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:
“The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men’s minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... feminist solidarity rooted in a commitment to progressive politics must include a space for rigorous critique, for dissent, or we are doomed to reproduce in progressive communities the very forms of domination we seek to oppose.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)
“Every seventh year you shall grant a remission of debts.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 15:1.