{"id":34,"date":"2018-11-12T12:31:51","date_gmt":"2018-11-12T17:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/eportfolio-sample\/?page_id=34"},"modified":"2019-05-04T22:04:32","modified_gmt":"2019-05-05T02:04:32","slug":"school","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat19-slevy\/overview\/setting-context\/school\/","title":{"rendered":"School"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jacob Hiatt Magnet School is a public magnet school in downtown <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat19-slevy\/overview\/setting-context\/community\/\">Worcester, MA.&nbsp;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/worcesterschools.org\/school\/jacob-hiatt-magnet-school\/\">JHMS<\/a> has a reputation in Worcester as being one of the more academically-successful schools, which they attribute to their use of best practices identified as the following:&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Metacognitive strategies (intentionally accessing prior knowledge of students)<\/li>\n<li>Explicit vocabulary instruction &nbsp;(critical in such a linguistically diverse place as Worcester)<\/li>\n<li>Balanced literacy approach<\/li>\n<li>Hands-on, inquiry based learning<\/li>\n<li>Flexible groupings and cooperative learning&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It is these best practices in combination with the small(er) class sizes and the administration&#8217;s choices about who they let and keep in the school that I think leads to JHMS having such a rigorous academic focus and high test scores.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, JHMS has a very strong sense of community &#8211; from what I&#8217;ve observed, teachers have a strong sense of communication and use each other as resources which is so crucial to creating an intentional learning environment!&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The student body of JHMS is similar to that of my class &#8211; culturally, racially, nationality, and linguistically diverse. It is an enormous asset to the school, and many teachers make sure that diversity is celebrated and a vibrant part of the fabric of their classroom. JHMS is also 100% free lunch for students, as the majority of students come from impoverished households.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>One aspect of JHMS that may stand out to a stranger is their positive behavioral management technique. JHMS uses an approach to behavioral management to create a culture of Self control &nbsp;(S), Taking responsibility for one&#8217;s behavior (T), Actively listening (A), and Respecting everyone (R). This STAR model is engrained in students from their first years at Jacob Hiatt through a reward system. Students who are seen following these expectations (which may have differentiated levels of positive behavior) are given a hole-punch (a &#8220;click&#8221;) on their STAR card, a special yellow index card. At the end of each week, students with full star cards can pull a reward from the reward box ranging anywhere from using a pen instead of a pencil to a positive phone call home. Popular rewards in my class were &#8220;You get to do a class read aloud&#8221; and &#8220;Lunch with the teacher.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I am not sure how this model works in the higher grades, but in the younger grades, creating a sense of community as a foundation to positive behavior is very effective. That being said, I think there is space to improve on this model to make more explicit the values that are foundational to the actions which STAR stands for. When I ask students to use &#8220;self control&#8221; it&#8217;s because we are trying to create a safe classroom, one that is filled with kindness, and one where my students have some self-awareness. If these values (and more) were instilled on a classoom and school-wide level, I wonder what sort of conversations could happen around what kindness, respect, and holding each other accountable could look like.<\/p>\n<p>One last very important aspect of Jacob Hiatt is the support for English Language Learners. Because Worcester has such a high population of immigrants, there are often many ELLs in a classroom, which need additional support so they can reach their highest potential. Although there are only two ELL specialists at JHMS, they have a very organized and consistent way of seeing each student who needs services and really value their thoughtful pedagogy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jacob Hiatt Magnet School is a public magnet school in downtown Worcester, MA.&nbsp; JHMS has a reputation in Worcester as being one of the more academically-successful schools, which they attribute [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":894,"featured_media":0,"parent":28,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-34","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat19-slevy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat19-slevy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat19-slevy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat19-slevy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/894"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat19-slevy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat19-slevy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat19-slevy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat19-slevy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}