It’s About Time: Organizing Schools for Teacher Collaboration and Learning

Part of the SCOPE research series titled Time Matters: Teacher Collaboration for Learning and Leading, the case study, It’s About Time: Organizing Schools for Teacher Collaboration and Learning, looks at Hillsdale High School, a large, comprehensive high school located in San Mateo, California, a high-tech enclave of Silicon Valley nestled 23 miles south of San Francisco and 32 miles north of San Jose. The San Francisco Peninsula is famous for high housing costs and serving families with high educational attainment, given its close proximity to Silicon Valley. The students at Hillsdale come from the surrounding neighborhoods of San Mateo and Foster City and reflect the full socioeconomic and cultural diversity of San Mateo County.

Hillsdale allocates time in service of very specific and intentional goals:

1. To personalize learning for students,
2. To support collaboration among teachers, and
3. To develop rigorous, cross-disciplinary units of study for stu­dents. Thus, time, at Hillsdale, is used to foster learning and development for both students and teachers.

This report is part of the SCOPE research series titled Time Matters: Teacher Collaboration for Learning and Leading and was prepared with generous support from the Ford Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge their support.