Student and School Background Information
At our suburban school, Memorial Junior High, we have approximately 400 students each year. Our school demographics have changed over the past few years. We have, in past years, had a fairly even distribution of Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic students, but each year the Caucasian population has decreased. This last school year we had approximately 18% Caucasian, 32% Hispanic and 33% African American. We did have a larger portion, 11% that identify as multiracial, which was not an identity marker previously. 90% of our students are considered socioeconomically disadvantaged and receive free lunches. 6% are identified as Gifted and Talented. While about ⅓ of the population is on an IEP, only about a quarter of the students on an IEP are in Special Education classes. We offer various electives: band, choir, technology, art, and PE. The school has 4 special education classrooms, three of which are self-contained.
Our students come from a wide variety of home backgrounds. Many students are bussed in from a notoriously dangerous area of our city, mainly living in poverty in Section 8 (government supplemented) apartments. Others are bussed in from (mostly) apartment complexes in slightly better areas. Then there is a smaller percentage that live in the middle-class neighborhood where the school is located. Many of the students that live in the school’s more affluent neighborhood go to magnet schools in the district or private schools outside of the district rather than attend our school because we have so many students bussed in from rougher areas. This, in turn, does support some segregation in the district.
Our art room is exceptionally large and well equipped compared to others in the district. We have a Promethean board, Apple tv, a class set of iPads, green screen set up, sewing machines, screen printing materials, a clay throwing wheel, kiln, and a great set up of materials (a lot of which I have acquired through grants). Students are allowed quite a bit of freedom in creating projects within given parameters for each assignment. For example, we may investigate and experiment with watercolors using various materials such as salt, oil, baking soda, and vinegar, and students will then be assigned to create an artwork of their choice using techniques and materials they have learned. We do a lot of integration with other subjects such as NASA lessons to utilize the seven simple machines, sewing effigies of Revolutionary War soldiers, and writing and video recording project self-critiques in the form of news broadcasts in front of the green screen. We often use math in our art projects (scale models using ratios and fractions, proportions of bodies and faces, and using the body as a measuring tool) but I have not created a lesson based specifically on math until now.
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