Category Archives: District VIII – Judith Cruz

Petroleum academy students develop skills, sportsmanship at STEM Showdown

Students from three HISD high schools took home prizes, as well as lessons on teamwork and sportsmanship from the recent Viva Technology STEM Showdown.

The event, which took place on Nov. 6 at University of Houston, is a partnership between Great Minds in STEM and Shell Oil Company. It provides traditionally underserved high-school students in IPAA/PESA Petroleum Academies with a chance to compete in an intensive series of STEM challenges alongside undergraduate partners attending local universities.

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Students win prizes in video contest for demonstrating web savvy

Harvard ES fifth-grader Callie Bream took home a gift card for $150 as the inaugural first-place prize winner of a new monthly video contest sponsored by HISD Education Technology and the Future of Privacy Forum.

Harvard ES fifth-grader Callie Bream took home a gift card for $150 as the inaugural first-place prize winner of a new monthly video contest.

Keeping email accounts secure with strong passwords is an important aspect of responsible digital citizenship, and students from two HISD schools have demonstrated their mastery of this concept by winning the top prizes in a video production contest co-sponsored by the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) and HISD’s Educational Technology team.

Harvard Elementary School students won four of the five prizes available (first and second, as well as two honorable mentions), while a student from Eastwood Academy took home the third-place prize.

The competition was created as a part of Digital Awareness Month in October to increase students’ web savvy while also giving them an opportunity for creative expression. Continue reading →

Construction set to start soon for new Energy Institute HS

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Energy Institute High School students, staff, and community members on Tuesday attended the second community meeting to hear about progress on a new $37 million school for the nation’s first energy studies high school.

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2015 holiday greeting card artwork winners announced

The winners of HISD’s annual 2015 Holiday Greeting Card competition were announced on Nov. 3, and one was a repeat from last year.

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Gloria Xie, who won in the middle school category in 2014, also claimed that honor this year as a seventh-grader at Pershing Middle School. “I would just like to say thank you to my principal, Ms. (Kim) Heckman, and my teacher, Ms. Perugini, and my parents,” she said.

Each year, the district sends out hundreds of holiday greeting cards to principals, board members, legislators, local leaders, parents groups, and community partners. Since 2003, these cards have featured the artwork of HISD students.

The other students whose artwork was selected for 2015 were: Continue reading →

HISD, Furr HS Green Institute recognized for partnership with U.S. Forest Service

Green Ambassadors visit local schools, communities, and parks to spread the conservation and environmental awareness message. They work with Woodsy Owl and his animal friends.

Green Ambassadors visit local schools, communities, and parks to spread the conservation and environmental awareness message. They work with Woodsy Owl and his animal friends.

The Green Institute at Furr High School is only two years old, but that program is already getting national attention for its efforts.

In March, a group of students from there delivered a presentation at the National Environmental Justice Conference and Training Program in Washington, D.C. And this week, students and educators will travel to the nation’s capital again to be honored alongside Forest Service representatives for the Abraham Lincoln Honors Award for Diversity, Inclusion, and Outreach from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  Principal Bertie Simmons will accompany students and educators in support of their recognition for this prestigious award. Continue reading →

Eastwood Academy community gets update on plans for new building

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Eastwood Academy students, staff, and community members attended the second community meeting on Thursday night to hear about proposed site and construction plans for a new building being constructed under the 2012 bond program.

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Furr HS breaks ground on ‘bigger and better’ new school

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Students, staff, alumni and other stakeholders of Furr High School gathered at the school on Thursday to break ground on a new $55 million campus, which is part of HISD’s $1.89 billion bond program.

“It’s a gigantic day for Furr High School,” said Principal Bertie Simmons. “There are so many exciting things about the new school – it’s going to be amazing.”

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Power of social media helps the Rusk School harness the power of the sun

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Students at HISD’s Rusk School will soon be growing organic food for local charities, after the campus completed construction on a geodesic-dome-shaped, solar-powered greenhouse funded by a $25,000 grant from the State Farm Youth Advisory Board.

The school won the grant in 2012 through the organization’s “Cause An Effect” program (later re-named “Neighborhood Assist”), an online contest that generates votes for local causes through social media. A student panel chose 100 finalists from a field of 3,000 entries, and voters on State Farm’s Facebook page chose the top 40 winners. Continue reading →

Academic Parent Teacher Teams (APTT) set the stage for student success

This year, in nearly 200 classrooms at nine HISD elementary schools, parents are experiencing a new kind of parent-teacher conference that gives them the tools both to expand their children’s learning and to monitor their progress.

Schools in their second or third years of implementing the Academy Parent-Teacher Teams (APTT) program are continuing to perfect and expand the new model of meetings to empower parents to help their children learn outside of school.

Eliot, Gallegos, Kennedy, Mitchell, Piney Point, Shadowbriar, and Tijerina elementary schools, as well as Fonwood Early Childhood Center and the Wharton Dual Language Academy, all recently completed their first round of fall APTT meetings.

The model replaces traditional parent-teacher conferences with three 75-minute group meetings involving all parents in the class, and one 30-minute individual session with the student, teacher, and parents. During group meetings, teachers share student performance data and expectations for the class, review skills, and model hands-on activities parents can do at home to help their children master skills. Parents practice the activities at home with their kids over a 60-day period until their next meeting, when they can again review the data and see how their child has progressed. Continue reading →

DiscoverU expands the number of educational travel opportunities for HISD students

DiscoverU has increased the number of partnerships it has with HISD schools to seven for the current school year, allowing even more students to expand their horizons through foreign travel, college campus residencies, business internships, and more.

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