Nearly a month into the new school year, teachers and staff hit the ground running with both instruction and student outreach. The weekend of Sept. 9 saw educators and wraparound specialists visiting student residences on a mission: regain absentee students, and make sure their families know that HISD cares about them.
Continue readingTag Archives: Welch MS
Teach Plus names 11 HISD educators to its state policy fellowship cohort
The national nonprofit Teach Plus has selected 45 Texas teachers to be a part of its 2022-2023 Policy Fellowship cohort, and 11 of them are from HISD.
Continue readingWelch MS names Dr. Deshonta Everett as new principal
Dr. Deshonta Everett has been selected as the new principal of Welch Middle School.
Continue readingShare your thoughts on a new superintendent: Take a survey and attend an upcoming meeting
The HISD Board of Education is searching for a new superintendent, and trustees want input from community members about the qualities and traits they would like to see in the next district leader.
The board has hired Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates to assist in the superintendent search process. The Illinois-based firm is conducting a survey (which you can find here) and helping trustees host a series of community meetings in March to gather input from various district stakeholders. Feedback obtained from those meetings will be used by trustees to finalize their superintendent profile and begin searching for candidates.
Batter up! Key MS breaks ground on new, state-of-the-art baseball field
SELF and Fondren foundations bring baseball, unity to school community
When baseball season begins next spring, the students at Francis Scott Key Middle School will be running the bases of their new baseball field. The Stacey and Bo Porter SELF Foundation, in partnership with the Fondren Foundation, are together donating the construction and support for the field.
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“Part of our mission is facility improvements, and this is a step in that direction,” said Bo Porter, chairman of SELF — which stands for Sports, Education, Lifeskills, and Faith.
Countdown to 2014-2015: What’s new in HISD #6 — Mascot makeover at four campuses
This is the fifth in a series of stories counting down to the start of school, spotlighting what is new in HISD in the coming year.
Two HISD middle schools and two high schools will be sporting new mascots when fall sports launch, in a historic move that saw outdated and culturally offensive symbols replaced in an orderly months-long process.
The Board of Education approved a policy change earlier this year after Superintendent Terry Grier sought new guidelines that would “respect cultural differences, values, and attitudes” by placing a ban on mascots or nicknames using race or ethnicity.
Madison HS Teacher Named KBR Science Teacher of the Year
Madison High School’s Vladimir Gonzalez Lopez (right) was named the 2014 KBR Science Teacher of the Year. With him is last year’s second place winner, Samuel Saenz.
Vladimir G. Lopez, a physics teacher at Madison High School, isn’t interested in spoon-feeding his students their lessons.
“Science is a process,” he said, “And you can’t expect anybody to give you the answers. Students have to do the experiments and try new things, because that’s what they’re going to need when they’re doing real science.”
It’s precisely that commitment to cultivating students’ own investigative skills that has made Lopez the first-place winner in KBR’s fifth annual science awards program. The contest was created in 2009 to recognize new and effective models of instruction that emphasize the scientific method and critical thinking skills.
Historic day for 4 HISD schools with new mascots
School communities at four HISD campuses with controversial mascots have selected new names, which were announced Tuesday, April 15, at a news conference at Hamilton Middle School by their principals and Superintendent Terry Grier.
In January, the HISD Board of Education approved a new policy that prohibited the use of any race or ethnic group as a mascot or nickname.
Four schools were identified as not aligning to the policy, and Tuesday, they received their new names:
Board of Education approves policy update banning offensive mascots
Houston Independent School District Board of Education on Thursday took the first step in approving a measure that would prohibit offensive or culturally insensitive mascots.
The proposed policy affects four HISD schools — Lamar High School Redskins, Westbury High School Rebels, Hamilton Middle School Indians and Welch Middle School Warriors. It would go into effect at the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year.
Not Your Parents’ Old-Style Teacher Conference
A new team approach – blending classroom learning with home support — is revolutionizing teacher-parent conferences in an HISD pilot program.
Centered on “Academic Parent-Teacher Teams,” the approach being tried at eight schools brings in groups of parents to meet with their child’s teacher three times a year. Instead of merely walking out with a report card, these parents know where their youngster stands in relation to the rest of the class – and take with them important tools to help support in the home what’s being taught in the classroom.