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Senior Juliette Oliver seeks opportunity to study abroad Page 5
Eye of the Tiger suggests aspects of grading to consider in district policy revision Page 7
High fashion hits the silver screen in designer Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals Page 10
Eye of the Tiger sports staff previews varsity boys and girls basketball teams Page 12
EYE OF THE TIGER Roseville High School’s student-produced publication
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Eye of the Tiger
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1 Tiger Way, Roseville, CA
DECEMBER 12, 2016 ISSUE 5, VOLUME 15
Quarter grades improve WAFEEQ RIDHUAN EYE OF THE TIGER
SAM MAILEY EYE OF THE TIGER
Assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction Jess Borjon (above) led November’s CILT meeting on rehauling district grading policy. Roseville High School staff at the meeting included assistant principal Anna Marie Clark, science teacher Mike Purvines and special services coordinator Jeff Clark.
District team to alter grading policy Improvement team to review current standards, research alternatives BY WAFEEQ RIDHUAN
w.ridhuan@eyeofthetigernews.com
A Roseville Joint Union High School District conversation could lead to revisions in the current grading policy and an establishment of district-wide grading guidelines. Assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction Jess Borjon led RJUHSD’s Continuous Improvement Leadership Team meeting in Nov. to analyze grading guidelines from Fairfax County Public Schools in Fairfax, Virginia with educators from around the district. They discussed their findings and how certain guidelines used in Fairfax County could or could not be used in RJUHSD.
Borjon is planning to formulate a team of writers, consisting of district educators, to help create a first draft of the policy in the next few months. Roseville High School assistant principal Anna Marie Clark was a representative for RHS at the CILT meeting. “I thought it was a productive meeting,” Clark said. “It was interesting to take a look at the various documents. One in particular seemed a little more mandating certain things about grades, another one was a little more guiding in terms of its structure.” RJUHSD’s current grading policy relies on individual teachers to determine the best
way to grade a student’s achievement within a course. However, Fairfax’s grading guidelines encourage teachers to “work with their Collaborative Team (CT) when developing their syllabus to further the use of consistent practices.” Their Collaborative Teams may be subject based, special project based or grade-level based. According to the Fairfax article series Practices at Work, Fairfax County Public Schools Instructional Service Department values teachers working together to ensure the creation of consistent expectations. CILT hopes to glean something from Fairfax’s grading system. “We just felt we were at a time where I was searching for critical mass, otherwise described as consensus of the group, that said, ‘Hey, I think it’s time we do more than talk about the grading
issues in our district,’” Borjon said. RJUHSD’s grading policy was revised last year to address issues regarding how schools weigh courses taken at community colleges. According to Borjon, CILT is determining how to “better support student learning” by addressing more complex grading issues throughout the district. To reach CILT’s goals at RHS, CILT members discussed topics including homework assignment weight, extra credit and late work. They have analyzed works from experts including Ken O’Connor, an independent grading consultant of more than two decades, and Rick Wormeli, who presents on education and grading policies. Science teacher Erin Granucci says she is open to any proposals GRADING | Page 3
Spring ROAR period lessons emphasize cultural sensitivity
BY NATE NGUYEN
n.nguyen@eyeofthetigernews.com
Roseville High School will present three lessons focused on cultural sensitivity during ROAR support periods during the first week of the spring term. The lessons are scheduled to take place during the first week of the semester. Assistant principal Anna Marie Clark said staff assembled to develop a way to educate the campus on Roseville High School’s diversity. “A team of teachers have come together to develop some lesson plans that celebrate the diversity on our campus and help students develop some tools to deal with sensitive situations that arise whether its cultural, whether it’s gender-based, whether it’s race-based,” Clark said. “When we have these issues arise, often times it happens in a peer group.” ROAR lesson planner Keshila Jones and Black Student Union members spoke during a Nov. faculty meeting. They presented their experiences with
racism or hate speech on campus. “Specific incidents that have happened and lack of student awareness brought about myself wanting to inform the student body and get other teachers involved,” Jones said. Jones hopes the students will take the opportunity to re-evaluate their attitude toward a variety of cultures on campus. “I want the [students] to be engaged and do some self-reflection about how they interact with students on campus or when they see certain things going on on campus,” Jones said. BSU member Charles Henderson hopes to expand Roseville’s approach towards cultural differences on campus. “I hope that it will bring more knowledge to the student body, because some people don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong, and what people deem offensive and what some people don’t, because everyone has their own opinions and views,” Henderson said. “I would love
CULTURE | Page 2
FILE PHOTO EYE OF THE TIGER
Fashion and Merchandising students work in RM 202. According to principal David Byrd, the 2018-19 school year may be the earliest the program could return.
Fashion merchandising on hiatus until at least ‘18 BY ZOE STEPHENS
z.stephens@eyeofthetigernews.com
Gail Johnson, Fashion and Merchandising teacher and Stripes and Stitches adviser, will retire at the end of this term. According to principal David Byrd, Roseville High School will be “stepping away from fashion,” and the soonest the fashion program could return would be 2018-2019 school year. Byrd plans on taking the time to find a teacher that would be a “champion” for the program. “Sometimes the right thing to do is to step away from something like that and go see if we can find that right person,” Byrd said. This move to drop fashion and merchandising follows an investment by the school into the fashion wing within
the 200 building made over the past seven years. Byrd expects that other electives will expand during Fashion and Merchandising’s absence. Byrd hopes to invest in the fashion program only after other electives have become stronger. “[We need to] spend the time trying to grow some of the other things we’ve got going on campus and think of them like flowers or plants,” Byrd said. “We want to get some of our other electives strong and healthy, so that when they are strong and healthy we can then turn to planting a new plant in the ground and putting some new seeds in the ground and seeing if we can get something to grow.” Johnson, fashion class and Stripes
FASHION | Page 2
Trends coincide with ROAR period rollout, other factors BY MEGAN ANDERSON
m.anderson@eyeofthetigernews.com
Quarter one fail rates decreased by an average of 3.4 percent from last year to this year. This was also the school’s first quarter since implementing the ROAR support period at the beginning of this school year. The largest decreases in fail rates come from the beginning classes of the Integrated Math program, the most drastic being 19.3 percent drop in IM1, from a 40.5 percent fail rate to 21.2 percent. IM2 has seen a similar pattern with a drop in fail rates with a 15.8 percent decrease, going from the 40.8 percent of students failing to only 25 percent. IM2 teacher Levi Fletcher believes the drop comes from time spent in ROAR that allows students greater access to academic support. “That wasn’t always the case before. It had to be just at lunch, just after school, or before school,” Fletcher said. “Now there is another time built right [into the day] where maybe it’s not a huge [problem] that has been holding you up, but it’s maybe something that can be taken care of in 15-20 minutes, and then all of a sudden you’re back on track and rolling.” Fletcher said students and teachers of Common Core curriculum also become more empowered and comfortable in their subjects as the years go on. Both IM1 and IM2 began two years ago, but IM3 only decreased by 1.5 percent since its introduction last year. “Teachers have more experience with how we’re teaching the content and how we’re helping students understand and expecting where there might be some problems,” Fletcher said. “The students who are coming in have another year of Common Core, so they are more ready for the types of questions and that is going to keep on improving.” Although Roseville High School’s first quarter returned fewer D’s and F’s and more A’s and B’s, principal David Byrd said conclusions about ROAR’s effectiveness require more data. “There could be a bunch of factors that go into grade improvement,” Byrd said. “Some people may immediately say, ‘Aha, that proves it is all because of ROAR support.’ It is the first little data point, but we need to do that for a whole year, and we need to compare the end of the second quarter, the end of the third quarter and the end of the fourth quarter to really get a feel for if we see these trends continuing.” Year-over-year, first quarter D and F rates decreased 12.6 percent in CP US History, 11.8 percent in Freshman Seminar, 11.4 percent in CP Government and 8.2 percent in CP Chemistry. Increases in academic performance are not consistent across the board. In classes like CP English 10 and CP English 12, fail rates in ROAR | Page 2
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