Category Archives: District VII – Bridget Wade

Class of 2014 IB diploma candidates receive their degrees

LamarHS_CO2014_IBDipsMore than 100 members of HISD’s Class of 2014 took home their International Baccalaureate (IB) diplomas recently. Ninety-six graduates from Lamar High School (some of whom are pictured here) and 10 from Bellaire High School accepted their degrees during special ceremonies held on Jan. 5 and Dec. 17, respectively.

Since IB diplomas are not conferred until late summer, students are generally presented with them while at home, on break from university.

Lamar and Bellaire were the first two HISD high schools to offer the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, which is composed of academically challenging and advanced curriculum. Lamar’s IB Diploma program is the largest in Texas and one of the top 10 IB Diploma programs in the United States. Reagan High School received its IB authorization for the Middle Years Programme in the fall of 2013. It is currently in the process of obtaining authorization to offer the IB Degree Program. The first students eligible to graduate from that campus with IB diplomas will be the Class of 2018.

Health program to help students focus, stay calm expands to 26 schools

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Breathing exercises and yoga poses are just a few of the things HISD students learn in the Sonima Health and Wellness program. Fourteen additional HISD schools now offer the curriculum, which is offered by the Sonima Foundation and teaches students multiple skills for a healthier lifestyle.

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Celebrations mark beginning of construction for 2012 bond projects

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Right on schedule, the fourth quarter of 2014 brought the beginning of construction for the 17 schools in Group 1 of HISD’s current bond program, bringing groundbreaking ceremonies and more activity to worksites across the district.

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College acceptance letters start arriving for members of Class of 2015

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Lamar senior Tyra Jenkins poses with the acceptance letter she received from Cornell University. Cornell is her dream school, and she plans to attend it in the fall.

Graduating seniors are starting to discover where their quest for higher education will take them this fall, as colleges and universities across the country are sending out letters of acceptance to those who applied for admission early.

More than two dozen students in the district’s EMERGE program have already received either early decision or early action notices from top tier schools, including Stanford, Notre Dame, Rice, Cornell, and Harvard.   Continue reading →

Student Congress giving high school kids a voice in their own education

Speaker of the Congress Zaakir Tameez (lower left) poses with members of the Student Congress at the Dec. 11 Board of Education meeting.

Speaker of the Congress Zaakir Tameez (lower left) poses with members of the Student Congress at the Dec. 11 Board of Education meeting.

A group of juniors and seniors from four HISD campuses is on a mission to give their peers a voice in public education—and they have created a new Student Congress to do it.

More than a dozen students from Bellaire, Carnegie Vanguard, Lamar, and Yates high schools founded the congress last spring, after participating in senior Zaakir Tameez’s Texas Performance Standards Project at Carnegie Vanguard.

“We were originally called ‘Our Shared Future’ and talked about current events,” explains Outreach Chair Amy Fan, now a junior at Bellaire High School. “But as we met with city leaders from all over Houston, our conversations would constantly lead back to education. Yet the only people with whom we could share our critiques was each other.” Continue reading →

Pre-K students get a holiday surprise

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Preschool students at Farias Early Childhood Center enjoyed an early holiday treat Tuesday, Dec. 16. Santa and his helpers along with HISD high school students and members of Leading Ladies, a nonprofit female youth service organization, distributed toys to 380 excited four-year-olds. Continue reading →

Solving math problems equals large sums for charities

Think Through Math winners When Think Through Math’s “Time for Giving” contest ended on Dec. 5, Ms. Argue’s “Math Masters” team of scholars was just one of two teams that won from the U.S. Central Time Zone and only one of eight teams nationwide. Students earn points by completing math lessons, and the points are then converted into dollars, which are donated to charities across the country. The River Oaks Elementary School math students earned enough points to donate $17,712 to the charities of their choice – Big Brothers Big Sisters and No Kid Hungry. Continue reading →

Students explore similarities of medicine, energy, aerospace at Pumps & Pipes

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Forty HISD students experienced what it would be like to be a surgeon and an engineer at  Pumps and Pipes, where thousands of medicine, energy and aerospace professionals and researchers exchanged ideas and explored crossover technologies in each industry.

“The aerospace, energy and medical fields have different techniques, but they basically use the same concepts,” said Energy Institute High School sophomore Shawn Attar.

Students from Energy, Baylor College of Medicine Academy at Ryan, DeBakey High School for Health Professions, Furr High School, Kashmere High School, Lamar High School, M.C. Williams Middle School, and South Early College High School attended the annual event Monday, Dec. 8 at the Houston Methodist Research Institute. The event is organized by ExxonMobil, Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center, University of Houston, and NASA. Continue reading →

Day 2: Hour of Code teaches students new web programs

Hour of Code Kinder

Kindergartners work on coding problems at Briargrove Elementary School on Monday, Dec. 8.

Kindergartners at Briargrove Elementary School collaborated to create an interactive character, coordinating his movements, look and sound for their Hour of Code activity. On Monday, Dec. 8, Cleopatra Jones’ ESL kindergarten class used Scratch, a web programming language tool used to create interactive art, stories and simulations to create an interactive character and build its environment.

More than 100 HISD schools are participating in the Hour of Code as part of Computer Science Education Week, Dec. 8–14. The week-long global initiative encourages students of all ages to learn the basics of coding, engineering, computer programming, and gaming. Continue reading →

Mandarin Chinese Language Immersion Magnet School breaks ground for new facility

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Stakeholders for the Mandarin Chinese Language Immersion Magnet School gathered Saturday at the school’s new site in the Galleria area to break ground on a new 21st century building. The $32 million campus is being built as part of the HISD’s 2012 bond program.

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