Monrovia Unified School District
During the three years I taught at MUSD, I served at the following schools and programs:
Canyon Oaks High
Mountain Park School
Canyon Oaks High School and Mountain Park School partner with Monrovia Community Adult School to provide alternative programs to secondary school learners in the Monrovia area.
Farming
Based on a true story in California's Central Valley, students compete and collaborate to deal with natural disasters as they try to design and maintain the most lucrative farm possible.
Farmers of the Central Valley.pptxFarm lesson.pdfThe complete lesson plan and sets of students handouts as presented at a Make-and-Take Session of California Agriculture in the Classroom Conference of 2018.
A flooded student field. Many crops ruined.
Tallying income.pptxStudent instructions on how to calculate final income at the end of the simulation.
Integration with social studies and math.
Mars DBQ
Mars DBQ.docxStudents also had the experience to drive (and be driven over) by a working model of the Mars rover, brought to us by NASA scientist and guest speaker, Mark Underwood.
Our school adopted the DBQ program as part of a focus on essay writing skills. All classes were required to teach at least 1 DBQ unit per semester. Unfortunately, the DBQ project did not have any units on science at the time. Here's what we wrote in collaboration with English and Earth Science teachers to create this science-based DBQ for High School Biology.
Sewer Science
In collaboration with the Los Angeles County Sanitation District, COHS and MP students built a working model of a wastewater treatment plant, testing the water for various indicators at each stage of the sanitation process.
The experience culminated with a field trip to our local waste water treatment plant.
MCAS provides many opportunities for adult learners to improve their English and basic Education skills.
I taught in their ABE, HiSet and High School Diploma programs over the course of three years.
American High School Experience Program
During the summer of 2017, Monrovia Unified School District hosted 4 cohorts of 8th grade Chinese students for a week-long American High School Experience. Placed in small groups with American counterparts, they attended classes everyday at the local high school. I modified the AMGEN curriculum to accommodate their English skills and taught a 4 day hands-on genetic engineering workshop.
Students extracted their own DNA and used micropipettes and gel electrophoresis to learn about the tools of biotechnology.
