Mylene_Melson_project

= Tucker High School =



= Demographics and Technology Assessment = Tucker was built as a campus style school on 44 acres with 19 buildings and originally served grades seven through twelve.It is now a high school for grades nine through twelve. It was at one time the most west end school.Since then, new high schools have been built as the population has gone even further west. We have been promised renovation many times but with the need for new schools, that project gets put on hold. Our approximately 1700 students come from 39 different countries with 21 different home languages.Our ethnic population is broken down as 61% White, 18.4% Black, 6.4% Hispanic and 9.2% Asian/Pacific Islander.Our economically disadvantage students are at 14.9% Our scores fluctuate some but for the most part are at or exceed the district and state scores.Our reading and math proficiency scores decreased in 2006 but have since increased each year. **[|Schoolmatters.com]**is a resource that gives comparisons of schools using many factors. One area of weakness for Tucker High School are test scores in combined math and reading for our Hispanic population and our English Language Learners (ELL) as a whole. In 2008 our scores were at 96% profficient for all students. The breakdown is about the same between genders and between Blacks and Whites. Our Hispanic population however was only 78% passsing and ELL was at 72%. Our Hispanic population keeps growing and we cannot let scores like this continue. The main reason, of course, is that we want all of our students to be successful. Another reason is that we will not make AYP with these kinds of scores once this subgroup becomes large enough to count in our statistics. This is also true for our Exceptional Education population with scores at 85%. In terms of technology, we have a wide range of proficiency and use of technology in our school. There are currently ten classrooms with Promethean Boards. Quite a few other classrooms have LCD projectors. We have a television studio for morning announcements, a computer lab devoted to the yearbook staff and other publications, and a robotics lab we use for competition. We had an evaluation of technology use and teacher/student attitudes towards technology done at our school this past year.Our principal was interested in forming the core department chairs forming a group called Reflective Friends.We met with staff from Staff Development who do this sort of evaluation and they came back with not so favorable results.Some people in our group were very offended by the methods used and the examples used in the results of the survey.A very small sample was observed and interviewed.The data and quotes included in the results were mostly negative and our group had a hard time believing that this was a true example of Tucker.Part of the data that could not be ignored was time spent using technology and time spent using higher order thinking skills.This is an area of weakness that we must address.

= Instructional Use = Teachers should use technology to inspire learning. It is important to convey the importance and dedication to quality over quantity. Teachers should examine each lesson to find the appropriate use of technology to enhance the lessons. At the beginning of the year, during teacher week, we will review the TPACK chart and the activities on the site listed below.

This shows the process that teachers can go through to find what technology will work for a particular unit. []

The county has invested in quite a bit of web resources. There are found at eLearning, a site of resources for students, parent, and teachers. SchoolSpace (a division of Angel and Blackboard). This will replace our VirtualShare server where drop boxes are created for each class to either drop assignments to the student or to the teacher. This is also a place to share lessons. SchoolSpace goes beyond VirtualShare in that teachers and students can communicate through discussion boards, live chats, or emails. Calendars, links to websites, communities and secure testing are also included in SchoolSpace. The advantage in moving to SchoolSpace is that it is web-based so it can be accessed anywhere. Another advantage is that it is password protected and therfore not public. The disadvantage is that it is more time consuming for teachers and students to upload and download course information. []

Each subject area has software specific to their curriculum. Some courses also have their textbooks online. Henrico County has also had some subject areas create their own online course or supplementary online material. []

= Student Access = All students are issued computers. There is a use fee of $50 for the year. There are funds available for families who have hardship in paying the use fee. Students who opt out have to use the computers in the library which are available all day. They can use their home computer or those found at the public library, but some software purchased by the county or school may not be available. Students are to bring their fully-charged computers to school each day. They are encouraged to bring their chargers.

Students have access to the internet but in school there are restrictions for some sites. Teachers must request that these sites be unblocked if it is for instructional use.

Students and parents can access their grades at any time on HCPSlink which is also password protected.

= Internet Safety = At Tucker High School all ninth graders and their parents are required to attend an orientation which includes a section on internet safety. During freshmen meetings, continued instruction on internet safety will occur.

Henrico County also has a section on their website devoted to this issue. Our librarians discuss this issue and others when teachers bring their classes down for an introduction on library usage. Teachers are also encouraged to give internet safety instruction when assigning and creating online assignments.

Found on the eLearning page under HCPS Teacher Computer Training []

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= Professional Development = Our Instructional Technology Resource Teacher (ITRT) is an integral part of the technology initiative. Teachers will turn to her for help, ideas and implementation of technology in the classroom. If a teacher wants to use software or the Web2.0, she will come in to either teach the students how to use it or as an aide in case the teacher runs into glitches.

Our staff development is coordinated by our ITRT. She includes teacher’s suggestions when setting up the site-based days that the county has set aside for staff development. Tucker High School has many major initiatives that support better teacher instruction and more student learning. Everyone on our staff is involved with at least two of these initiatives. Much of our staff development time is set aside for the following. With all the different areas that the county and our school would like to develop, teachers unfortunately do not always get to attend the session they might want.

Henrico County has initiated the Henrico21, which focuses on teachers sharing their best practices in bringing technolgy to the classroom. We recieved an email after lesson plans had be submitted for review stating that none of the lesson truly reflected 21st Century learning. Therefore much of our staff development will focus on this.

As part of the 21st Century Skills initiative our administration has include the Relflective Friends program as part of our Contiuous School Improvement Plan. The website, [], explains that "The Reflective Friends process is designed to provide participating schools with objective data on their efforts to build 21st century learning environments. Through a series of systematic classroom observations and interviews with teachers and students, a profile of trends in classroom instruction (content, pedagogy, and technology) will emerge. These data will become good information to be used for future development of your school program." We had observations this past year but there were so few teachers observed and the interviews with students and teachers were not very helpful. We decided that more observations and interviews would be needed this year after some additional training in modeling 21st Century Skills.

Tiger Hall is our freshman academy. One building of our campus is devoted to our freshmen. Homeroom, core classes and special informational/instructional time is all housed in Tiger Hall. The administration decided to start this initiative because of the retention rate of our freshmen and ultimately the graduation rate. We have a Professional Learning Community (PLC) that meets to discuss and share techniques that can be used for the success of our freshmen in their transition to high school.

Tucker was also selected to house the second International Baccalaureate Specialty Center inthe county. Since this is our first year with this program, it will be for incoming freshmen as part of the Middle Years Programme. Each year a new grade level will be added untill full participating in the Diploma Progamme. Since this is a major initiative, our principal decided that the entire school should embrace this philosophy. Our lesson plans will be structured to reflect a more global, technological curriculum.

We are one of three high schools in our county to have our AP program supplemented by Virginia Advanced Study Strategies (VASS). Extensive training is given to our AP teachers in Math, Science, and English. In return, supplies and monetary incentives are given to students and teachers for scores of 3 or higher.

Promethean boards are making their way into our schools. We currently have 10 boards with 6 more coming through a grant for our Exceptional Education teachers. All of our students and teachers have ActivInspire which is used with the boards. This means that teachers with no boards still have access to the power of the software. All teachers will need training for this since the county has a vision of eventually providing all classrooms with the Promethean boards. media type="youtube" key="Bq0RyunVwaw" height="385" width="480" align="center"

The pilot phase is now complete for SchoolSpace which was explained above in the intstructional use section. Staff development time has been set aside for training for teachers who have not used this web resource. Two hours of training is mandatory prior to the start of the school year.

We are switching platforms from XP to Windows 7 on our Dell Computers. Mandatory training on the new platform will also be completed before the beginning of the school year.

= Funding = Funding for schools is divided between our three governing bodies: federal, state and local. Grants and other independent sources are also very important to schools in being able to provide more than the minimum to our students.

Our Tiger Hall initiative has been funded by a grant secured by one of our admiistrators. Our AP program is partially funded by Virginia Advanced Study Strategies (VASS)