Author Archives: HISD Communications

Advanced Placement teacher named to national AP Advocates Program

Diane Morrow teaches an AP English class at Davis High School, April 14, 2014. (Houston ISD/Dave Einsel)

Diane Morrow teaches an AP English class at Davis High School, April 14, 2014.

As an Advanced Placement literature and language teacher at Davis High School, Diana Morrow takes pride in challenging and pushing her students to pursue rigorous coursework in order to prepare them for life after high school.

“I tell my students this is going to be the hardest class they’ll take in their life,” Morrow said. “They need this class to understand analyzing, synthesizing, how to defend an argument, how to write. These are the skills they need for college. So, I have such a big responsibility to help these kids be successful.” Continue reading

Community meetings scheduled to share design concepts and site plans for 2012 bond schools

Editor’s note: The story has updated to reflect that the community meeting at Mandarin Chinese Language Immersion School has been postponed to a later date that has yet to be scheduled.

The Houston Independent School District has scheduled two additional community meetings to discuss the progress being made within the 2012 bond program, which will renovate or rebuild 40 schools to create 21st century facilities.

The meetings for Sterling High School and Parker Elementary are part of the district’s commitment to host at least three community meetings for each bond campus during the different phases of the building program: planning, design and construction.

This will be the third community meeting for Sterling, and the second for Parker in a process designed to encourage collaboration and participation. The goal is to present the work done so far in the design process and to share site plans, exterior drawings, final designs and construction schedules.

Input from the community meetings is used to guide the work of each school’s Project Advisory Team, which is made up of teachers, staff, administrators, students and community members. The team provides recommendations on all phases of the projects, which will undergo a final scope-to-budget review before construction begins.

The meetings will be held from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m

Tuesday, November 18 Sterling High School
11625 Martindale Road
Monday, December 15 Parker Elementary School
10626 Atwell

Video: Vision for a new Bellaire HS is coming together with community’s help

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In a new video, members of Bellaire’s Project Advisory Team (PAT) discuss their vision and priorities for the school’s new 21st century campus, which will be built as part of the district’s 2012 bond program.

Continue reading

Eastwood Academy students become CyberPatriots

Students from Eastwood Academy are learning how to keep personal data safe, protect it from vulnerabilities, and “black hat” hackers and malicious software, all while having fun in the process. This is the second year that teams from Eastwood Academy are competing in the CyberPatriot National Youth Cyber Defense Competition.

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The competition positions middle- and high-school students as newly hired IT professionals who must manage the network of a small company, utilizing their knowledge of networking, switches, routers, firewalls, TCP/IP protocols and architecture, and administration of various operating systems. During the competition, students will have to identify network vulnerabilities within a six-hour window. Continue reading

HISD students participate in first-ever UH Special Olympics Basketball Camp

Basketballs were flying around the Hofheinz Pavilion on Nov. 10, as more than 50 HISD students with special needs got to meet and play basketball with coaches and student-athletes from the University of Houston (UH) men’s basketball program.

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For the first UH Special Olympics Basketball Camp, Cougar coaches and players set up six stations on the pavilion’s basketball court, and middle-school students practiced shooting, dribbling, passing, and other fundamentals. Continue reading

HAIS principal honored with outstanding school leadership award

The Houston Academy for International Studies (HAIS) was officially recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School at an awards ceremony on Nov. 11 in Washington, D.C., and Principal Melissa Jacobs-Thibaut was also presented with the Terrel H. Bell Award for Outstanding School Leadership.

The award recognizes campus leaders who are committed to doing whatever it takes to help their students meet high standards. The award’s namesake served as secretary of education from 1981 to 1985. Continue reading

Curriculum manager named Star Award winner by University of Houston

HISD’s Angela Miller accepts the Star Award from Robert (Bob) H. McPherson, dean of University of Houston’s College of Education, on Nov. 7.

A talent for obtaining federal grants that have benefitted both HISD teachers and the institution where they studied has earned Secondary Social Studies Curriculum Manager Angela Miller recognition this year from the University of Houston (UH). Miller was recently named the sole “dean’s choice” Star Award winner for 2014 by that school’s College of Education.

“The Star Awards are an opportunity for us to shine a light on our best and brightest alumni, faculty, and students,” said UH College of Education Director of Advancement Brandie Cleaver. “The Dean’s Recognition Award is to honor those individuals who have made an impact on the UH community but don’t necessarily fit into one of those categories.” Continue reading

Endurance sport training builds fortitude and fraternity at Sharpstown HS

The Aramco Houston Half Marathon is still about ten weeks away, but excitement is building at one HISD school, courtesy of a science teacher with a penchant for endurance sports. Sarah Kingston and a group of like-minded students and staff members at Sharpstown High School have been training together now for about five weeks in preparation for that annual event.

“Our students and staff ran a 5k race on Nov. 2,” said Kingston, “and it was an amazing experience. Last week, students ran the same two-mile loop that they did during the first week of training, and they were really able to see changes in their running.” Continue reading

HISD schools awarded STEM grants from ExxonMobil

Samuel Saenz

A proposal submitted by East Early College High School recently won the school a grant from ExxonMobil that will help fund science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs for girls.

Science teacher Samuel Saenz applied for the company’s Southeastern Consortium Minorities in Engineering (SECME) mini-grant by submitting a proposal entitled “G-3 (Girls, Gears & Gadgets): A Program to Encourage Girls from Economically Disadvantaged Families to Consider STEM Related Career Choice.” The proposal outlines a plan to form a girls’ robotics and engineering team that will not only program robots for competition, but encourage younger students from feeder schools to explore STEM career possibilities. Continue reading

Special Education expert shares lessons learned during PowerUp

Representatives from school districts as far away as Seattle and Boston sat in on Beth Goodrich’s presentation on the importance of considering the needs of special student populations when giving students access to laptops or tablets.

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The HISD senior manager’s talk was one of many sessions at the fall 2014 meeting of the Urban Special Education Leadership Collaborative, a national network of approximately 100 school districts committed to improving outcomes for students with disabilities. The topic of the gathering hosted by HISD last week was “Designing Learning Environments for all Students: Increasing Access Through Technology.” Continue reading