Edith C. Baker Elementary School - Chestnut Hill, MA

Located in Chestnut Hill, MA, the Edith C. Baker School, a K-8 school, is distinguished by its remarkable cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity. Over one-third of our students speak a language other than English in their homes and nearly 40 languages are spoken within the school community.

Focused on continuous improvement, certain initiatives have taken priority over the past three years. We restructured grades 6-8 to create smaller, grade-level based, student-focused teaching teams. This shift allowed for a truly middle-level and age-appropriate learning environment for students and moved away from an overly-departmentalized academic structure which was not meeting the learning and social-emotional needs of young adolescents. Moreover, we stress the importance of being experts on children and support and hire middle-level teachers that are multi-certified in order to foster a successful interdisciplinary approach to teaching middle-level students. To further strengthen grades K-5, we restructured our master schedule to include consultation and collaboration time for our grade-level teachers which improved our responsiveness to the needs of our elementary students. The restructuring of the master schedule, which included improving the teaching scope of our world language and essentialist teachers, also allowed for better K-8 implementation of student support services, general education intervention, social-emotional support, extension offerings, and interdisciplinary common planning time.

Baker School's motto, "Work Hard, Be Kind, Help Others, Build Relationships," exemplifies the foundation to our success. We are proud of the work we do at Baker and will continue to improve in order to ensure equitable and enriching outcomes for our elementary and middle-level learners.