Category Archives: District III – Daniela Hernandez

Interactive bus to help students learn more about health, science, tech careers

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HISD’s completely revamped career bus is hitting the road.

The district’s Career Readiness Department unveiled the newly remodeled vehicle—known as the Career Ready Wagon—on March 26, when it made its inaugural visit to Atherton Elementary School.

The bus is designed to allow elementary school students in third, fourth, and fifth grades the chance to explore possible career interests before advancing to middle school. It features a robotics station, a flight simulator, and a welding simulator, as well as an electric station that allows students to build their own electrical circuits. Also inside are four touchscreen monitors where students can test their career knowledge with a short quiz and watch a career-related video.

The bus will visit another 10 elementary schools — Anderson, Dávila, Emerson, Field, Garcia, Helms, Jefferson, Mading, Mandarin Chinese Language Immersion Magnet School, and T.H. Rogers — throughout April and May.

The bus is sponsored by HISD and CenterPoint Energy.

Also see this related story on HISD’s one and only Career Cowboy, Jake Breier, who was the subject of an “I Am HISD” profile last October.

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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Sanchez ES advances in NCUST award process

Sanchez Elementary has moved to the next level of competition in the 2015 National Center for Urban School Transformation’s (NCUST) National Excellence in Education Award. The school has now been named a Silver level winner for 2015, and is in contention to receive the Gold award later this year.

Among the thousands of urban schools in the nation, Sanchez won the honor by demonstrating exceptional academic results through achievement test scores and other indicators of academic accomplishment for every demographic group. After naming the finalists, NCUST sent executive coaches all over the country to visit schools, meet with principals, and observe lessons before determining the silver and bronze award winners.

Gold Level prize winners will be announced at the 2015 National Excellence in Urban Education Symposium in Dallas on May 21.

ACP grant lets teacher pursue professional development in Singapore over Spring Break

Shannon Kelly

Shannon Kelly

Program yet another benefit of obtaining alternative certification credentials through HISD

Shannon Kelly, a ninth-grade geography teacher at Milby High School, has big plans for her spring break.  She will be attending the fourth International Problem-Based Learning Symposium in Singapore March 18–20, thanks to HISD’s alternative certification grant program.

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Hispanic Parent Summit connects families with the resources they need most

“My child wants to be the president of the Unites States of America. How can I help her?”

That was just one of the many questions asked this past Saturday at the Hispanic Parent Summit held at Anderson Elementary School. The summit connected parents from schools all over District IX to representatives from HISD’s Literacy, College and Career Readiness, and Multilingual departments, as well as Houston Community College, University of Houston, Catholic Charities, Houston Public Library, and many more.

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQOhopPxzRE”] Continue reading →

Parents of student athletes sing praises of annual Football Showcase

Last month, the seventh annual Greater Houston Senior Football Showcase (GHSFS) took place, and hundreds of student athletes came to NRG Stadium’s practice bubble that day in the hopes of landing an academic scholarship.

The event turned out to be a huge success, as of the 468 students who showed up this year, 374 of them—or a whopping 80 percent—were offered scholarships. And while the tallies of this year’s scholarship dollars still aren’t in yet, the totals have topped $10 million for each of the past four years. Continue reading →

Library love leads to volunteering for Brookline ES fifth-graders

BrooklineES_LilLibrarians_400The “Early Bird Library Club” has been a popular destination for third- and fourth-graders who want to get in a little reading before class starts at Brookline Elementary School since January of 2014. But this year, a group of seven caring fifth-graders also decided to get in on the library love, when they began volunteering to replace books on the shelves after the club members had left.

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Community groups supporting district’s digital transformation

Volunteers spend afternoon at Milby HS learning more about the HUB

Houston community members and local businesses are supporting PowerUp, the district’s effort to digitally transform teaching and learning in the classroom. Recently a group of volunteers spent the afternoon side-by-side with teachers at Milby High School learning more about the HUB, the district’s new online teaching and learning platform.

HISD Instructional Technology Program Specialist Diana Bidulescu came up with the idea of having a support group of volunteers at Milby assist with the school’s recent distribution of laptops to students and its ongoing transition to digital learning. She hopes to expand the program to other HISD high schools in the future.

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Students celebrate reading as participants in ‘Read the Most Coast to Coast’

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Patterson Literature Magnet Elementary School participated in a nationwide effort to Read the Most Coast to Coast on Friday, Feb. 27. They joined hundreds of thousands of students in Renaissance Learning’s celebration that encourages students to read as much as they can.

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