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Homework 1. Science, technology focused school opens in LWSD August 21, 2012 By Ari Cetron Cindy Duenas has spent most of her career as an educator working with students who have specific needs. She’s had students who were considered “at risk” and students in honors programs, sometimes teaching both sorts of students in the same school year.

Construction proceeds at the new school site shown in this aerial photo from July. “I found it fascinating because it taught me a lot,” Duenas, a Kirkland resident, said. “It really taught me that teenagers are all the same.” Now, Duenas will bring her 27 years of experience to a new challenge as principal of the Lake Washington School District’s newest high school, a science technology engineering and mathematics (sometimes called STEM) magnet school. The school was started partly as a response to district residents who wanted an option for an intensive science program for their children, and partly to help provide more space for the growing number of students across the district. It will house 150 students per grade. This first year, there are only ninth and 10th grade students at the school. The building is still under construction off state Route 202, just north of Sammamish. Students will be housed at Eastlake High School until construction is complete, which Duenas said she expects to be some time around December’s winter break. While the STEM students may be housed at Eastlake, it will effectively be its own school, complete with a separate bell schedule. Until the move, Duenas said that teachers and administrators at Eastlake have been working with them to ensure that her teachers will have adequate classroom and lab space. Those teachers, Duenas said, were chosen by her from across the district largely because their interests meshed with the school’s mission. “I was going after teachers who are passionate about science, technology, engineering and math,” she said. But there was another nuance Duenas wanted. While the teachers — 13 full time and one part-time — needed the passion about STEM, they also needed to understand that students would need a more well-rounded education. “Don’t do it at the expense of language arts or foreign languages,” Duenas said. The focus, however, will lead to limiting some options in non-STEM areas. The only foreign language for the students will be Spanish, and there will be limited choices for arts classes. Kathryn Reith, Lake Washington School District spokesperson, explained that the smaller number of students means it will be more difficult for the district to justify offering a wider variety of classes. Duenas said it might be an advantage. Since all the students will be taking the same language, it may allow them to get deeper into it, she said. Problem-based learning The curriculum at the new school will be a bit different from the traditional high school experience. The students will spend at least some time working on real world engineering problems, developed by the National Academy of Engineering as part of the Grand Challenges of Engineering program. Challenges are across engineering’s disciplines and include options like “Make solar energy economical,” “Prevent nuclear terror” and “Reverse-engineer the brain.” Duenas said the faculty will bring in experts in various fields to help students get started on how to solve the various problems. Students will also go out into the community to work with and learn from professionals. Duenas said she saw a similar concept at a school in Chicago and was impressed by the way the students stuck with a topic. She explained that these sorts of projects, like most scientific research, teach the students to tackle a problem for a lot longer than one or two classes. “What they learned was they do have the capacity to work through problems over time,” she said. Over the next couple years as the school adds 11th and then 12th graders, the focus in those upper grades will get more intensive by using laboratory concentrations. These concentrations, such as environmental engineering and sustainable design, will take up about 40 percent of the student’s time, Duenas said. The cross-disciplinary class will count as three classes for purposes of earning credits. These disciplines can help students interested in these fields. She noted that in some cases, it might help a student to be pushed a little to explore new areas and broaden their ideas. In other cases, she said it could have the opposite effect, helping students who might otherwise try and take on too much to focus their efforts in a smaller number of areas. “We want to make sure all these doors are open,” Duenas said. Admissions The school is full this year, but students with an eye toward the 2013-2014 school year might still be able to enter. Admission to the school is generally on a lottery basis. Any student in the Lake Washington District who is entering grades 9-11 can enter their name into the lottery, unlike some science magnet schools in other parts of the country, which require admissions exams. Details of how to enter the lottery for the STEM school will be released by the district, likely in December, along with information about the other choice schools. Class size is capped at 150 students per grade. For next school year, that means there will be 150 spots for ninth-graders, filled by lottery. There may be some openings for 10th and 11th grade students if current students leave the school. In that case, the school will first look at its waiting list to fill the spots before opening them up to a lottery. There will be no 12th graders at the school until the 2014-2015 school year. A new name Right now, the school is being called STEM, but that’s a placeholder. Later on in the school year students, parents and teachers will begin the process for selecting a permanent name. The district has a detailed policy involving the names being nominated, whittled down to a few, and then presented to the community and the School Board for a final choice. Along with the new name, the incoming students will choose things like a mascot and the school’s colors. “It’s really something the community needs to be involved in,” said Cindy Duenas principal of the new school. Go home for sports The new school won’t field any sports teams of its own. According to statewide rules, students at choice schools, such as the new STEM school, must return to their home school to participate in athletics. Students who live in Sammamish, the vast majority of whom would go to Eastlake as their “home” school, would return to Eastlake to participate in sports. The rule only applies to sports, principal Cindy Duenas said. The school will still be able to host its own clubs and other extra-curricular activities.

"Science, Technology Focused School Opens in LWSD." : Sammamish Review – News, Sports, Classifieds in Sammamish, WA. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Sept. 2012. <http://sammamishreview.com/2012/08/21/science-technology-focused-school-opens-in-lwsd>.

Homework 2. My favorite demo has to be the one with he 3d graphical designs. The concept of different dimensions has always interested me in many ways and being able to graph them so easily on the computer is awesome. MATLAB makes it really easy to do all this which is always a plus and I am happy for that.