Jack Vander Sluis Education 302 Walcott / Keeley 28 April 2014 Context East Grand Rapids High School,

which goes 9th grade through 12th grade, is a part of the East Grand Rapids School District. The high school has been constantly remodeled and renovated to continue to provide students with top of the line athletic, technological, and other learning facilities; and along with the beautiful facilities that have been built within the school, there is also a community library right across the street of the school. The student/teacher ratio is 20.93 (NCES) within EGRHS, but in my U.S. history class there are 26 students- 14 girls and 12 boys. This is a class primarily composed of juniors with a few seniors mixed in as well. In order to attend East Grand Rapids High School you have to either live within the East Grand Rapids city boarders or get permission through school of choice; so inevitably the majority of students live within the city of East Grand Rapids and I can assume that most of the students come from middle/upper class families. 89% of East Grand Rapids High School is made up of white, non Hispanic, students (NCES); this holds true for my class room as well as there are only two black, non Hispanic, students with the rest being white. All of the students that I have in my class speak English as their first language. MDE common core standards are used for U.S. history and their textbook is entitled, The Americans. From conversations with the teacher that I am assisting for, there isnt a very broad range of intellectual ability in my classroom, rather there is a wide range of motivation within the students. Most of these students come from affluent families that are very engaged in the learning process of their kids. For instance, on any given Friday my teacher and I will send out

e-mails to the parents of students with less than a C in his classes and within five minutes we will have already received responses from a few parents. This kind of parent involvement and concern is very common at East Grand Rapids High School. There are two students who receive special assistance with their homework and they go to a different room to take their tests, but they are still able to work in small groups and fully participate in our classroom activities so as far as I can tell their struggles at school are actively being addressed. There are also four AP students that are by far the most involved in classroom discussion and tend to get near perfect grades. Like my teacher says, the classroom is filled with a lot of smart kids who have a lot of different levels of engagement, and that is the difference maker. East Grand Rapids is a very affluent city compared to Michigan averages. According to the Community Research Institute, there are only 2.6% of the residents living below the poverty line, as opposed to Michigan on average, which has 15.4% of residents living below the poverty line. Likewise, East Grand Rapids has only .8% of residents without a high school diploma compared to 11.9% in the state of Michigan as a whole (CRIDATA). Numbers like these clearly reflect a community with high expectations and ample resources for helping students to succeed. And like I mentioned before, the far majority of the students at East Grand Rapids High School live within the boarders of East Grand Rapids.