiences are fresh in your mind, is the best time to design next year’s summer program. How well did your program meet its mission, its goals, and the needs of today’s families?

In an earlier I&P, we detailed results of a yearlong study conducted during the 2010–2011 academic year. Titled the Student Experience Study (SES), the project measured the effects of student-perceived predictability and support from their teachers on student performance, satisfaction, and enthusiasm. The results were clear. While there was a positive correlation between predictability and support and performance, there were extraordinarily strong correlations between predictability and support and both student-reported satisfaction and student-reported enthusiasm (each measured separately).

In the 2010–11 school year, ISM conducted a one-year partial replication—using a stronger research design and a more exacting statistic—of its original six-year International Model Schools Project, a research project that focused on student performance, satisfaction, and enthusiasm. The results of the 2010–11 project, titled the ISM Student Experience Study (SES), were published by ISM in complete form as a white paper in January 2012, and summarized in Ideas & Perspectives in Vol. 37, No. 4. The following article, featuring one of the instruments derived from the SES findings, is designed to be read in the context of either of those two documents. Readers are asked to take note of the fact that the Characteristics of Professional Excellence II, shown in this article, supersede ISM’s original Characteristics of Professional Excellence, first published in Vol. 31, No.8, and then expanded upon in Vol. 32, No. 16.