East Iredell Middle School Profile
Vision: To promote a culture of leadership excellence through collaboration with students, staff, parents, and community in an environment that celebrates diversity, built on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Mission: To rigorously challenge all students as 21st Century learners by providing them with opportunities to achieve their learning potential. We will achieve this with the support of students, parents, staff, and the community.
Core Values: Our core values are aligned with those of the district: a focus on students and learning, a motivated faculty and staff based on stakeholder input, strong partnerships with parents and the community, focus on continuous improvement, management by fact, and focus on results. Our relationship to one another is guided by the principles outlined in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Demographics: East Middle is a diverse learning community with a fourth month enrollment of 536 students in 2011. The makeup of the student body is 44.28% White, 28.60% African American, 17.6% Hispanic, and 7.38% Asian. The percent of students on free and reduced lunch is 67.61.
Students assigned to the East Middle district live in neighborhoods ranging from federally subsidized housing in Statesville to expensive homes around the Statesville Country Club.
Program Offerings: East Middle offers a standard core curriculum and an exploratory program delivered through flexible block scheduling.
Exploratory courses include band, art, computers, career development, health, and physical education. Students receive physical education/health every day throughout the year in fulfillment of the 225 minute a week/30 minutes a day State requirement for physical activity in middle school.
Students are heterogeneously grouped in core classes. EC students identified in Reading/Math are assigned to language arts/math during the same period or block. EC specialists work with the grade level content area teachers to provide appropriate support to each student based on the IEP. This is a flexible model which allows for pull out sessions, co-teaching, and focused group sessions with the EC specialist and/or the content specialist, driven by the data collected and analyzed by professional learning communities.
Students who are identified as Academically Gifted are clustered in language arts and math classes with other AIG identified peers. AIG students receive a Differentiated Education Plan which outlines a Differentiated Education Project that each student will complete, based on the student’s interest and area of giftedness. Each student is assigned to a DEP coach who meets monthly with the student to assess progress toward completion of the project and to determine whether mid course revisions to the plans need to be made. Students are given class time to work on their projects as one means of differentiation. Pre-Algebra is offered as an advanced course in 7th grade. Algebra and Advanced Pre-Algebra are offered as advanced courses in 8th grade. On-line courses are available on an individualized basis for students who need expanded or accelerated course offerings such as geometry or a foreign language.
A 40 minute block of time is scheduled daily to provide expanded opportunities tailored to individual student needs. Students performing at grade level are provided with enrichment opportunities in their subject of strength. Students performing below proficiency in reading and/or math are given additional time for re-teaching and reviewing essential objectives in their area or areas of need. Students performing well below grade level in reading are assigned to a Corrective Reading class during this time.
High performing students participate in year long classes that include Honors Band, Chorus, Robotics, Advanced Fitness and Physical Education, a student produced “KNN” news program, MathCounts, Battle of the Books, and Yearbook.
Results: East Middle achieved High Growth and was designated a School of Progress on ABC’s in 2010. 27 of 29 hurdles (93.1%) were met on AYP. The African American and Students with Disabilities subgroup did not meet AYP in Math, and in Reading LEP and EC subgroups met AYP by Confidence Interval. (For more information see http://www.ncreportcards.org/src/.)
Key Improvement Focuses
- Inclusive Practice Goal—To provide access to the standard curriculum with a highly qualified teacher for all students and to provide an appropriate level of support to all students to address their gaps based on their individual needs.
- Leadership Goal—To establish a “culture of empowerment” based on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, that will enable every staff member and every student to assume a leadership role in at least one identified area.
