Cokie Gaich

Integrated Core 2: ED 299

Fall 2017
9/27/17 Pike High School Reflection
School Funding:

Pike High School receives $10, 447 per student, which is about $1,000 less than the
state average. They also receive extra funding for special education programs and from
all federal, state, and local funding the school district receives around $144 million per
year. Even though Pike receives less than the state average they have been able to
expand the school with the Freshman Center and create technical programs for the
students who dont wish to go to college. Theyve also managed to create a small town
within their high school as they have social workers and a police stations as well as
functioning cosmetology center and mini restaurant for faculty through these technical
programs. All this being said about 62% of the students are on free and reduced
lunches and they have 38 homeless students. For the homeless students they have
buses that will go to homeless shelters to ensure that they have a means of
transportation to school or there are some students that live in the car and use the many
facilities at the school to get ready for the day.

Special Education:

About 13% of the student population receives special education. Pike High School also
has an academic behavioral support coach who works with 20 cases of students
needing IEPs, mostly those with emotional disabilities. The school also gives these
students special hall passes on their IDs that allow them to remove themselves from
stressful situations in class or any triggers to go and calm down before entering the
classroom again.

Educational Program:

Pike High School has students from 81 different countries and many of these students
are first generation English speakers. 8.2% of the student population receives ENL
classes which totals to around 270 students. So there are going to be more resources
for ENL classes than what we may have seen in other school simply due to the increase
of size of the student body.
Pike realizes that not every single one of their students will go to college with only
90.1% of their students being college bound. With this in mind theyve created different
technical programs so that students can become certified in a field theyre interested in
while gaining real world experience. They have programs for auto mechanics,
cosmetology, the culinary arts, and EMT training. For the culinary arts program they set
up a mini restaurant during lunch and teachers and staff can eat there for $5. Pike High
School also has a fully functioning cosmetology center where students can practice their
skills whiles at school. They also have many facilities and resources that arent normally
seen in high schools such as, a planetarium, a natatorium, three gyms, and an
auditorium. These resources provide the chance for more engaged and diverse
learning. However, their school day isnt brain-aligned; the high school has a start time
of 7:15am and gets out at 2:23pm. When discussing this with Mr. Mitchell, he said there
has been some discussion about changing the start time but it mostly comes down to
childcare availability for families that makes it harder to move back the start time.

The Students:

The Math class I observed was an Algebra 2 class, however they were taking a test
during that class period. Since there was no direct interaction with the students I used
this time to take a closer look at behaviors in the classroom. One of the first things I
noticed was that most of the students had headphones in while taking the test. I thought
this was interesting since my only school experience with tests we werent allowed to
have anything on the desk other than what was handed out and maybe a calculator, but
never a phone or the use of headphones. When talking to Mr. Mitchell about this he said
its more of a choose your battles scenario and focus on what is more important, so the
rules for headphones use can differ from classroom to classroom. However, the general
rule is that if theres active instruction no phones should be in use. I do think that the
option to listen to music gives students more responsibility over their learning because
sometimes we may think that music could be helpful only to find that in the end is just
distracting. In turn this allows the students to learn more about themselves and how
they can best succeed.

Experience of College Life:

For the high school students I think I would share how in most aspects academically,
college isnt that much different than high school. In the end it comes down to the
amount of effort youre willing to put in. This goes for all aspects of your life and not just
academics. Like high school, there are going to be some classes that push you and
require a lot more effort and commitment than others, but that extra effort is always
noticed even when you dont think it is. Youre still going to have days where you dont
want to go to class or finish that paper, but just getting out of bed is the first step to
solve most of these problems. In the end youll be thankful that you went to that class
because you wouldnt have lost any important information about an exam and when you
finish that one paper youll have more time to do what you actually want to do.

The Brain and the Stress Response:

Pike High School has an academic behavioral coach who has a specific caseload
mostly dealing with students with IEPs and emotional disabilities. This was mentioned in
the special education section of this paper. However in this section Ill be going into
some more detail about how this is leaning towards a more brain-aligned practice. With
these specific students the school gives them special hall passes that allows them to
leave a classroom is they get too overwhelmed. Most of the time theyll go to the
behavioral coachs office to help calm down and regulate the stress response. From
there the faculty quickly determines if the student needs the rest of the day in a calmer
environment or if they can go back to class right away. We discussed the start time of
the school with Mr. Mitchell and how such an early start wasnt brain aligned and as I
said before, the reason for not changing the time has to do with childcare availability for
parents.

Effective Leadership:

From this school visit, one of the most important things about effective leadership I took
away was to make sure that every student has at least one adult they have a
connection with. Even though as future educators we want to make a connection with
every student we meet, the reality is for such a large school like Pike High School there
are some students that you may not be able to reach all the time. But simply knowing
that they have an adult they can go to and be comfortable and safe with helps to create
a sense of community in a school that large in size.