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:
“no little brass rollers
and small easy wheels on the bottom—
my townspeople what are you thinking of!
A rough plain hearse then
with gilt wheels and no top at all.”
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
“Experiences in order to be educative must lead out into an expanding world of subject matter, a subject matter of facts or information and of ideas. This condition is satisfied only as the educator views teaching and learning as a continuous process of reconstruction of experience.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)
“We grant no dukedoms to the few,
We hold like rights and shall;—
Equal on Sunday in the pew,
On Monday in the mall.
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)