Independence Charter School
Kristen Long is an experienced educator with a strong background in leadership and curriculum development. Currently serving as a Neubauer Fellow at the Philadelphia Academy of School Leaders since July 2016, Kristen has also been the Principal at Independence Charter School since September 2003, where responsibilities have included redesigning the teacher evaluation system, managing schedules, leading professional development, and supporting various educational initiatives. Prior to this, Kristen held positions such as Curriculum Specialist, Reading Specialist/ESL Teacher, and 5th Grade Teacher with significant experience in diverse school settings, including the San Francisco Unified School District and District of Columbia Public Schools. Kristen holds a Master of Science in Education from the University of Pennsylvania and multiple degrees from institutions including Temple University and Stanford University, with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Spanish from the University of Richmond.
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Independence Charter School
Independence Charter School (ICS) is a community-oriented public K-8 charter school located in Center City Philadelphia. At Independence Charter we provide our students with an intellectually stimulating and internationally focused curriculum emphasizing the arts, languages, and world cultures. Recognized nationally for our innovative global studies program, we are the only Philadelphia school to deliver an integrated curriculum that uses world cultures and second language acquisition to introduce and connect content disciplines. We strive to develop a bilingual, interculturally competent, high-achieving student body. All students at ICS study Spanish within two distinct programs: the Spanish Enhanced program, which includes 30-40 minutes of Spanish language instruction daily; or the Spanish Immersion program, in which students begin Kindergarten with 90% of their day taught in Spanish and 10% in English. By fifth grade that balance is 50/50. By the time they graduate, ICS students are bilingual and biliterate in Spanish. Independence Charter serves over 800 students from almost every zip code in Philadelphia. Students are randomly chosen through an annual blind lottery. Independence Charter was founded in 2001 by a group of parents and community members devoted to raising their families in Philadelphia. These founding members developed ICS’s mission and program, and many remain instrumental today as parents of current students and in founder seats on our Board of Trustees. Teachers ICS could not achieve its results without our energetic, talented, and caring teachers. They bring to life our approach to cross-thematic teaching and they embody our international focus. Our teachers come from Venezuela, Colombia, Spain, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Argentina, Guatemala, and the United States, to name just a few represented countries.