Memorial High School - II

My first visit to classroom - I talked to the teacher Jacqueline Wilson about the school demographics and history. I am going into this research knowing that I have a lot to work on in terms of handling my bias. But, boy was this an eye-opener! How easy it is to make assumptions even when you think you are forming an informed opinion.

I menitoned in my earlier post that Memorial HS was a public charter school. I assumed that like other public high schools it was a neighborhood school. In fact, because it is a charter school students have no residency requirement. The fact that in any given year, about 10-15 students stay betwen 25-40 miles away adds another factor to an already difficult situation.

Notes form an earlier meeting about the school
* 22 students - 8 juniors, 14 seniors, 13 girls, 9 boys
* CA HS req is 2 Math + 2 Sci courses
* UC has a 3 yr Math req/4 yrs reco
* CAHSEE in the 07-08 batch had a 75% pass rate for AMth, 61% for English
**Most of the Math issues are actually lang issues
* EPAAHS - 84% graduation rate (this is a CA calcualted rate, the actual is a moving target as students leave and we don't track that well)
* Student population comes from all over - it is an ope charter school with no geograpical boundaries on enrolllment - like from Oakland, Hayward and Union City. This leads ot absenteeim that has nothing to do with motivation to come ot school.
* Parenting is very low - teen pregnancies are on the rise
* Free and reduced price lunch is at 80-90% at EPAHS
* EastSide Prep erodes the enrollment at EPAHS as it is a similar academically oriented school. The comprehensive public HS (Carlmont, Sequoia, Woodside, Menlo-Atherton) draw students away as they have better sports programs and bigger proms, a homecoming etc.
* Funding is shared by CA($6000/student) and Stanford($7000/student), inspite fo this they lack proper infrastructure.
**SUSE - refunds the STEP students' tuitions if they teach in an underperforming district for 5 years.
* Facts about East Palo Alto
** Largest US city without a bank, grocery store
** Population has grown from 30,000-50,000 in the last few years - city infrastructure unable to handle the growth
** 1992 - calle dhe murder capital of US. Crime reduced but now is on the upswing. The predominantly AA city is now slowly becoming Hispanic, Pacific Islander and then AA. the school demographics reflect this (2 AA out of 22) - largely Spanish speaking class.

Memorial High School - I

Memorial High School is a public charter school in Northern California. It draws its student population from an area which with mainly low-income families. Most of the incoming student population will be the first college graduates in their family. A number of them will be even first time high-school graduates. There is a large proportion of students for whom English is not their first language.

This city has been without a comprehensive high school since the school district shut down the local high school in the late 1970s and started busing the city's students to another high school 10 miles away. About four years ago, Memorial High School was started as a charter school with support from the School of Education at the local University.

The school's emphasis is on preparing students for college. It is a public school open to all members of the community. The school has seen near perfect graduation rates and nearly all their graduates make it to college.

A highly trained staff, a curriculum that connects the work of the school to the life of the community, commitment to technology integration and a data driven decision making makes this process. preparing its diverse student body for college and the 21st century workplace. As a charter public school, we are open to all students, have no admission requirements and do not charge tuition.
The school aims to meet the needs of their students by combining the most successful models of urban school reform, with highly qualified teachers and a curriculum that connects the work of the school to the life of the community.

ICOTS 8 Paper description

This paper is an account of a year spent in a high school classroom observing the integration of Fathom software into the teaching of statistics. A majority of the students at this high school, which draws its student population from a lower-income community, are aspiring to be first generation high school graduates and learning in English as a second language. The school aims to "meet the needs of their students by combining models of urban school reform, with highly qualified teachers and a curriculum that connects the work of the school to the life of the community".

This paper will attempt to capture the "spots of time that glow"—episodes that stand out as being particularly enlightening. Questions guiding the exploration are:

• What do the students report as the highlights of their interaction with the software and curriculum?
• What are the teacher's strategies to integrate technology and how does she adapt them as the year progresses?
• What is the nature of some of the challenges faced by the teacher? How does she address them?
• What role does the software end up playing in the classroom and how did that come about?
  

Data to inform this discussion will gathered from six months of participant observation by the author as well as in-depth interviews with the teacher and students.