We Tip Our Hats
The NEW San Juan High School
If you have driven down Greenback Lane in Citrus Heights, chances are that you have seen a lot of construction outside New San Juan High School. To the community, it has created a sense of curiosity and wonder. For our staff and students it has created a bit of noise, but otherwise excitement and a grand sense of rebirth. In 2013, the school will be turning 100 years old with a much needed face-lift.
The Greenback Lane street scape is undergoing renovation. In early Spring we will be opening the doors to a full-scale restaurant and community center that will house our award winning Culinary Academy. At the same time construction is complete on our Tech Wing that houses classrooms and labs for our Transportation, Engineering, and Construction pathways. In late Spring ground will break on a new Media building that will house our Media pathway and as well as our satellite studio.
With all of the updated facilities and all the money that is invested in each of these projects, as a staff we are overwhelmed with excitement and humbled to be a part of this journey. At the same time, we also recognize that our job as professionals is to start looking at education in a different way. We recognize that the world is changing and education as it stands needs to be reformed. Designing our school to foster twenty-first century skills will allow our students to gain a greater sense of the world than they may have had in the past.
It was this vision that prompted us to undergo a process of consideration ourselves. In the Spring of 2008, as a staff in a sign of solidarity to this vision, relinquished our current positions only to interview for a position at New San Juan High School. This process created a moderate amount of adult turnover on campus. Ultimately, this process has given the staff unity behind a common vision.
We believe that our students deserve to have as many options when they graduate from high school as possible. Given our economy's current situation, we recognize that a high school diploma alone is certainly not enough to sustain a living and college continues to become more expensive. Qualifying them for both A-G and also giving them viable career options is our goal and commitment.
On campus we have created Small Learning Communities that creates a more personalized learning experience. As a staff we recognize the effectiveness of having common teachers and within those subjects using cross-curricular instruction to drive students learning. It makes learning more relevant for them and gives them more chances to understand and absorb information. It also allows for a better chance for creating relationships between teacher and student.
Inside two of these SLCs there is a career focus. One of the SLCs is concentrated in Culinary and Media. The other is our TEC SLC that focuses on Transportation, Engineering, and Construction. Our purpose is to give each student not only their A-G core classes, but also give them insight and training into a viable career in hope that it will transfer to their college courses and/or a good paying job.
Our third Small Learning Community is our chance to efficiently address the needs of our incoming freshman class. The Freshman Academy is designed to incubate the freshmen as much as possible in their first year. Sharing common teachers, sharing common space on campus, learning vital personal and professional skills will give them an advantage for their sophomore year.
One very important aspect of our staff instruction is Project Base Learning. We have committed ourselves to reconstructing what we thought we knew about instruction and are in the first stages of implementing project based instruction and curriculum. It infuses real world curriculum and project-management skills, while at the same time building each student's capacity for leadership, accountability, and relevance in the classroom.
We understand that our journey has just begun and we are excited for the future of New San Juan High School. We are committed and dedicated to give our students the educational and career skills needed to reach their goals and prosper in the twenty-first century.