Creating Kirkland International Community School:

1997-2001

How Kirkland International Community School Began

My work on this second in a series of small public schools began in March of 1997.*

I had been approached by Kirkland parents to create a clone of the Bellevue International School, where I had been a program director and Humanities for six years.  After expressing interest in their offer, and they lobbied the Washington School District administration to support my efforts to design and launch the school.  I accepted.

My first public information/recruitment meeting was held at Lake Washington HS auditorium. Three hundred excited parents (and their students) attended.

From that introductory date, I had only six months to design, create and open this exciting school of choice.  Nothing like it had existed here before.

My program development tasks included:

Recruiting our first two classes of 150 7th and 8th graders, via evening meetings open to all comers.

Developing instructional and program philosophy that extended and improved upon the original Bellevue International School model*

And with parent participation, screening the inaugural teaching staff.

For its first three years our Kirkland International Community School was housed in portables located behind Redmond High School.  On free time our students had no shelter from the rain, and bathroom facilities were located in the high school on the far side of a large parking lot.

Life in the portables was both a cramped and an exciting & wonderful adventure.  During that first year there were no student computers available–only the secretary’s and mine. And mine had been loaned to me by one of our enthusiastic parents.

By the conclusion of the second year, our Kirkland International Community School students had achieved the highest writing scores on statewide standard exams.  For more than a decade thereafter, this new school notched higher test scores in all content areas than our Bellevue International parent.  Both these schools have always been among the highest achieving schools in the state of Washington.

Why are these results worth noting? Not only because they demonstrated the success of our teaching and learning culture, but also because they validated a founding principle.  In an era which sees school spending and student performance as correlated, we stood alone as an example of a materially deprived school where, because of staff commitment and instructional culture, our students reached the highest levels of achievement year after year.

As at Bellevue International, we teachers knew that school success was all about the quality of the teaching and learning.

So what is the recipe for school success?

Key questions we asked each other all along the way:

What are we doing?

Why do we do it?

When do we do it?

Why it is essential–absolutely crucial–to do these things in a deliberate order?

What skills, attitudes and habits of mind (Meta Curriculum) should underlie all learning regardless of content area?

And finally: what instructional practices puts students at the center of the classroom conversation? How do we generates student enthusiasm for asking questions, for evaluating information, for critiquing practices, hypotheses, assertions? (See the Social Promotion page for more discussion of teacher skill set.)

Asking and answering questions like these creates professional and collegial dialog across the entire instructional team.

There are many to thank for the opening and success of Kirkland International Community School.

First would be the energetic parents who invited me to join them, and encouraged the WSD Board to approve creation of the school.

Second, and most directly responsible for the success of the school, would be the inaugural staff** who pulled the program together during those challenging first several years.

Kirkland International Community School is now entering its twenty seventh year of operation, and is a leading public school program in Washington State.

*As the last of the remaining founders on the Bellevue International School staff, I had the privilege of graduating with our first 17 member class before departing for Lake Washington school district to develop Kirkland International Community School.  In both schools, I was a teacher of both Humanities and my own Writing Curriculum.

**Inaugural teaching staff at Lake Washington International Community School: John Heil (Science), Damaris Bartlett (Spanish), Andrew Ivy (International Studies), Sophia Hindley (Fine Arts), Ella Johnston (Math), and Bruce Saari (Humanities).

***