Vision Emery High School believes in developing and maintaining a supportive learning environment based on high expectations for all students. Emery High School will support all Spartans in becoming academically strong, socially just community members, and resolute in pursuing their life’s passion.
Hello Spartans Family,
Thank you so much for entrusting your student(s) to Emery High School! Emery High School strives to create a positive, physically and emotionally safe environment where students can reach new levels of academic achievement and social inclusion.
Academic Student Supports After-school Tutoring: Tutoring and academic counseling support is offered by Emery teachers after school multiple days per week. Students can receive support, retakes tests, get help with projects, catch up on instruction they missed due to absence, finals preparation, and more. Please refer to the current tutoring schedule here.
Push-In Support: Based on our data and student need, Emery has started a new program in which our teachers go into the classrooms of colleagues to provide academic support to students in the classroom. This looks like providing individual one on one support for students and providing additional instruction to small groups. Our focus areas for push-in this year is Algebra 1 and Geometry, however support is provided in additional classes.
Social Emotional Learning and Supports In order for students to fully engage in the academic and social aspects of Emery, we must provide support for the social emotional and mental health of students. The following supports are provided to students for this purpose.
Check-ins: On a monthly basis, teachers will conduct a one on one check-in with every student in their classes. Teachers will check in regarding the social and academic aspect of school. Should it be necessary, the teacher will assist in connecting students with resources that would be helpful.
Mental Health Support: Should a student need mental health support so they can be provided strategies to cope with grief, anxiety, stress, substance abuse, etc. they can refer themselves or be referred by a staff member.
Equitable Grading and Late Work Policies Grading System at Emery High School Did you know? Emery High School’s teaching staff responded to the return-to-school challenges created by the Covid lockdown by adopting the rationale of the Grading for Equity approach 3 years ago. It’s used throughout the school. It’s mentioned on the website, too, but we know families want to know more. Grading for Equity is an approach that works to reduce bias in grading, focus teaching on key skills and knowledge , and encourage a positive mindset for students. Equitable grading is an approach that focuses on assessing students based only on their understanding of course content, rather than traditional factors like homework completion or behavior. This method aims to create a more accurate, fair, and motivating grading system that can help reduce achievement gaps among students Students at Emery High School receive grades only on what are called summative assessments, like final essays, unit tests, or unit projects. These grades can be changed if the students retake tests or redo work: the final grade on an assessment is the best grade (usually the most recent attempt.) The goal here is to encourage kids to keep learning and improving and to allow that work to show in their grade. We believe every student can improve and succeed if they take the time and make the effort. Teachers work to make sure students have the resources and support to improve their understanding of the material that was the focus of the assessment they are working to improve on by asking students to meet with them after school during tutoring hours. Every teacher is available at some point in the week. All retakes or redone work needs to be completed and submitted within the grading period it was originally assigned in: if I fail a test in September I will need to complete my retake before the end of the first quarter. This helps students avoid ending up with a backlog of work and falling behind. Our block schedule makes it possible for students to have time to do significant individual and group work AND work through teacher directed lessons. Every class is 90 minutes. Teachers plan the progression of lessons so that students working in class can achieve the current learning objective. This also give teachers the opportunity to encourage and supervise work. We know some of our students don’t have time or resources to do significant homework, so it wouldn’t be fair to include work done at home in student grades. Something you can do if your student is failing a particular subject is to ask the teacher if the student is doing work in class. The same is true for grades that used to be given for “effort” or attitude”: these categories don’t tell us anything about how well students are learning and can provide opportunities for bias. Although grades are given only for summative assessment, the teaching, practice, discussion and effort that lead up to those assessments are all important. Any work that students do that helps them make good progress on their summative assessments is always useful! Learning this from experience helps our students make the connection between the effort (doing focused work) and the goal (learning). Emery High teachers know that students who make this connection do better in school and in life. Want to know more? Emery High School teachers are glad to explain how grading works in their classrooms. Email is the best way to reach a teacher. The Principal can answer questions for you, too. Call the office or email. If we have parent and community interest, the school would be glad to hold a meeting to discuss how we grade student work.
Professional Expectations for Faculty We will continuously engage in professional discourse and actions around sustained improvement.
Teachers and the principal will use qualitative and quantitative data to identify problems and propose and test the effectiveness of solutions.
Students will be Provided with Daily Rigorous Instruction of the Common Core/NGSS Standards
Teachers will identify and explain standards-based learning objective(s) for each lesson
Teachers will provide instruction, assignments, and assessments that are aligned with the lesson objective and Common Core State Standards
Continuous implementation of site-wide academic and conduct policies
Everyone on campus will adhere to and enforce site-wide policies and practices, and ensure students do the same.
Feel free to reach out to Emery High School staff should you want additional information on offerings, programming, or student supports. Thank you for your interest in Emery High School!
