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MICHELLE LE
Students settle in for lunchtime at Mountain View High School on Monday, the first day of school.
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the district board’s policy says. “Grades are not influenced by a student’s behavior, student characteristics and/or non-academic indicators.” When grades are a composite of too many factors, Sarraf said, it can be confusing for a student to understand how he or she really arrived at that final mark. “You won’t survive in the real world if you don’t have good work habits,” Sarraf said, acknowledging a common critique of the new system. However, she continued, teachers and their department teams are working on ways to assess and give feedback on non-academic factors separately. “It’s all about providing useful feedback to students instead of lumping it all together.” Teachers, kids, courses There are 14 new teachers working throughout the district this year, Sarraf said, along with as many as 90 more students than last year, spread across both Mountain View and Los Altos high schools. This year also comes with a slew of new classes — some brand new, others duplications of existing classes to meet student demand. The construction program — which began at Mountain View High School last year and gives students access to hands-on exercises in masonry, plumbing, electrical work and roofing — will expand, taking on students from the neighboring continuation high school, Alta Vista. Los Altos, which has long had a robotics club, will now have an official class for school credit. Both comprehensive high
schools will now offer three levels of Mandarin language courses. On the Advanced Placement front, Sarraf said she is “totally stoked about” a new AP computer science course at Mountain View High School. There will also be a new AP Japanese course at MVHS and an AP Latin course at LAHS. But the associate superintendent said she is perhaps most eagerly anticipating the introduction of a health career class at Los Altos High School. Students in this course will learn how to measure blood pressure, test for blood sugar levels, measure eyesight for corrective lenses, practice sports medicine and work with a blooddrawing simulator built into a plastic model of a human arm. Khan Academy Two Mountain View High School teachers will be using Khan Academy’s online tutorials to help their students learn algebra and geometry, Sarraf said. The limited introduction of the Mountain View-based, online
instructional tool comes after MVHS math instructors, Justin Sligh and Jared Darby, each had success using Khan Academy in their summer school classes. Sarraf said the district brass is “intrigued” by Khan Academy, which is headquartered on Castro Street and has garnered national attention and praise for its line of instructional YouTube videos and interactive online tests. “We don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like at this point,” she said of the future of Khan Academy in the district. “We are considering it as one more tool in our toolbox. We are definitely still in the exploratory stage. We are exploring the benefits.” One such benefit, Sarraf said, is that some teachers in the Los Altos School District, as well as in the Mountain View Whisman School District, have been using Khan Academy. She said it would “make sense for us to continue to provide access to that tool” to students as they matriculate into MVLA’s high schools. V
Mtn. View-Los Altos Adult School
Fall Session 2012 (September 4 – December 21) Enroll at:
www.mvlaae.net or call 650.940.1333 Catalogs no longer mailed to homes.
Fall Registration Starts Friday, 8/17 August 17, 2012 ■ Mountain View Voice ■ MountainViewOnline.com ■
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