Rocketship Public Schools are a network of charter schools with campuses in the Bay Area, Milwaukee, Nashville, and Washington D.C. I work at Rocketship Discovery Prep (RDP) located in San Jose, CA. The school was founded in 2011 and has 482 students enrolled in grades TK-5. Of those students, 84.9% are considered socioeconomically disadvantaged and 57.5% are English language learners (ELL). The majority of students are Hispanic and speak Spanish fluently. All teachers at Rocketship are trained with Project GLAD to learn strategies to better support all of ELL students through hand motions, songs, and visuals.
RDP is departmentalized and students attend four classes a day. The students rotate between math, humanities, learning lab, and enrichment class. RDP offers art, physical education, and engineering as its enrichment courses. All Rocketship schools have a learning lab where students spend ninety minutes utilizing personalized online learning programs targeted to students' needs and areas of growth. Staff consists of school leaders, teachers (GE and SPED), enrichment coordinators, integrated learning specialists, support staff, an operations manager, and a business operations manager. Rocketship has a Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS) program where teachers and school leaders meet regularly to review data points regarding incident reports and to improve school culture.
Rocketship provides curriculum and lesson plans for teachers. Teachers are expected to annotate and personalize lesson plans to meet their classes' needs and teaching styles. Teachers begin units with a vision of excellence plan (unit plan). In this plan we analyze the end of unit assessment, break down the unit's standards, and review day-to-day lessons and objectives. Teachers work with a coach on all unit plans to ensure they are utilizing appropriate strategies for their students and pitching lessons with rigorous examples. Once students have taken the end of unit assessment, teachers and coaches engage in a data analysis meeting to analyze student mastery levels and create reteach plans. The reteach plans ensure that all students are given multiple opportunities to master the standards either through small group or whole group instruction.
I teach Kindergarten Humanities and currently am the Grade Level Lead. This position is helping me develop as a leader on my team and campus. Grade Level Leads attend additional professional development sessions to further support our team by holding unit plan and data analysis meetings which help develop peer teachers. I have two cohorts of students and each cohort is named after a university. My cohorts are DePaul University and Johns Hopkins University. Johns Hopkins has 22 students with 7 girls and 15 boys. DePaul University has 23 students with 9 girls and 14 boys. Each cohort has students that are predominately Hispanic with some Punjabi, African American, and White students. Each student is provided breakfast from 8:00 to 8:30. This is followed by instruction that goes from 8:30 to 11:00. Lunch and recess then goes from 11:00 to 11:50 with classes transitioning at 12:15. Instruction resumes from 12:15 to 3:10, followed by enrichment from 3:10 to 3:55 and dismissal at 4:00. Many students come into school far behind, not knowing letter names and sounds or how to write their first and last names. We provide rigorous academics and instruction with an extended school day to ensure that we are doing everything in our power to close the achievement gap. I build strong relationships with my students' families through home visits and constant communication. I believe building strong relationships with parents better supports student success.
RDP is departmentalized and students attend four classes a day. The students rotate between math, humanities, learning lab, and enrichment class. RDP offers art, physical education, and engineering as its enrichment courses. All Rocketship schools have a learning lab where students spend ninety minutes utilizing personalized online learning programs targeted to students' needs and areas of growth. Staff consists of school leaders, teachers (GE and SPED), enrichment coordinators, integrated learning specialists, support staff, an operations manager, and a business operations manager. Rocketship has a Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS) program where teachers and school leaders meet regularly to review data points regarding incident reports and to improve school culture.
Rocketship provides curriculum and lesson plans for teachers. Teachers are expected to annotate and personalize lesson plans to meet their classes' needs and teaching styles. Teachers begin units with a vision of excellence plan (unit plan). In this plan we analyze the end of unit assessment, break down the unit's standards, and review day-to-day lessons and objectives. Teachers work with a coach on all unit plans to ensure they are utilizing appropriate strategies for their students and pitching lessons with rigorous examples. Once students have taken the end of unit assessment, teachers and coaches engage in a data analysis meeting to analyze student mastery levels and create reteach plans. The reteach plans ensure that all students are given multiple opportunities to master the standards either through small group or whole group instruction.
I teach Kindergarten Humanities and currently am the Grade Level Lead. This position is helping me develop as a leader on my team and campus. Grade Level Leads attend additional professional development sessions to further support our team by holding unit plan and data analysis meetings which help develop peer teachers. I have two cohorts of students and each cohort is named after a university. My cohorts are DePaul University and Johns Hopkins University. Johns Hopkins has 22 students with 7 girls and 15 boys. DePaul University has 23 students with 9 girls and 14 boys. Each cohort has students that are predominately Hispanic with some Punjabi, African American, and White students. Each student is provided breakfast from 8:00 to 8:30. This is followed by instruction that goes from 8:30 to 11:00. Lunch and recess then goes from 11:00 to 11:50 with classes transitioning at 12:15. Instruction resumes from 12:15 to 3:10, followed by enrichment from 3:10 to 3:55 and dismissal at 4:00. Many students come into school far behind, not knowing letter names and sounds or how to write their first and last names. We provide rigorous academics and instruction with an extended school day to ensure that we are doing everything in our power to close the achievement gap. I build strong relationships with my students' families through home visits and constant communication. I believe building strong relationships with parents better supports student success.