The Home Of Scholars And Champions Education Essay

For my fieldwork observation, I have chosen Long Beach Polytechnic High School. I am a first-time visitant to LBPHS, but I live three blocks from the school, so I see it every twenty-four hours on my manner to school and work. I have been familiar with the school since my first-year twelvemonth of high school, when my school competed against LBPHS for legion athletic events. Long Beach Polytechnic High School was established in 1895 as Long Beach High School. Currently, it is located at 1600 Atlantic Avenue in Long Beach, California. The school serves different vicinities of Long Beach, including Bixby Knolls, every bit good as subdivisions of two adjacent metropoliss, Lakewood and Signal Hill. Though the school serves multiple upscale vicinities in the Long Beach country, it is located in one of the most unsafe vicinities in all of Los Angeles. Downtown Long Beach has a repute for condemnable activity, particularly in the East Village, near Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. The places environing the school are old and run down, and cheapjack autos line the street ‘s borders as one base on ballss by. The high fencings, barbed wire, and penitentiary-type feeling that I got upon my initial visit were non reassuring, but the statistics certainly were. Even though LBPH is located in such a bad portion of the metropolis of Long Beach, it is highly safe. Po lices say that the school poses no bigger menaces than that of any high school in an upscale vicinity. Long Beach Polytechnic High School belongs to Long Beach Unified School District. LBUSD presently includes over 81,000 pupils from 84 public schools in the metropoliss of Long Beach, Lakewood, Signal Hill, and Avalon on Catalina Island. To better understand the manner that the territory maps logistically, the salary agenda has been included in the appendix. LBUSD has even been rated one of the top 20 school systems in the universe and one of the top three in the United States. The school territory has gained widespread acknowledgment for set uping really high criterions for its pupils, both academically and socially. LBUSD has even been featured in multiple media channels, such as Good Morning America and Sports Illustrated, for enormous academic and athletic success. Schools in the territory continuously exceed province criterions, and show dramatic growing in sustained academic accomplishment. The territory credits its successes to its partnerships with local concerns, Long Beach C ity College, and California State University Long Beach. The LBUSD, CSULB and LBCC have worked with local, regional and national spouses to make a smooth way for pupils that helps them advancement from preschool to post-graduate school. The partnership has been particularly good for pupils because it combines academic and societal criterions with a deeply-rooted support system to make critical, all-around persons. LBPHS presently enrolls 4,835 pupils. The pupil organic structure is 50 % male and 50 % female, and the ethnicities are 31.1 % Asiatic, 29.9 % Latino, 26.5 % Black, 11.4 % White, and 1.2 % Other. Long Beach Polytechnic High School has an Academic Performance Index ( API ) of 750, and it has increased for each of the last five old ages. In 2012, 28.5 % of pupils scored proficient or above on the California Standards Test for math, falling rather abruptly of the province norm ( 51.4 % ) ; nevertheless, this defect is countered in English: 52.1 % of pupils scored proficient or above in English. Harmonizing to an interview with the school principals, LBPHS has a graduation rate transcending 90 % ! The free and reduced-price tiffin plan on campus serves 63.7 % of the pupils. Enormously, the attending rate at the school is over 95 % ; that means that, on any given twenty-four hours, 4593 pupils are on campus. With such diverseness and capacity, it is surprising that the school can keep suc h high rates. LBPHS offers many astonishing academic chances for pupils, including 11 acquisition academies through which pupils learn. One of the highlighted academies of the school is called the Program of Additional Curricular Experiences, besides known as PACE. Pace is a high-velocity, aggressive attack to academics that merely accepts the best work from the brightest of pupils ; it pushes them to their fullest potency, and this has drawn attending from many pupils who desire such an experience. Some other academies at LBPHS include the Beach Academy of Math and Science, the Pacific Rim Magnet Academy, the Center for International Commerce, the Academy of Humanities, the Media, Entertainment, Technology and Sports Academy, and the Medical and Public Services Academy. This system of larning communities has been extremely effectual because each academy specializes in a certain type of pupil ; the categories, instructors, and overall experience are shaped to the pupil ‘s ends , instead than the pupil being limited by their environment. The staff play an perfectly important function in developing these dramatic acquisition communities. Long Beach Polytechnic High School has highly-qualified and experienced module. LBPHS presently employs 179 instructors who, together, have a average experience of over 14 old ages. With 4835 pupils, the ratio of staff to pupils is 27:1, a reasonably sensible ratio sing the sum of budget cuts, layoffs, and dropped categories. Presently, over 98.6 % of categories taught at LBPHS are No Child Left Behind compliant. The combined experience and student-teacher ratio aid to do Long Beach Polytechnic High School one of the best schools in the state. The staff and decision makers work together to form the multiple academies on campus. Since there are academies dedicated to particular skill sets and category types, there is no traditional English section ; nevertheless, there is are legion academies where English has an accent. The academies are headed by a instructor, and the other members meet to form and discourse a course of study specific to each academy, instead than holding each section meet to discourse their ain course of study. The caput of each academy, every bit good as the staff list, can be seen in the appendix. Long Beach Unified School District has legion reading lists recommended by the State of California. The territory allows instructors, pupils, and parents to take books that are relevant to the reading degree and grade degree of the pupils. There are a sum of 13 lists, each with 100s of books -far excessively many to name here, or in an appendix ( The reading list is 99 pages! ) . The reading lists advancement in trouble, with List 1 holding the easiest books and List 13 holding the hardest books. These lists contain books with a corresponding class scope to assist pick books that are interesting and relevant to pupils in any given class. List 1 is included in the appendix. Any pedagogue could state you that engagement and extracurricular activities play a important function, whether it be from parents assisting their pupils pick proper books from the territory reading list or from pupils seeking an mercantile establishment from the course of study, leting them to come in a positive societal environment that can assist fix them for a life-time of critical thought and public service. Long Beach Polytechnic High School is no exclusion to this impression. Harmonizing to the school web site, â€Å" [ T ] he full Poly experience includes engagement in the school ‘s diverse nines and activities. † The school has over 100 on-campus nines, including service nines and societal groups. LBPHS hosts legion formal and informal dances, lunchtime mass meetings, carnivals, community clean-ups, community public assistance and beautification undertakings, school beautification undertakings, and simple school tutoring Sessionss. Students are able to take part in the Student Commission, a group, elected into office by their equals, that manages the ASB budget and makes fiscal determinations for the remainder of the pupil organic structure. The members of the Student Commission, every bit good as ASB, organize, manage, and take part in most of the events antecedently listed. Along with these countless nines so legion that there is bound to be something for everyone, pupil and module likewise, are some of the state ‘s best athletic plans. Long Beach Polytechnic High School has a star-studded athletic history and plans for both male childs and misss. Recently, Poly received the Rotary Centennial Trophy for the 16th clip consecutively for running the most successful athletic plan in the metropolis of Long Beach. The school has besides been voted â€Å" Athletic School of the Century † by the California Coaches Association. In the last five old ages, Sports Illustrated Magazine has rated Long Beach Polytechnic High School as one of the top athletic schools in the full state. The athleticss presently available to pupils of LBPHS are badminton, hoops, transverse state, football, association football, golf, swimming, tennis, path and field, volleyball, H2O Polo, wrestle, baseball, and playground ball. The school has sent more football participants to the National Football League than any other school in the full state. Poly is non home to any â€Å" dense athletes † ; the school has some of the most demanding academic outlooks for their jocks ; student-athletes from Long Beach Polytechnic High School are extremely sought after. The school has much to offer pupils, from a broad array of nines and activities to a distinguished sports plan that caters to some of the best jocks in the United States. The wealth of information that I have acquired while carry oning this study of Long Beach Polytechnic High School has made me improbably excited to get down working with them. I have non begun any observation, yet I am overwhelmed with the pride of going a portion of such a wondrous successful topographic point of larning. I have ever been a tough critic when it comes to academic establishments ; I have struggled to happen the good in schools when the bad radiances through some vividly. Long Beach Poly has reignited my flicker. After seeing the astonishing work that the pupils and module are making, I have faith that we can do future coevalss more critical, socially-aware, and brilliant. They may non hold the best installations ( they ‘re located in a destitute â€Å" goon † ) , but everyone makes do with what they have, and they keep their eyes set non on the environment, but on their wildest dreams. The unbelievable success of the sports plan was something that I was c ognizant of beforehand, but I was unaware of its magnitude until I performed this survey. I was genuinely blown off when I read that LBPHS has been ranked as one of the top athletic schools in the state. Besides, when I read that, despite the big figure of pupils on the free or reduced-price tiffin plan, the poorness rate of the environing vicinity, and the diverseness and size of the pupil organic structure, the school is every bit safe as any other urban school of its assortment. The rate of attending besides made my jaw bead. I went to high school in Temecula, California. My school was upper-middle category, predominately white, and we ne'er got anyplace near 95 % attending. All of this research makes Long Beach Polytechnic High School shine even brighter in an already sparkling school territory. The infinite positive findings about LBPHS has dramatically shifted my position. Originally, I intended to carry on my fieldwork at that place merely because of my propinquity to the cam pus ; nevertheless, now, I intend to detect at that place because I am filled with school spirit, and I am non even a Jackrabbit! The school looks perfectly fantastic, and I am no longer afraid of such a intimidating establishment.