Organization-houses/small Learning Communities
Clinton is split into several small learning communities (SLC). They include the Macy Honors Gifted Program (internally referred to often as the Macy House), Health Professions, Veterinary Professions, Public Service, Business Enterprise, Future Educators, Academy House, and Varsity House.
The Macy Program, "begun in 1985 with funding from the Macy Foundation," attracts intelligent, hard-working children and preparing them for exceptionally selective colleges. The Macy program has been expanded to serve 1,200 students. The current Macy coordinator is Ernesta Consolazio. The Macy Honors Gifted Program in the Sciences and Humanities has its own teachers, and a nine-period day compared to the regular New York City eight-period day. The program offers Specialized and Advanced Technology (SMT) courses, Science, Math, English, Law, Government, Philosophy and Great Books. All students in the program are required to have a minimum average of 80 and not to fail any courses. When Macy students are removed from the program, they are placed in Excel, a special Macy-run program just for its kick-outs and drop-outs, before getting fully demoted to the lower programs. From at least 1998 to 2002 some students went directly into the Excel program.
Advanced Macy students are invited to join the even more selective Einstein Program which has about 50 students in each grade. The Einstein Program has even more rigorous academic performance requirements. Einstein students in their junior year are required to take a College Now course for philosophy and government science, in their first and second semester, respectively. These courses are used to earn college credits. Einstein students are automatically assigned to honors and AP classes as early as freshman year, followed by the mandatory AP United States History and AP English Language for Einstein students who make it to their junior year.
Many MACY students are invited to MASTERS, a month-long summer program that offers many hands-on college courses that emphasizes mathematics and science. Some include: Forensic Science, Robotics, Anatomy, Business, Consumer Chemistry and Electricity.
Read more about this topic: De Witt Clinton High School
Famous quotes containing the words small, learning and/or communities:
“Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made,
Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the rath,
And a small and a feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade,
Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet;
While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious, their chieftains stood....”
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“Learning and teaching should not stand on opposite banks and just watch the river flow by; instead, they should embark together on a journey down the water. Through an active, reciprocal exchange, teaching can strengthen learning how to learn.”
—Loris Malaguzzi (1920–1994)
“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)