Chicago Public Schools have restructured their
Vocational Education Departments. All schools had to re-apply for
Vocational Education status within their schools. New curriculum
proposals had to meet new "School to Work" requirements. A list of
approved programs for Mather High School are the following:
Business/Finance
Communication Technology
Health
Integrating the Vocational Education classes with
the academic classes is a major feature of the new direction within
the Chicago Public Schools. These include integrated course offerings
and/or block programming. Mather High School is currently developing
integrated curricula between the Vocational Education and the
academic segments. Because of the limitations of space, Mather is
currently at 165% of capacity and we are focusing our efforts on
blocking core courses within the sequence of required classes. The
following areas are under development presently:
Business/Finance:
Communication
Health
Everyone gains in this new endeavor. Technology spreads throughout the school for all students to use because of the demands for technology in the curriculum of the Vocational Education program. Drafting programs require a Pentium computer laboratory to support the new AutoCad software being used. The old drafting 486 computers are now utilized as a writing lab for English classes. Microsoft Works and Offices software is used within business labs which benefits all of the students when it comes to writing papers and reports for other classes. The science students benefit because they use Microsoft Excel when doing science reports or Science Fair projects. The Computer Assisted Instruction lab (CIA) has all of these programs available on a network for student use. After upgrading the Business/Finance lab, these computers became single classroom computer stations within academic classrooms that allow students to work on their writing or mathematics skills depending on the class.
Technology has been a driving force in the Vocational Education department at Mather High School. This year the school became fully fiber optic wired. Every classroom is hooked up to a media center where all types of multimedia are available to the classroom teacher. Internet connection to each classroom is planned and if all goes well, it will be in place by next school year.
Mather also participated in a Challenge 2000 grant. A part of the grant included an interactive video studio, which is now in place. Mathematics, science, and technology teachers are writing interdisciplinary curriculum integrating all three areas. This project includes Indianapolis Public Schools, Walled Lake Schools (Michigan), and Chicago Public Schools (Masher and Kelly High School). The video studio is available for use by the entire school and not just those departments working within the grant.
One of the first interdisciplinary curricula to be developed is Keyboarding and ESL English. The teacher who instructs keyboarding and the ESL English teachers have gotten together to help the students improve their grammar and writing skills. Grammar worksheets in the Keyboarding classes help the students learn typing while at the same time re-enforcing the English skills being taught in the ESL classes. Sharing vocabulary is an important aspect to both classes. The ESL teachers give writing assignments that can be entered within the computer classroom. This inter-departmental cooperation helps ESL students at Mather to exit the bilingual programs more quickly.
Students in Computer
Technology classes re-enforce their skills
for graphing when the class does spreadsheets. Algebraic equations
are used in the construction of the various worksheets. Graph
interpreting, construction, and readability are major components of
this course. The spreadsheet unit relates to the mathematical classes
that the students have at the same time.
Patricia J. McArdle / Mather High School /5835 N. Lincoln Ave. / Chicago, IL 60659/ CES Fall Forum 1997/ page 5
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