Category Archives: Middle Schools

School secretary Karen Reed is HISD Employee of the Month for January

Karen Reed, left, is recognized as the January 2015 Employee of the Month at the HISD Board Meeting in December.

Karen Reed, Employee of the Month for January, is a Special Education secretary at Hogg Middle School, a position she has held since 2012. She walked away from a lucrative career in commercial real estate to join Team HISD, after realizing that her job wasn’t meaningful enough.

“As a research analyst, I did all this work so brokers could go home with big commissions,” said Reed. “I was padding someone else’s pocketbook, but not making a difference. I wanted somewhere for my stamp to be. These kids provide me with what I need: a purpose.”

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Vanguard magnet programs challenge students with rigorous courses

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In the Vanguard magnet program at Black Middle School, students are taking advanced courses such as biology, geometry, and creative writing. They’re working on their own experiments, researching history on a local and national scale, and even writing their first novels.

“Our students are taking high-school level courses in the seventh and eighth grades,” said Katelyn Riley, the school’s Vanguard coordinator. “Our sixth-graders are learning seventh-grade math, and we have students taking geometry and biology as eighth-graders.” Continue reading →

Italian Consulate celebrates winners of literary contest

Students who are taking Italian at Bellaire High School and Pin Oak Middle School entered projects in a literary contest organized and sponsored by the Italian Consulate and the Committee of Italian Residents Abroad. Italian journalist and archeologist Valerio Massimo Manfredi presented the winners with certificates during the 10th Conference of Italian Researchers in the World, which was held at the Italian Consulate on Dec. 6. Continue reading →

Students become global thinkers in IB programs

Tamokia Thompson, right, poses for a photograph with her daughter, Cienna Alley, left, at Fondren Middle School, September 9, 2014. (Houston ISD/Dave Einsel)

Tamokia Thompson, right, poses for a photograph with her daughter, Cienna Alley, left, at Fondren Middle School.

The International Baccalaureate (IB) program at Fondren Middle School challenges students to think globally by grasping skills in design and technology to research, solve problems, and present new ideas on international places, populations, and cultures.

As a district of choice, Fondren is one of several IB schools that HISD families can choose. The rigorous and broad IB program empowers students to become bilingual and biliterate learners who embrace multiculturalism and diversity. The deadline to apply to an IB program is Friday, Dec. 19.  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 →

Teaching language arts helps one educator publish his first book

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When Mark Dostert was hired as a “children’s attendant” at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center back in 1997, he didn’t realize that meant he would actually be serving as an unarmed guard of the facility’s inmates.

But the seventh-grade English language arts teacher, now in his eleventh year at HISD’s Johnston Middle School, said the year-long experience in Chicago taught him some valuable lessons about working with at-risk youth—and now he is sharing those lessons with other educators. Continue reading →

Students join in the fight against hunger among children, homeless

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Come out and join Hamilton Middle School and the Rice University Coalition on Hunger and Homelessness this Sunday, Dec. 5 for the school’s second annual Fall Sandwiches for All. The event is scheduled for 2 p.m. at Hamilton, 139 East 20th Street.

Hamilton is the only HISD middle school to partner with the Rice University Coalition on Hunger and Homelessness to develop a program that specifically focuses on ways to feed children in Harris County, where 25.5 percent of youngsters live in food-insecure households. Continue reading →

Welch MS capitalizes on popularity of ‘color dash’ concept to spruce up its fall festival

Runners at Welch Middle School started out with white T-shirts and ended up with a rainbow of colors splashed across their clothing, faces, and even their hair.

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The Wolf Pack Fall Festival and Magnet Color Dash took place on Saturday, Nov. 15, and both children and adults finished the mile-long race looking as though they had been through an explosion in a paint factory. Continue reading →

Mock wedding ceremony joins math and reading at annual family night

Fleming Middle School recently hosted its annual Family Math Night for parents and students. This year’s event combined mathematics along with the district’s Literacy by 3 movement. The highlight of the evening was a mock wedding ceremony between “numeracy” and “literacy” in an effort to help parents and students understand how reading and math can be combined in the classroom to create academic success. Parents also got to actively participate in a variety of hands-on activities that reflected the daily work that their scholars are engaged in.

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T.H. Rogers students celebrate Diwali

T.H. Rogers students celebrated Diwali – the Hindu festival of lights – in a special program held on Nov. 14.

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