Teaching at D.Tech High School: English (Part 2)
Wearing a tie, button-down shirt, and slacks, Nathan Pierce, a veteran of 19 years in classrooms of which the last four have been at d.tech, begins his senior English class with digital slides on one of the walls in a spacious room holding 30 students. He directs his students to look at agenda for the day and the upcoming project of shadowing someone in the middle of their career.
Desks are pushed together to form a long row on both sides of the room with a space in the center where a podium/table with Pierce’s LCD and class handouts are piled. Students face one another allowing for much interaction in this horse-shoe arrangement of furniture and space.
It is first period of the day, following the Advisory when students met with their teachers between 8:45-9:15. No bells or chimes mark beginning or end of the period.
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Welcome to Design Tech High School, hereafter d.tech, in the San Mateo Union High School District. Authorized as a charter in 2014, the school has moved quarters three times, the last occurring in 2018 when they leased a new building located on the campus of Oracle, a for-profit technology company. The high school cost $43 million to build and Oracle agreed to rent the building to the charter school for one dollar a year. While d.tech has its own school board and is independently operated, this is the first public high school located on a corporate site.
The d.tech building houses about 550 students. Admission to the school is by lottery with priority given to families residing in Sequoia Union and San Mateo Union high school districts. For students living outside of those districts, a waiting list is available.
Demographically in 2018, the largest racial group is white (48 percent) followed by Asian and Filipino (24 percent), Latino (14 percent), African American and multi-racial (13 percent). Females are 42 percent of the enrollment. Fifteen percent of the students are poor as measured by families eligible for free and CONTINUE READING: Teaching at D.Tech High School: English (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
