Stevenson Intermediate School

Stevenson Middle
It seems that there is a few blocked reviews and some negative comments. I have a wide teaching background. I have visited the school and my initial reaction is –it is a freakin normal middle school, pre-​pubescence oozes uncertainty and awkwardness.
Elementary schools are so glad to be able to get rid of 7^th or 8^th graders from primary schools because the whole primary school prospers, not the ⁷⁄₈^th gr. The ‘Jerk’ factor goes down when the big kids leave a primary school (I’m using jerk but we can be more colorful to discuss what we really mean).
Stevenson really is trying. There is huge mandates that they have to juggle, No Child Left Behind, Testing, Race for the Top mandates that are changed at the HI State Leg., New Common Core Curriculum initiatives and all the other stuff that goes on in a middle.
Stevenson has a workshop for parents– called changes. It meets 4 times, 1 per month and helps out those parents that don’t have an education background. I have a MEd in ESL and SpEd, I would rather try to win tickets to a Unilocal event than be upset by some teacher that knows the Keiki personally but does not know educational development as well as I do– Yes, I have an ego and more so I hate hearing bs like ‘in 3 years 100% of our keiki will be on grade level’. Really? Is that possible, we had a president of the US that got C’s at Yale because his father bought buildings for the school. Give me reality, not bs. What are you as the teacher doing to change the school system because it is not working right now? So– I prefer to let the parents that may be from Micronesia learn something about education in classrooms that have electricity instead of arguing about how special ed. students that are not vocal can possibly pass a standardized test (fyi they can’t so when they say 100% of students they are allowed to have 5% of the school student body not take the test– so is it really a true standard? NO!). But they are trying and that is my point– they are reaching out to the parent community to try to help students.
On their site, Stevenson has a kidbiz site that helps students use internet and resources online.
Stevenson has info on how to complain. This is the first of this kind of out there that I have ever seen.
There is info on how to start thinking about going to college for all students. College for Every Student helps keiki start thinking about college, wonderful for those that never have had any relative that have ever gone to college.
There is a Stevenson parent teacher association. I don’t know too much about it but luckily there are parents that are conduits for the school and trying to get more funding for school activities– I myself believe that this is a disservice because ALL Education K-​12 should be fully funded Nationally! PTAs should be for extra curricula like band trips — not actual needed resources for English and Math.
I’ve heard of and met two science teachers from Stevenson that won an award for teaching and the work they are doing in STEM projects. Unfortunately, not ever teacher is a clone of them, so it is hit or miss if your child is able to have the 2 winning STEM teachers or more likely, another teacher doing the best she or he can. It just proves that it really is what the teacher can do for the student and good teaching is good teaching which is good teaching.
Again, there are pluses and minuses of any public school. Working towards helping Keiki though should be the focus and hopefully it is. Stevenson do seem to try to care and do the best that they can with the large numbers of students that they have since the students switch classes often.
I’m progressive in that I know change is coming– but instead of insulting or nagging I have practical suggestions that could implement change:
Allow students 7 to 10 years of ESL support, right now it is limited to up to 3 years.
Allow more students to drop out, if they do not want to be in school, allow them to leave, right now they have to be 16 years old before dropping out.
Make teachers 12 month employees– right now they are almost full time but on salary, changes to the HI constitution will need to be made to make this possible to increase funding needed in the DOE not for admin but for teachers to reduce class sizes which directly impact test scores positively, and not much else improves test scores btw across the board.
I have more but most need funding to change– so basic solution is to fund all k-​12 education at the federal level because it is a common right, similar to health care or safety, for an industrialized nation to prosper.
More info at:
Student Resources:
Academic LinksAchieve 3000/​TeenBiz
AVID National Website
AVID Newsletter
Book Fair
Check Grades
Clubs
College for Every Student
Hoonuike
Learning Center
Parent Resources:
Association of Parents & Teachers (APT)
Grades
ContactTeachers
Complaint Procedures
Parent Tours