Enterprise Charter School: Heather Lyon
To Whom It May Concern:
This letter is written in praise of the work that Constance Foland has done with Enterprise Charter School over the past two years. The Center for Innovative Education (CEI) has contracted with Accelerated Literacy Learning to provide literacy professional development to their schools. Constance Foland is the consultant assigned to our school.
During this time, Constance has acted as both a guide and a coach with our staff around the areas of Readers and Writers Workshop. What’s remarkable about her work is that although it is primarily focused on Writers Workshop, because reading and writing are so interconnected, Constance has linked these two fundamental pedagogical approaches for the teachers. What’s more, she has done so in a way that honors the teachers no matter where their current understanding is and taken them to the next best place and beyond. Constance has done this through her consummate professionalism and flexibility. For example, we often are challenged to have enough substitutes to accommodate the number of teachers we want to work with Constance. This means that it is not unusual for the schedule to change the morning of the work. Constance is always understanding of our constraints and approaches her work with an "I’ll make it work" attitude.
As the Head of School and former Chief Academic Officer, I have also benefitted from Constances reflections on her work with the teachers. While Constance will always find areas of strength with everyone she works with, she also respectfully offers her thoughts on areas that may benefit from additional support and/or revision. On multiple occasions we have acted on her feedback and this has led to improvements in our instruction with our students.
In fact, our results on the NYS Assessments demonstrate this improvement. Through many efforts, including but not limited to our work with Constance, Enterprise Charter School grew 8.97% between 12/13 and 13/14 in ELA. This was the largest growth of any school in Buffalo-traditional public or charter.
Thus it comes as no surprise that I am highly satisfied with our work with Constance Foland and that we are grateful for her time and impact on Enterprise Charter School.
Sincerely,
Heather Lyon Ph.D
Head of School Enterprise Charter School