Day 2 of HISD’s EMERGE Northeast college and university tour included trips to Harvard and MIT, where students got to walk in the footsteps of such notable alumni as W.E.B. Du Bois (Harvard), Buzz Aldrin (MIT), Richard Feynman (MIT) and President Barack Obama (Harvard). The #EMERGEtour will take more than 95 students from 15 HISD high schools to nine top-tier university campuses this week.
Here are the student’s impressions of their second day, in their own words: Continue reading
HISD’s PowerUp initiative is already transforming the way teachers are deliver instruction and students learn through the mass distribution of laptops, but other types of cutting-edge technology are also making a big impression on district campuses.
Students at HISD’s Herrera Elementary School, for instance, have been “making” the most of a new three-dimensional (3-D) printer the school purchased this year, using it to explore lessons in science, music, and art.
Continue reading
Jason Castro is usually knowing for his catching prowess on the baseball diamond, but on May 29, he was delivering a pitch.
The professional athlete was at Scroggins Elementary School last Thursday to persuade young learners to continue reading for pleasure over the summer months, and to improve their chances of doing that, he helped distribute some of the 7,200 books he and his wife had donated to two HISD campuses. The books were divided between Scroggins and MacGregor elementary schools, and students at each campus got to select up to five books to take home and keep.
A hundred lucky families also got to attend the Houston Astros’ evening game against the Baltimore Orioles. The donation was coordinated through the literacy foundation the couple started, called Castro’s Kids.
Thousands respond to annual district survey to offer views on rigor, safety
HISD thanks the more than 110,000 parents, students, teachers and administrators who submitted responses to the annual Your Voice district survey this year.
Although mailed results are still being tallied by RDA Group, more than 4,000 parents took the survey online, answering questions about their perceptions of rigor, consistency and safety in HISD.
Complete results of the Your Voice survey are expected to be available online by July 11. Principals and other campus decision-makers will use these survey results to help guide campus improvement plans.
Once again, thank you to all who submitted survey results. With your support and participation, we can make changes that will impact the educational future of Houston’s children.
The summer break has just barely begun, but faculty and staff members at hundreds of schools around the Houston Independent School District are already getting a head start on the coming school year by setting up something called “leveled bookrooms” on their campuses.
The bookrooms are being stocked with some of the more than $8.5 million worth of reading materials the district purchased from Scholastic, Inc. with approval from the Board of Education. They are sorted by reading level and contain multiple copies of more than 5,000 titles in a wide variety of text types, themes, genres, topics, and content areas. The bookrooms will serve as an integral part of the Literacy By 3 (LX3) initiative by providing materials for teachers to use in guided reading exercises. The goal of LX3 to have all third-grade students reading at or above grade level by the end of the third grade.
The Houston Independent School District is serving free breakfasts and lunches to children ages 1-18 at more than 200 schools this summer.
Children do not need to be enrolled in summer school to participate in the program, and no paperwork, registration or proof of income is required. Adults may purchase breakfast for $2 and lunch for $3.25.
Juniors and seniors in HISD’s EMERGE fellowship program got to hear firsthand Monday what attending a top-tier university is really like on the first day of a whirlwind tour of nine Northeast college and universities.
EMERGE students from 15 HISD high schools toured Tufts and Northeastern University and heard from students about what it is like to be the first in their family to go to college.
Here’s what EMERGE students thought of their initial day: Continue reading
Renderings of the new DeBakey High School for Health Professions are featured in a new HISD video that highlights the planning and design of the campus.
The new facility’s transparent and collaborative design will provide students a 21st century academic experience in the heart of the Texas Medical Center. The school will be located in the medical center to better engage students in a medicine and research facility environment and provide them easy access to these resources.
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Adrian Acosta
Adrian Acosta has been challenging his biology classes at Young Men’s Preparatory Academy for years with a singular offer: if 25 percent or more of them earn “commended” status on the annual state-mandated assessment test, he will shave his head.
Until now, he has never had to make good on that promise, but on May 29, Acosta closed his eyes, sat in a chair, and handed the clippers to a student, after learning that 14 of his students—or a whopping 41 percent of his biology class—had held up their end of the bargain.
Natalie Nichols
Natalie Nichols has seen a lot of tragedy in her short life. Given up for adoption by her dying mother when she was just four years old, she lost both her mother and her younger sister in Guatemala before being adopted by a couple from the U.S.
Assimilating to life in a foreign country is a formidable task on its own, but that hasn’t stopped the plucky Helms Elementary fourth-grader from taking on additional challenges. Natalie wants to excel academically as well—and now, she has done so—earning a perfect score on the math portion of the recent STAAR exam.