McLane High School
T-Building
2:30 to 5:30pm
Introduction
Introduction to McLane High School by Matt Ward
Video of McLane Small Learning Communities
- SLC research:
- increased success
- improved academics
- fewer dropouts
- increased personalization
- Small schools at McLane to get kids connected to their education, interested in school, relevancy in their education
- Plan is to be a model high school for the state of California
- Highlights in the video of each of McLane's small learning communities
- Art Venture
- Business Academy
- Digital Media
- Medical Education and Research
- Turning Points Academy
- Teachers have a renewed attention to students when you place students in SLCs
- Interdisciplinary curriculum is critical, students need to see connections to outside world
Student Focus Group - facilitated by Cindy Tucker
- Students discuss what they're interested in doing after high school, some themes include:
- Finding something interesting to them now and something that seems like a good career
- AVID was mentioned a few times as being important for students
- 8 students have diverse interests
- Applying wthat they're learning to real-world problems makes school alot better
- Learning things in context is so different that regular schools. Everyone gets to learn what they want to learn.
- Academies help us figure out what we want to do.
- We're closer to our teachers and our fellow students too, because we're with them for 3 or 4 years, we connect with our teachers better.
- Programs are flexible, and can adapt to the students
- Freshman Academy is great. THey help prepare you in a big family environment and help us chose an academy for next year by talking about what our strengths are.
- It would be good to have teachers stay with the same students, they should follow us
- We need to ask more kids what theie interests are
- The personalized learning is the best part of the academies
- We need more information about getting scholarships. Start earlier, maybe freshman year, especially if they want to go to the UCs.
Discussion of Draft Recommendations in Workgroups