Energy, Environment, and Health

Introduction

The William C. Overfelt High School community is located in the Eastern section of California's third largest city; San Jose, with an ethnic makeup of predominately Mexican American with smaller percentages of African American, Samoan, Filipino, Cambodian, and Vietnamese. The area is also one which was hardest hit during the collapse of the real estate market with hundreds of homes being foreclosed each year adding to the already existing high rate of poverty. The student population of Overfelt High School is 75% of Hispanic ethnicity, 9% Asian, 7% Filipino, 2% African American, and less than 1% White with slightly over 35% of the student population designated LEP (Limited English Proficient). Student enrollment over the last twenty one years has dropped from a high of 2,238 in 1990 to 1520 during the 2010-2011 academic year. ¹

The single largest contributing factor for the declining enrollment has been the transfer of students from Overfelt High School to other schools within the district, charter schools or schools with Magnet programs as a result of Program Improvement under the No Child Left Behind mandates. Predominantly all of the transferring students have been those at the higher end of the academic achievement level contributing to Overfelt becoming the lowest achieving high school in Santa Clara County as identified through API scores. The transfer of higher achieving students out of Overfelt High School has resulted in a large percentage of students who are not academically prepared to take Physics and a second sub-group of students who may be academically prepared but choose not to take Physics due to the challenges of the course and the absence of understanding the importance of academic achievement, both personally and at home. For these reasons my Physics curriculum must be academically challenging, interesting, have multiple pathways for student success, and meet the diverse learning needs of the academically advanced and lower achieving students within my classroom. In designing my curricular unit I had to focus on my students' abilities, culture, and the new content standards for science. Of equal consideration is the fact that according to the 2010-2011 API report ², the educational statistics relating to the parents of my students indicate that: 67% of parents did not graduate from high school, 21% graduated high school, 7% had some college experience, 5% are college graduates, and 1% had a graduate degree. Thus, in order to truly raise environmental awareness and responsibility, my curriculum must involve educating my student's parents and families also.