Standards of Mind and Heart

This is the remarkable story of the creation of a new kind of high school that truly aspires to educate all students to high standards. Believing that a deeply personalized culture can prevent the senseless violence that has invaded many public schools, educators at Souhegan High School in Amherst, New Hampshire, set out to create a safe, caring, and academically rigorous school. In this volume, Silva (a teacher) and Mackin (a principal) chronicle their experiences as they worked through the many challenges that ultimately resulted in this extraordinarily successful school. Featuring their honest reflections and the voices of other participants, this book:

• Portrays a real public high school (not a small alternative school) that is successfully implementing most of the reform practices recommended by national reform models.
• Demonstrates how schools can strike a balance between the need for stricter safety measures and the social and emotional needs of each student, thus avoiding violent outbursts in schools.
• Details the school’s structure, curriculum, professional culture, and systems of accountability for all students in a heterogeneous, inclusionary setting.
• Describes the use of teaming, advisory groups, exhibitions, and senior projects.
• Provides a working model of the “Breaking Ranks” recommendations, including the importance of “personalization” and democracy in education.

Peggy Silva is currently a Humanities teacher at Souhegan High School in Amherst, New Hampshire. She has written articles for the Writing Within School Reform series of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Robert A. Mackin is the founding principal of Souhegan High School and is now the President of LEAD New England.

“An important book. Souhegan High School proves that consequential and imaginative change from ordinary routines can happen in a suburban school serving middle-class students. Standards of Mind and Heart demonstrates that sensible and sensitive reform can happen anywhere. There can be no excuses.”
—Theodore R. Sizer, Coalition of Essential Schools

"This book reflects the best thinking in secondary school reform literature and demonstrates how it has been enacted in a real high school. This is an important example of what works."
—Gerald N. Tirozzi, Executive Director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals