School Environment:

Vision Statement: Where Excellence is Expected.

Mission Statement:
Fort Collins High Schools mission is to provide an excellent education for all
students in a nurturing, creative, challenging, and disciplined environment so that
all students have the knowledge, values and skills to be productive, responsible
participants in our society and to successfully pursue careers when they
graduate from Fort Collins High School.
o "Fort Collins High School 2014-2015 Planner."
https://fch.psdschools.org/webfm/2306/view.
Expectations: Fort Collins positive expectation guide is expressed as a set of five pillars
in which the schools community stands upon. The five pillars represent five behaviors
the school deems important to their culture. The five pillars are:
Acceptance: FCHS is the most diverse high school in the district and acceptance
of the diversity is instilled upon this pillar.
Pride: FCHS takes great pride in their culture and history as a timeless staple in
Fort Collins.
Integrity: FCHS is responsible for building up excellent citizens, students and
workers. Instilling integrity is a key pillar for building students character.
Respect: FCHS believes in maintaining a mutual respect across all students,
teachers, and administrators.
Responsibility: The students are taught to take responsibility for their actions by
consistently striving for excellence.
o "Fort Collins High School Culture." Culture.
https://fch.psdschools.org/about-us/culture.
Culture: FCHS takes great pride in their long-standing culture which strives for
excellence in all that they do. FCHS takes pride in the fact that over twenty percent of
their student body comes from ethnically diverse populations. Respect and acceptance
towards all of the students are pillars which FCHS instills in their students. FCHS
diverse community is supported through several extra-curricular activities for the
students to partake in. A few of those are:
Latin-American Student Association
Rachels Promise
Peer Counseling
o "Fort Collins High School Culture." Culture.
https://fch.psdschools.org/about-us/culture.
Traditions: FCHS cherishes their numerous, long-held traditions. A few significant
traditions are:
Pops in the park: where seniors join with their community for a last moment
together before they venture off on their individual life adventures.
Booster dance: A sadie hawkins dance that the booster club puts on once a year.

Homecoming dance: Because FCHS respects and takes pride in their alumni,
this dance provides the opportunity to honor those who have previously passed
through FCHS doors.
o "Fort Collins High School Traditions." Traditions.
https://fch.psdschools.org/about-us/traditions.

Classroom Environment:
Demographics:
38 students
>5 minority students
No IEPs
3 AVID students
All juniors
Learning Styles:
2 students, who arent on IEPs, do require emotional differentiation. One prefers
to work alone. And the other is seated next to students who will include her more
so than other students.
A small group of girls are heavily dedicated to the content and actively
participate.
There are 2-3 habitually absent students, 1 of which always completes the work
despite never showing up for class. Nothing is being done, beyond contacting
parents, to remedy the situation.
The students get along well and I have seen all students interact with one
another positively, Im not as naive as to think this camaraderie extends into the
hallway but the classroom environment allows for productive collaboration.
This group of students occasionally engages in more small talk than is
appropriate but, collectively, they all get the task at hand done. Ms. Keller says
this is her best class and I can see why. The students interactions rarely impede
on the learning at hand.
Classroom design:
The desks are in nine tables of fours. The students played a role in who they sat
with. Having the students play a role in deciding their seats places the
responsibility to stay focused on them and it seems to work.
The room is shared by two teachers, who have both decorated it with bits of their
personality. There is a huge Beatles poster and Star Wars poster. What strikes
me as potentially problematic is the amount of liberal decor on the walls. There
are pins from the past couple DNCs and pictures of the teachers family dining
with Clinton and Obama. There is an obvious liberal bias in the rooms decor.
Ms. Keller assigns professionalism points and her classroom is receptive to that.
I see students enjoying themselves and their friends. At the same time I see the
students engaging with the content. All of the students are friendly to one
another and engage well together in all of the group activities. The environment
of the classroom reminds me of a friendly and productive work environment.

Topic and Rationale:

The class is a U.S. history course. Weve already covered two units and am now
beginning the unit on 1800-1850 roughly. Ms. Keller always ties causality into
her lessons. I am really diving into teaching the next unit on the Civil War. What
were going over now is regional fracturing, dichotomous economies and moral
disruption. This is all setting the stage for the Civil War to come.
All students have likely heard a lot about the Civil War. The unit will begin with
assessing the depth of the students prior knowledge in order to gauge the gaps
we need to fill. Ms. Keller is wanting to run this unit old-school with rote
memorization and a multiple choice exam. To accommodate this assessment my
lessons will be collaborative-based but focus on memorization in as an engaging
a way as is possible.
Building note-taking skills will be necessary and helpful in this unit. Application of
information will be my driving force to keep the unit engaging.
My unit is a ways off from now so I havent pinned down exactly how I am going
to approach this unit. I am fully aware of the importance of old-school learning.
College readiness, despite current teaching fads, does revolve around
memorization and multiple choice exams. It sounds counter-intuitive to teaching
21st century skills but it is what it is. I am going to research the most engaging
and effective ways to deliver the content in a manner that will teach the content
and skills while being able to assess in a traditional format.