Small Learning Communities Grant
In 2001, Memorial received a U.S. Department of Education Small Learning Communities federal grant to support a "neighborhood" reorganization. Students would be assigned to "backyards" consisting of approximately 20 students and a staff member, Backyards are grouped together to form "blocks", which are grouped to form "neighborhoods". In total there would be 100 backyards which combine to form 5 blocks which combine to form 4 neighborhoods. Started during the 2002-03 school year, the goal was to create a smaller environment where students would feel connected to each other and staff members. Different from a traditional homeroom concept, students are assigned to "backyards" consisting of approximately 20 students and 2 staff members (teachers, nurses, librarians, counselors, etc.) Students remain in the same backyard with the same students and teachers for their entire high school career. Backyard is currently receiving mostly negative views from students, and is under debate for improvement. Each neighborhood is assigned a vice principal to help ensure consistency in administration as students matriculate. In total there are 100 backyards that combine to form 20 blocks that combine to form 4 neighborhoods (Rock, Wolf, Fox, and Wisconsin).
Read more about this topic: James Madison Memorial High School
Famous quotes containing the words small, learning, communities and/or grant:
“To begin to use cultural forces for the good of our daughters we must first shake ourselves awake from the cultural trance we all live in. This is no small matter, to untangle our true beliefs from what we have been taught to believe about who and what girls and women are.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)
“Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The rebel, unlike the revolutionary, does not attempt to undermine the social order as a whole. The rebel attacks the tyrant; the revolutionary attacks tyranny. I grant that there are rebels who regard all governments as tyrannical; nonetheless, it is abuses that they condemn, not power itself. Revolutionaries, on the other hand, are convinced that the evil does not lie in the excesses of the constituted order but in order itself. The difference, it seems to me, is considerable.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)