Post by momto4 on Feb 7, 2011 15:26:15 GMT -5
beaconnews.suntimes.com/3542359-417/east-oswego-students-percent-craig.html
Seven years after it opened, Oswego East is still shaping its identity
By Rowena Vergara
rvergara@stmedianetwork.com
There is no such thing as a slowdown when you are in one of America’s fastest-growing counties.
For the next several years, Oswego School District 308 will continue to expand and change as it grapples with the growth from the great housing boom of the 2000s.
Case in point: in the fall of 2014, it will open its third high school.
But while the district’s focus surely is on the future, its second high school, Oswego East, is still trying to make the present right.
Seven years after the school opened its doors, the Oswego East community — its students, staff, and parents — have a lot of work to do, Principal Jeff Craig said.
Sure, Oswego East possesses all the ingredients of a great high school. It is a state-of-the-art facility with a pool, a track and a phenomenal fine arts wing.
At the incoming freshman night last month, parents and their eighth-grade sons and daughters cocked their heads back as they gazed at the massive university-style foyer and cafeteria. Then they headed into East’s jaw-dropping auditorium, which could rival any professional performing arts center.
There’s no question the community finds the building impressive. Oswego East indeed opened with a bang. But where does it stand now?
Craig said recently that East is in a time of transition, and he is wasting no time shaping its identity. A 22-person committee of staffers was developed to talk about its values, mission and overall code as a high school.
“We’re at a point right now in Year 7 where we have our school colors, our mascot and our song. We have some things we think we want to stand for. Now it’s time to embed that into everything we do. When you enter Oswego East High School, you will know this is how we are,” Craig said.
“We’re beyond the infancy and now it’s time to be big kids. Now it’s time to kick it into high gear,” he said.
As with any new high school, it will surely has its issues. At Oswego East, Craig describes a series of challenges that are not exactly unique, but are new challenges for this district.
The high school has a 22 percent low-income population. In comparison, Oswego High’s is at 16 percent.
Students say test scores are an issue, but that upcoming classes are working hard to bring scores back up.
“Some students are a little less serious about their academic studies,” Oswego East senior Melissa Patrick said. “The community sometimes looks down at East because of our test scores.”
Both high schools are working on their scores. To improve test scores, OEHS and OHS soon will change to an eight-period schedule instead of a block schedule. The change will immerse students in a subject daily, for a year, instead of over a few months.
Throw all those factors at a new school that is building its reputation and there’s suddenly a lot to handle at once. And those are just the internal struggles.
Externally, the greater Oswego community may still perceive East as the “other high school.” For more than 50 years, this former rural village only had one high school, Oswego, a symbol of the town’s roots.
But in the past 12 to 15 years, Oswego has grown and so has the school district around it. The district spans 68.6 square miles and includes parts of Aurora, Montgomery, Plainfield and Joliet.
Parent Michelle Sather called the growth on the east side of town “new Oswego.” She moved into a new subdivision a decade ago. Her daughter will attend Oswego East in the fall.
Of Oswego East’s 2,200 students, the majority come from families who have moved into the district during that residential growth spurt. With those new families came multicultural diversity.
The demographic makeup of Oswego East’s student body is: 52.9 percent white, 23.2 percent Hispanic, 14.4 percent black and 6.4 percent Asian. In comparison, Oswego High is 73.6 percent white, 15.1 percent Hispanic, 6.7 percent black and 1.9 percent Asian, according to the Illinois State Report Card.
Students at Oswego East say their school’s multicultural diversity is just one of the traits that make it great.
But not everyone around town has understood the beauty of that, apparently. Students and staff say Oswego East has been negatively labeled “the ghetto school” at times.
The school’s principal, Craig, said there may have been some fear from longtime residents about the new kinds of faces moving into Oswego.
“We have diversity here that has not been experienced in the community in a long, long time. There was a bit of hesitancy,” he said. “These were the new kids on the block and those new families moving in didn’t look like the guy down the road always did.”
But seven years since its inception, this much is true about Oswego East: Its students, teachers, parents and staff are really proud of their school. Now it’s time for this high school to prove that pride to everyone else.
Unity and support define East Oswego
Despite these challenges, students have no trouble vocalizing Oswego East’s positives: They feel lucky to attend a new school. They appreciate their innovative, caring teachers, students said.
At East, students want to write its school’s history. Whatever it is that motivates a student, each one is encouraged to be the very best at it.
There’s a definite friendly factor that exudes from this school, students say. Patrick, a student ambassador, said cliques and bullying are not prevalent.
Because East is new, there are no class systems that may be deeply entrenched in other high school cultures.
“We’re not the typical high school you see in 1980s movies. People are laid back and relaxed and everyone’s friends with everyone,” she said.
If you don’t believe it, look no further than the cafeteria. A stereotypical high school cafeteria scene is divided by status or popularity. At Oswego East, you could be a senior and friends with a freshman, or a debate club member lunching with a basketball star.
While circles of friends are diverse socially, they are just as mixed racially.
Freshman Sajela Harlow is grateful to be exposed to all walks of life. One of her best friends is Vietnamese and the other is Pakistani.
“I’ve learned so many different things. I get informed and educated through them,” she said.
To Oswego East students, racial tolerance is a null issue, and an old one. Most of Oswego East’s students, like sophomore Arden Wood, have grown up in the district and have always been exposed to classrooms of all skin colors.
Attending Oswego schools since the first grade, the British and African American student has always been in classrooms filled black, white, brown and yellow faces.
“We might have different backgrounds, but people are all the same,” Wood said.
Awareness and appreciation of all backgrounds is what Oswego East is all about, Wood and other students said. There’s even a club that celebrates this trait: MOSAIC Club. It stands for Many Ordinary Students Appreciating Individuality and Culture.
The school eliminated separate cultural groups for blacks, Hispanics or Asians only, because administrators felt it was more beneficial to unite its racial backgrounds instead with one club, sponsor Dianna Adalba said.
Oswego East’s diversity, administrators believe, is a picture of what this country will look like in the next 15 to 20 years.
“Our kids are very accepting of differences around here, probably because they’ve been exposed to differences and they don’t know a mono diagram of students and staff,” Craig said.
“They have always known diversity. That’s one of the great nuances of a school like this; when you start off that way, you don’t know anything different.”
And about the so-called label placed on East as a “ghetto school,” it seems just about everyone has heard of it, but they do not let it faze them.
Senior John Griffin is an OHS student, but attends Oswego East half-time for engineering courses, so he is exposed to both schools. When asked if he had heard of that label, he rolled his eyes and nodded.
“I’ve heard it and I don’t understand why. I see people who are totally normal,” he said.
“It doesn’t feel much different to me. It’s very welcoming,” he said of East compared to his home school.
Special attention to changing demographics
A homey and united atmosphere is not always a straight shot for a new building, but East got it right.
Principal Craig said he believes the bigger issues are its low-income population and the influx of students who have not grown up in the school district.
School officials are concerned about its low-income population’s academic performance. That group scored 38.9 percent in reading and 41.1 percent in math on the Prairie State Achievement Exam, compared to the overall school’s scores of 53.1 percent in reading and 52.6 percent in math.
The state standard in reading and math for every demographic population is 77.5 percent, but hundreds of schools in Illinois are not meeting it.
Craig is hopeful that East’s low-income students will enroll in a new summer school program to keep them engaged year-round. Low-income students are automatically at a disadvantage because they are not likely to be exposed to cultural opportunities outside of school, like museums or camps, he said.
Also, some Oswego East students will be the first to graduate from high school, or attend college, in their families. The importance of an education has not been a strong value in some families, Craig explained.
These challenges, Craig said, “are obstacles, but we overcome it very well here.”
There’s also data that show non-white students test lower than white students on standardized tests.
But Adalba, an English teacher in addition to MOSAIC Club sponsor, said statistics will never tell the full story at East.
She teaches nearly as many high-achieving minorities as she does low-performing students, she said.
Back to back, Adalba teaches freshman remedial reading, and Honors British Literature. Half of her remedial students are in special education. The entire class is barely passing. Between her honors course and her remedial class, the ratio of non-white to white students is almost equal.
Making history, breaking barriers
Last year, this school made a breakthrough. Cross-country runner and junior Ariel Michalek became Oswego East’s first athlete to win a state title. The whole school gathered for a pep assembly in her honor. For the first time, East got its first taste of high school pride.
Michalek became an inspiration for students to achieve success, whether it be in sports, academics or in clubs.
As Craig says, East students are hungry.
“We’ve never had that first state champion and now we have and we’ll have more. Somebody has broken through and said, ‘Yes we can,’ ” Craig said.
That hunger is seen in junior Kristine Doligosa, who plans to join a ton more clubs in addition to a community service organization, National Honors Society and others. She also plays badminton. Michalek’s win personally motivated her.
“I want to win sectionals and get to state. Maybe get our names up on that wall. Make our coaches proud,” she said.
Harlow is also hungry for more. The freshman varsity tennis player wants to go professional. She went to state last year and is determined to go every year.
Slowly, East students are beginning to show the community what it’s got. The Scholastic Bowl, speech team, drama department and cheerleading team, to name a few, are winning all sorts of titles.
As for community perception, Craig said he believes, “the defenses are coming down.”
“We’re gradually becoming more accepted, more successful in some areas and we’re earning some respect,” he said. “We’re starting to earn it. The perception is we’re doing some good stuff and we’re making some inroads.”
Call them what you will: the invaders, the misfits, the new kids. But Craig likes to call them the East underdogs. And he is OK with East being the underdogs for a long time.
“I hope we are never established. I hope we are never there. … If we win a state championship in something, we want another one. If we ever stop getting better, that means we’re getting worse,” he said.
“If I ever thought we were good enough, then we probably weren’t.”
Seven years after it opened, Oswego East is still shaping its identity
By Rowena Vergara
rvergara@stmedianetwork.com
There is no such thing as a slowdown when you are in one of America’s fastest-growing counties.
For the next several years, Oswego School District 308 will continue to expand and change as it grapples with the growth from the great housing boom of the 2000s.
Case in point: in the fall of 2014, it will open its third high school.
But while the district’s focus surely is on the future, its second high school, Oswego East, is still trying to make the present right.
Seven years after the school opened its doors, the Oswego East community — its students, staff, and parents — have a lot of work to do, Principal Jeff Craig said.
Sure, Oswego East possesses all the ingredients of a great high school. It is a state-of-the-art facility with a pool, a track and a phenomenal fine arts wing.
At the incoming freshman night last month, parents and their eighth-grade sons and daughters cocked their heads back as they gazed at the massive university-style foyer and cafeteria. Then they headed into East’s jaw-dropping auditorium, which could rival any professional performing arts center.
There’s no question the community finds the building impressive. Oswego East indeed opened with a bang. But where does it stand now?
Craig said recently that East is in a time of transition, and he is wasting no time shaping its identity. A 22-person committee of staffers was developed to talk about its values, mission and overall code as a high school.
“We’re at a point right now in Year 7 where we have our school colors, our mascot and our song. We have some things we think we want to stand for. Now it’s time to embed that into everything we do. When you enter Oswego East High School, you will know this is how we are,” Craig said.
“We’re beyond the infancy and now it’s time to be big kids. Now it’s time to kick it into high gear,” he said.
As with any new high school, it will surely has its issues. At Oswego East, Craig describes a series of challenges that are not exactly unique, but are new challenges for this district.
The high school has a 22 percent low-income population. In comparison, Oswego High’s is at 16 percent.
Students say test scores are an issue, but that upcoming classes are working hard to bring scores back up.
“Some students are a little less serious about their academic studies,” Oswego East senior Melissa Patrick said. “The community sometimes looks down at East because of our test scores.”
Both high schools are working on their scores. To improve test scores, OEHS and OHS soon will change to an eight-period schedule instead of a block schedule. The change will immerse students in a subject daily, for a year, instead of over a few months.
Throw all those factors at a new school that is building its reputation and there’s suddenly a lot to handle at once. And those are just the internal struggles.
Externally, the greater Oswego community may still perceive East as the “other high school.” For more than 50 years, this former rural village only had one high school, Oswego, a symbol of the town’s roots.
But in the past 12 to 15 years, Oswego has grown and so has the school district around it. The district spans 68.6 square miles and includes parts of Aurora, Montgomery, Plainfield and Joliet.
Parent Michelle Sather called the growth on the east side of town “new Oswego.” She moved into a new subdivision a decade ago. Her daughter will attend Oswego East in the fall.
Of Oswego East’s 2,200 students, the majority come from families who have moved into the district during that residential growth spurt. With those new families came multicultural diversity.
The demographic makeup of Oswego East’s student body is: 52.9 percent white, 23.2 percent Hispanic, 14.4 percent black and 6.4 percent Asian. In comparison, Oswego High is 73.6 percent white, 15.1 percent Hispanic, 6.7 percent black and 1.9 percent Asian, according to the Illinois State Report Card.
Students at Oswego East say their school’s multicultural diversity is just one of the traits that make it great.
But not everyone around town has understood the beauty of that, apparently. Students and staff say Oswego East has been negatively labeled “the ghetto school” at times.
The school’s principal, Craig, said there may have been some fear from longtime residents about the new kinds of faces moving into Oswego.
“We have diversity here that has not been experienced in the community in a long, long time. There was a bit of hesitancy,” he said. “These were the new kids on the block and those new families moving in didn’t look like the guy down the road always did.”
But seven years since its inception, this much is true about Oswego East: Its students, teachers, parents and staff are really proud of their school. Now it’s time for this high school to prove that pride to everyone else.
Unity and support define East Oswego
Despite these challenges, students have no trouble vocalizing Oswego East’s positives: They feel lucky to attend a new school. They appreciate their innovative, caring teachers, students said.
At East, students want to write its school’s history. Whatever it is that motivates a student, each one is encouraged to be the very best at it.
There’s a definite friendly factor that exudes from this school, students say. Patrick, a student ambassador, said cliques and bullying are not prevalent.
Because East is new, there are no class systems that may be deeply entrenched in other high school cultures.
“We’re not the typical high school you see in 1980s movies. People are laid back and relaxed and everyone’s friends with everyone,” she said.
If you don’t believe it, look no further than the cafeteria. A stereotypical high school cafeteria scene is divided by status or popularity. At Oswego East, you could be a senior and friends with a freshman, or a debate club member lunching with a basketball star.
While circles of friends are diverse socially, they are just as mixed racially.
Freshman Sajela Harlow is grateful to be exposed to all walks of life. One of her best friends is Vietnamese and the other is Pakistani.
“I’ve learned so many different things. I get informed and educated through them,” she said.
To Oswego East students, racial tolerance is a null issue, and an old one. Most of Oswego East’s students, like sophomore Arden Wood, have grown up in the district and have always been exposed to classrooms of all skin colors.
Attending Oswego schools since the first grade, the British and African American student has always been in classrooms filled black, white, brown and yellow faces.
“We might have different backgrounds, but people are all the same,” Wood said.
Awareness and appreciation of all backgrounds is what Oswego East is all about, Wood and other students said. There’s even a club that celebrates this trait: MOSAIC Club. It stands for Many Ordinary Students Appreciating Individuality and Culture.
The school eliminated separate cultural groups for blacks, Hispanics or Asians only, because administrators felt it was more beneficial to unite its racial backgrounds instead with one club, sponsor Dianna Adalba said.
Oswego East’s diversity, administrators believe, is a picture of what this country will look like in the next 15 to 20 years.
“Our kids are very accepting of differences around here, probably because they’ve been exposed to differences and they don’t know a mono diagram of students and staff,” Craig said.
“They have always known diversity. That’s one of the great nuances of a school like this; when you start off that way, you don’t know anything different.”
And about the so-called label placed on East as a “ghetto school,” it seems just about everyone has heard of it, but they do not let it faze them.
Senior John Griffin is an OHS student, but attends Oswego East half-time for engineering courses, so he is exposed to both schools. When asked if he had heard of that label, he rolled his eyes and nodded.
“I’ve heard it and I don’t understand why. I see people who are totally normal,” he said.
“It doesn’t feel much different to me. It’s very welcoming,” he said of East compared to his home school.
Special attention to changing demographics
A homey and united atmosphere is not always a straight shot for a new building, but East got it right.
Principal Craig said he believes the bigger issues are its low-income population and the influx of students who have not grown up in the school district.
School officials are concerned about its low-income population’s academic performance. That group scored 38.9 percent in reading and 41.1 percent in math on the Prairie State Achievement Exam, compared to the overall school’s scores of 53.1 percent in reading and 52.6 percent in math.
The state standard in reading and math for every demographic population is 77.5 percent, but hundreds of schools in Illinois are not meeting it.
Craig is hopeful that East’s low-income students will enroll in a new summer school program to keep them engaged year-round. Low-income students are automatically at a disadvantage because they are not likely to be exposed to cultural opportunities outside of school, like museums or camps, he said.
Also, some Oswego East students will be the first to graduate from high school, or attend college, in their families. The importance of an education has not been a strong value in some families, Craig explained.
These challenges, Craig said, “are obstacles, but we overcome it very well here.”
There’s also data that show non-white students test lower than white students on standardized tests.
But Adalba, an English teacher in addition to MOSAIC Club sponsor, said statistics will never tell the full story at East.
She teaches nearly as many high-achieving minorities as she does low-performing students, she said.
Back to back, Adalba teaches freshman remedial reading, and Honors British Literature. Half of her remedial students are in special education. The entire class is barely passing. Between her honors course and her remedial class, the ratio of non-white to white students is almost equal.
Making history, breaking barriers
Last year, this school made a breakthrough. Cross-country runner and junior Ariel Michalek became Oswego East’s first athlete to win a state title. The whole school gathered for a pep assembly in her honor. For the first time, East got its first taste of high school pride.
Michalek became an inspiration for students to achieve success, whether it be in sports, academics or in clubs.
As Craig says, East students are hungry.
“We’ve never had that first state champion and now we have and we’ll have more. Somebody has broken through and said, ‘Yes we can,’ ” Craig said.
That hunger is seen in junior Kristine Doligosa, who plans to join a ton more clubs in addition to a community service organization, National Honors Society and others. She also plays badminton. Michalek’s win personally motivated her.
“I want to win sectionals and get to state. Maybe get our names up on that wall. Make our coaches proud,” she said.
Harlow is also hungry for more. The freshman varsity tennis player wants to go professional. She went to state last year and is determined to go every year.
Slowly, East students are beginning to show the community what it’s got. The Scholastic Bowl, speech team, drama department and cheerleading team, to name a few, are winning all sorts of titles.
As for community perception, Craig said he believes, “the defenses are coming down.”
“We’re gradually becoming more accepted, more successful in some areas and we’re earning some respect,” he said. “We’re starting to earn it. The perception is we’re doing some good stuff and we’re making some inroads.”
Call them what you will: the invaders, the misfits, the new kids. But Craig likes to call them the East underdogs. And he is OK with East being the underdogs for a long time.
“I hope we are never established. I hope we are never there. … If we win a state championship in something, we want another one. If we ever stop getting better, that means we’re getting worse,” he said.
“If I ever thought we were good enough, then we probably weren’t.”