Yearly Archives: 2015

New signing day celebrates magnet acceptances

Districtwide celebration is also a chance to hand in paperwork

This year, students and families can celebrate their acceptance into a magnet program by participating in a Magnet Signing Day event at their campus of choice.

Magnet Signing Day events—which are scheduled at the school level and do not fall on any particular date—provide an opportunity for parents and students not only to celebrate, but to meet with school officials and confirm their child’s seat at the accepting school. Parents should bring a signed copy of their Magnet Entrance Agreement, proof of residence, and, if they have a child new to HISD entering Pre-K or kindergarten, proof of that child’s age, to the festivities.

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Speech therapists make the case for careers with Team HISD

SanAntSpeech2_300One of the best aspects of working for a school district is the opportunity to be part of a team—and that is particularly true for speech therapists.

“After salary considerations, the most critical thing speech therapists say they look for in a position is the chance to work in a supportive environment where they can collaborate with other professionals,” said Cheval Bryant, manager of Speech and Language Services. “In clinical settings, it’s often just one person in a room with a child. But in school settings, professionals aren’t in silos. They work closely with school psychologists, diagnosticians, and teachers to best serve students.”

And that’s precisely the message that Bryant and several other members of the Office of Special Education were out in force to share at the Texas Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s 59th annual convention in San Antonio earlier this month.

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HAIS students travel halfway around the world to give back

For many students, spring break usually means vacation on the beach, a road trip across the country, or simply rest and relaxation at home. But students from the Houston Academy for International Studies spent their time away from school performing hands-on service learning projects in another country.

Twelve students and two teacher chaperones participated in the Rekha & Sudhir Puranik Foundation’s Impact India program. The program is based at the Puranik Foundation’s Vision International Learning Center, a rural English school that serves more than 80 impoverished primary and secondary students from villages around Pune, India.

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“Impact India is designed to teach students about India’s rich history and culture, and give them insight into how different cultures address social and political challenges,” said Rekha & Sudhir Puranik Foundation Executive Director Revati Puranik. “The school and the foundation are fully sustainable without electricity and running water, an ideal environment for students to participate in service-learning activities focused on alternative energy, agriculture, and education.”

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‘Roses and Knights’ take first place in robotics tournament

Students from Young Women’s College Preparatory Academy and Mickey Leland College Preparatory Academy won the National Society of Black Engineers’ inaugural National VEX Robotics Championship this past weekend in Anaheim, California.

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Fourth-graders visit Texas A&M and University of Texas at Austin

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It’s never too early to get students excited about college. Shadowbriar and Mading elementary schools took fourth-grade students on college visits recently. Close to 150 Shadowbriar students, teachers, and staff, as well as some alumni parents, traveled to Texas A&M University (TAMU), and 55 Mading students went to University of Texas at Austin (UT).

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Teacher-produced STAAR videos motivate students for testing

Gallegos Elementary School and Wheatley High School teachers and staff created videos to get their students focused on doing their best work on this week’s STAAR tests.

Fourth- and fifth-grade Gallegos ES students saw the videos at a STAAR Pep Rally on Friday, March 27.

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Up Close takes a look at district’s move online for state testing

HISD is making the move toward online assessments that help teachers better determine what students know so that they can personalize the learning experience.

HISD Board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones addresses the transition in this month’s edition of Up Close with Chief Academic Officer Dan Gohl, Formative Assessment Manager Betty Garcia-Hill, and Carol Mosteit, principal of the High School for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice. Continue reading →

Status of all students’ magnet applications now available

New HISD School Choice website will guide parents through the acceptance process

The results of approximately 65,000 magnet applications from close to 21,000 HISD students are now available on the Magnet parent dashboard at www.hisdchoice.com.

Parents will also receive an email invited them to log in to their parent dashboard. The notifications will be sent starting at 4 p.m. on Friday, March 27, 2015. (This process will take several hours, so please do not be alarmed if you don’t see an email right away.) In addition, letters will be mailed via the U.S. Postal Service to the address of record on file for each student’s application and should arrive a few days later.

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Four students win national recognition for their writing talent

Four students from HISD schools have been recognized at the national level this spring through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

Bellaire High School’s Liana Wang and Carnegie Vanguard High School’s Victoria Songyang won Gold Key Awards, while Bellaire High’s Christina Tan and Gabriel CyPacht from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts won Silver Key Awards.

Only 39 students in Harris County earned awards at the national level of this competition, which is sponsored regionally by the Harris County Department of Education. To see a full list of winners, please click here.

The Gold Key winners will be honored at a ceremony at Carnegie Hall in New York City in June.

Yates HS communications students begin massive video archiving project

Students in the magnet communications program at Yates High School recently launched a massive archiving project that will one day result in the digitization of more than 30 years of video footage.

Phase one entails the ingestion of hundreds of video tapes from the Yates magnet program dating back to 1980, containing footage of the school and its history, events, faculty, and students.

The ultimate goal of the project is to produce a digital archive on Blu-Ray discs that can be displayed at the school’s new facility and will be ready in time for the 40th anniversary of the School of Communications in 2018.

Yates’ new chapter of the Student Television Network is using the latest in digital content acquisition technology to ingest the legacy analog video into an updated iMac system. Students involved are acquiring skills that can be used in the media archiving industry, film and television non-linear video editing, and metadata management, which is an introduction to meta-tagging and understanding aggregate data for social media careers.