History of Northridge Academy High School
Northridge Academy High School, a partnership of the Los Angeles Unified School District (Local District 1) and California State University, Northridge (CSUN), opened on September 9, 2004 with 600 ninth and tenth grade students. Our school currently serves approximately 980 students in grades 9 through 12.
School conception: The partnership between CSUN and LAUSD Local District 1, resulting in our school, was first initiated in the late 1990’s. Key to the partnership was a land swap approved by the state legislature and governor that allowed CSUN to assume ownership of the former Prairie Street School area (now used for CSUN parking) in exchange for a parcel of land just north of the tennis courts, now the site of NAHS. Located on Zelzah Avenue between Lassen and Prairie Streets, NAHS is comprised of three buildings: a four-story classroom building, a multi-purpose room, and a gymnasium.
Initial Professional Development (PD): During Summer 2004, as the initial staff of Northridge Academy Senior High School (at that time called Valley New High School #1) prepared to open our brand-new school for the fall, we began a lively, collaborative discussion with CSUN faculty from a number of departments regarding our collective core values and beliefs as a learning organization. Fortunately, we requested from the District and were approved for 10 Professional Development days during the summer.
Developing school culture: We chose to utilize most of these days to focus on the development of our school culture, an effort that has become a strong, ongoing focus of our school. Because we were opening a new school and had the unique opportunity to build our own culture from the ground up, a key part of this beginning discussion addressed such questions as: What are our beliefs? What do we want to stand for? What systems need to be in place to ensure we move effectively toward our vision? What makes a school/university partnership successful?
Our ideal school identified: Through a comprehensive research-based inquiry process, participants worked on our collective vision of “Our Ideal School”, with corresponding core values, behaviors that reflect these core values and systems that need to be developed and instituted in order to support our core values.
School Motto developed- From our intensive discussions, in small groups and as a whole, arose our motto“The Choice is Learning”, emphasizing our belief that “learning” must be central to everything we say and do at our school. In fact, we agreed that our Guiding Question would be: “Does this choice support the Learning Community?”. Note: During the Fall 2008 semester the motto was changed to "Inspire and Achieve".
Guiding Norms established- We identified key ingredients of our learning community, our “Guiding Norms”, based on our core values: Personal Ownership; Respect and Responsibility; Communication and Collaboration; High Expectations for All; and A Rigorous, Stimulating, Safe and Aesthetic Environment. We then committed ourselves to a set of Guiding Principles, as follows: “In our community, we have the choice to: (1) Embrace excellence; (2) Respect ourselves and our community; (3) Believe ALL can achieve success; (4) Celebrate intelligence, creativity and diversity; (5) Support personal growth and academic achievement; (5) Commit to lifelong learning that is rigorous and relevant; (6) Challenge the status quo; and (7) Continually develop as a collaborative community to create and achieve our goals.
LCPs adopted- One of the most important lessons learned from our Summer 2004 work was the necessity for explicitly focusing on building a strong, positive school culture and involving all stakeholders in this effort. We realized, in order to encourage effective communication and action among all stakeholders, we would need to consistently serve as role models of high levels of collaboration, learning and humanity, an evolving process that our learning community would need to monitor and refine on an ongoing basis. Because of our commitment to adhere to these high standards, we agreed to adopt “Learning Conversation Principles” (LCPs) introduced by one of our administrators as the foundation for our communications and interactions. These LCPs, adapted from the work of Sue Miller Hearst, have become integral to everything we do: (1) Listen with the intent to understand, rather than to respond; (2) Open your mind to new learning and practice; 3 ) Inite differences and move away from ‘either/or’. Embrace ‘and’; (4) Wonder in front of each other; and (5) Assume and exhibit good will. As we have added new members to our learning community, including staff, students, parents and community partners, we have made it a point to teach and model the LCPs while we include input from our new stakeholders to our vision of “Our Ideal School”. This process has also served us well as the foundation for the development of our leadership and governance groups, in our school naming process, and during all meetings.