Culture and Community Context
Rocky Mountain High School (established 1973) is part of Poudre School District and is located in the Fort Collins area. Rocky Mountain is a 5A school with 2,025 students enrolled (further demographic breakdown can be seen below). The school’s mascot is a the Lobo, and follows closely with the school’s motto and mission statement: “The Lobo Way.” Rocky Mountain’s mission is to inspire, guide, and support students, faculty, and staff to reach their maximum potential in a caring, challenging, and safe environment. More detailed information on the school’s mission statement and “The Lobo Way” can be found at the school website. Click here to access the site.
From my experience as soon as you enter the doors of the school, The Lobo Way is clearly visible. Staff and students alike are welcoming, kind hearted, and dedicated to the success of everyone as a collective whole. As a student teacher, I was given the utmost support from administration, the art department, my mentor teacher, and the student body. While this experience presented challenges at times, I knew that I had the support of many and that nobody was going to watch me fail. Collaboration became a crucial element in my teaching at Rocky in order to help the success of students.
From my experience as soon as you enter the doors of the school, The Lobo Way is clearly visible. Staff and students alike are welcoming, kind hearted, and dedicated to the success of everyone as a collective whole. As a student teacher, I was given the utmost support from administration, the art department, my mentor teacher, and the student body. While this experience presented challenges at times, I knew that I had the support of many and that nobody was going to watch me fail. Collaboration became a crucial element in my teaching at Rocky in order to help the success of students.
Demographic Characteristics
*All information is current as of August 2018 and was found on Schooldigger.com
Total Enrollment: 2,025 students
Student - Teacher Ratio: 19.6
Racial Breakdown:
-White: 76%
-Hispanic: 14.9%
-Two or more races: 4.3%
Free and Reduced Population: 29.3%
Statewide Ranking: 65/388 for Colorado high schools
*83% of Rocky Mountain graduates continue their education in institutions of higher learning.
Total Enrollment: 2,025 students
Student - Teacher Ratio: 19.6
Racial Breakdown:
-White: 76%
-Hispanic: 14.9%
-Two or more races: 4.3%
Free and Reduced Population: 29.3%
Statewide Ranking: 65/388 for Colorado high schools
*83% of Rocky Mountain graduates continue their education in institutions of higher learning.
Classroom Environment
In my eight-week experience teaching at Rocky Mountain High School, I taught an introductory 2-D Design course, and two sections of Photography 1. Classes were 90 minutes in length and met five times a week; Rocky Mountain is one of the few high schools that follows a ‘true block’ schedule. Between these three courses, I had about seventy students; most of these students were freshman, but also included sophomores, juniors, and seniors. 2-D Design is intended to give students the opportunity to develop skills through exploration of a variety of 2-D art making methods. Students were exposed to collage, contour drawing of the human figure, value drawing focusing on light structure, portrait drawing, and introductory color theory. Literacy was integrated into the course by students developing their own digital portfolios through a platform called Bulb. Photo I gave students opportunity to develop proficiency in traditional photo image making methods. For every shooting assignment, students utilized a 35mm film SLR camera, processed film with wet chemistry processes, and created silver gelatin prints in a traditional darkroom setting. Students explored a variety of picture making approaches such as, interior shooting, low-light conditions, urban and natural landscapes, and a little bit of macro photography. Literacy was integrated into these courses by having students create a digital portfolio through the Bulb web platform.
Safe Schools and Students with Special Needs
Safe Schools: Poudre School District sets the goal to provide all students with a safe and inclusive learning environment. Campus Security Officers are at each school in the district and a Student Resource Officer is at each middle and respective high school in the district. Student safety is an utmost priority in PSD. (All information was found on the Poudre School District website; psdschools.org)
Poudre Schools follow a crisis management/communications plan that is based on the FEMA National Incident Management System. PSD's approach to emergency response and crisis management focuses on five phases of crisis management:
1. Prevention: School prevention include visitor screening, suicide assessment and intervention, implementing prevention programs, and conducting threat assessments.
2. Protection: Some school protection programs include evacuation, sheltering for hazard, lockdown, lockout and "run-hide-fight" protocols.
3. Mitigation: Examples of mitigation include installation of backup generators for power outages; early warning systems for severe weather events, fencing hazardous areas, safe construction and defensible space for wildland fires, and the presence of School Resource Officers. Any of these measures could mitigate the impact of an event.
4. Response: Taking action to effectively contain and resolve the crisis or emergency, including all aspects associated with notifying and protecting the students, staff, public and property.
5. Recovery: Assisting students and staff in the healing process and restoring educational operations in schools. The two main priorities of this phase are the emotional recovery of the students and staff and the physical recovery of school.
Students with Special Needs: At Rocky Mountain High School, there are six paraprofessionals that assist in integrating and involving students into a 'regular' classroom environment. These paraprofessionals play a crucial role in helping students with special needs succeed in the classroom. Students with special needs are integrated into many classes throughout the school with art classes being a very common place for this population of students to be involved in. One other program that makes Rocky Mountain a unique place in the Lobo Bistro. This is a teacher restaurant located within the school where students with special needs are in charge of preparing a meal for teachers on a day-to-day basis. The goal of this program is to provide students the opportunity to learn valuable and transferable job skills that can be used in a work setting outside of the school walls.
*Poudre School District utilizes Integrated Services which offers many programs for a variety of student needs in order to help them succeed. Click here for a more detailed look at these programs.
Poudre Schools follow a crisis management/communications plan that is based on the FEMA National Incident Management System. PSD's approach to emergency response and crisis management focuses on five phases of crisis management:
1. Prevention: School prevention include visitor screening, suicide assessment and intervention, implementing prevention programs, and conducting threat assessments.
2. Protection: Some school protection programs include evacuation, sheltering for hazard, lockdown, lockout and "run-hide-fight" protocols.
3. Mitigation: Examples of mitigation include installation of backup generators for power outages; early warning systems for severe weather events, fencing hazardous areas, safe construction and defensible space for wildland fires, and the presence of School Resource Officers. Any of these measures could mitigate the impact of an event.
4. Response: Taking action to effectively contain and resolve the crisis or emergency, including all aspects associated with notifying and protecting the students, staff, public and property.
5. Recovery: Assisting students and staff in the healing process and restoring educational operations in schools. The two main priorities of this phase are the emotional recovery of the students and staff and the physical recovery of school.
Students with Special Needs: At Rocky Mountain High School, there are six paraprofessionals that assist in integrating and involving students into a 'regular' classroom environment. These paraprofessionals play a crucial role in helping students with special needs succeed in the classroom. Students with special needs are integrated into many classes throughout the school with art classes being a very common place for this population of students to be involved in. One other program that makes Rocky Mountain a unique place in the Lobo Bistro. This is a teacher restaurant located within the school where students with special needs are in charge of preparing a meal for teachers on a day-to-day basis. The goal of this program is to provide students the opportunity to learn valuable and transferable job skills that can be used in a work setting outside of the school walls.
*Poudre School District utilizes Integrated Services which offers many programs for a variety of student needs in order to help them succeed. Click here for a more detailed look at these programs.
Lesson Plans
In this introductory drawing/painting course, students were exposed to the basic fundamentals of art and art making. For this lesson, students were shown the Elements and Principles of design and completed a short exercise to demonstrate understanding. Students researched and found two images for each element/principle and publish them to their class website. After this, students were asked to utilize this language in each of their following assignments. A variation of this lesson was taught in all classes that I oversaw at Rocky Mountain. In photography, instead of students finding photos online, students used their camera phones to create their own pictures around the Rocky campus.
Student Work Examples
Photography Portfolios
For this lesson, introductory students were asked to shoot a roll of film of various spaces that were of personal importance to them. Students began by looking at various artists' work and comprehend how other artists have approached using space. Students utilized traditional methods of photo image making for this assignment. Students exposed a roll of film, processed it, and used those negatives to create a silver gelatin print.