I teach at one of three high schools located in Centennial, Colorado part of Littleton Public Schools. Our school has always been the dominant high school in our district as well as a leader in the state regarding state and national testing. Our college remediation rate, which measures the student’s preparedness for college-level classes, is one of the lowest in the state. About 92-94 % of our graduating seniors go on to college. We are an open enrollment school with two feeder middle schools. A number of our students come from these two feeder schools, but we do have a good percentage of open-enrolled kids as well. Students are open-enrolled based on a letter they write to our principal, previous academic achievement, and possibly an interview. We have a student body that is primarily Caucasian, suburban, and upper-middle class.
Most ninth-grade English classes have around 30 kids. Our curriculum is undergoing some revision aiming for more alignment towards essential learnings defined at each grade-level rather than a large curricular approach. Personal Learning Communities is an additional focus in our school district. The aim is to give teachers more time to examine current practices, create common assessments, and ultimately, ensure that all our students are receiving the same education. We have been participants in a massive staff development effort examining how kids learn best and how technology can support that learning.
Our administrative staff is led by our veteran principal who has hired over 98% of the teachers at our school. He has been the principal for over 20 years. His administrative staff consists of 5 assistant principals all with various levels of experience.
I am a veteran English with eleven years of experience. Other teachers in the department vary in their experience from 3 years to 30 years.. For freshmen, we offer Humanities classes, regular ninth-grade comprehensive English as well as Honors. We are also offering some single-gender classes. There are two 1-1 English classes at AHS. The ninth-grade class as a whole usually numbers around 500-550. We have tremendous community support. At our school, both parents usually work and many have received their Master's degrees. The parents are mostly upper-middle-class with strong ties to the community. Many parents volunteer at the school or support their child in extracurricular activities. Well over half of our students participate in extra-curricular activities.
However, even with all these advantages present in our students’ lives, we still have a number of students who chose not to invest in learning. There are a small number of students who do the minimum and get through with D'sand C's on their report cards. My goal was to find a way to motivate these students.