Thursday, April 30, 2015

Robotics' Students visit Amec Foster Wheeler


WAIS middle school students participating in after school robotics and Intro to Robotics met with the president of the Education Foundation of Harris County, Douglas Kleiner, as well as several engineers from Amec Foster Wheeler twice this week. Students demonstrated lego-based robots working to complete tasks serving as simulations of actual tasks and projects that AFW and other engineering companies specialize in.

Engineers from Foster Wheeler provided feedback on the student's efforts and shared information about their own careers and projects at AFW.

WAIS Yearbook Recognized by Balfour Publishing



The 2013/14 edition of Westchester Academy's annual student publication, was recognized by publisher Balfour Yearbooks. Our publication will be listed for Honorable Recognition in Balfour's 29th edition of the Yearbook Yearbook. Around 15% of publications are recognized in Balfour's Yearbook Yearbook.

The 2013/14 edition of Miacis was created by WAIS yearbook students, with Ariel Denbow of the class of 2014 serving as editor, cover designed by Ariel Denbow and Karla Alanis, with the assistance of other yearbook staff. The cover features soft touch surface, with a glossy treatment on the Miacis title and on the large center W. Westchester faculty member Shaun Wegscheid served as yearbook advisor.

In the past four years, this is the third edition of the Miacis to be recognized in Balfour's Yearbook Yearbook.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

WAIS in the Chronicle's Memorial News


WAIS was recently featured in the Memorial News by the Houston Chronicle. The article, Westchester thrives by offering small classes, rigorous studies by Annette Baird, is specifically about WAIS, including information on our program and history.

excerpt:
In the years since it opened, Westchester, a school for sixth through 12th grade, has evolved and flourished, this year marking a record number of applications for the 2015-16 school year. The school received 690 applications, up from 375 last year, for about 170 spots, most of them for sixth and ninth grade.

Read the full article on Chron.com

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Ranking in Washington Post's Most Challenging Schools

The Washington Post has recently released its top schools in the Nation report for 2015’s most challenging schools.  Westchester was ranked 197 in the country this year!  This is a 222 point jump from where we were ranked 419 in 2014, making us the highest ranked school in SBISD!

We are ranked number 38 in the state of Texas according to this report, and 9th in the Houston area. Of Washington Post's top 10 schools in the Houston area, we are one of only a couple who are open enrollment.


We take the total number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Advanced International Certificate of Education tests given at a school each year and divide by the number of seniors who graduated in May or June. I call this formula the Challenge Index. With a few exceptions, public schools that achieved a ratio of at least 1.00, meaning they had as many tests in 2014 as they had graduates, were put on the national list. 

[...]

I think 1.00 is a modest standard. A school can reach that level if only half of its students take one AP, IB or AICE test in their junior year and one in their senior year. But this year, just 11 percent of the approximately 22,000 U.S. public high schools managed to reach that standard and earn placement on our list. On our list, the top 220 schools are in the top 1 percent nationally, the top 440 in the top 2 percent, and so on.

-source:  How the America’s Most Challenging High Schools list works
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/how-americas-most-challenging-high-schools-works-the-selection-method/2015/04/14/cfdd9e44-e30a-11e4-905f-cc896d379a32_story.html


Monday, April 20, 2015

Yearbook Permissions

Our biggest difficulty this year is definitely dealing with permission to include students in the yearbook. Most years, we only have around 5% of students to speak with about not turning in permission at the start of the year. However, this year the district changed how first day packets were handled. This change caused less than 50% of district permissions to be returned.

At this point, the yearbook has been complete for weeks, however, we've been working on permissions for months. As of this Friday, anyone without permission will have to be removed from the yearbook so it can go to print. At this point, around 20% of students still have not turned in permission. We've tried announcements in the morning announcements, lunch announcements, visiting advisory classrooms, posters, flyers, posting who has permission by student lockers, and physically trying to find the ~500 students without permission. We've made progress, but will still be pulling a lot of students out of the book on Friday.

If your student has not turned in a permission form, or they are unsure, they need to bring one to Mr. Wegscheid on or before Friday, April 24th. Forms can be picked up from the office, or printed from the Wais Yearbook page. (direct link to form).

If you have concerns about the permission forming making it from home to school, you can instead send a picture of it to Shaun.Wegscheid@springbranchisd.com

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Three WAIS OM Teams Advance to Worlds

Student teams headed to World Finals this summer at Michigan State University in East Lansing. 

Westchester teams placed in 1st Place in Problem 4, Lose your Marbles, Division 3; in 2nd Place in Problem 5, Silent Movie, Division 3; in 2nd Place in Problem 1, Runaway ‘Train,' Division 2; and our vehicle problem was awarded the highest award for creativity, the Renatra Fusca Award, for the team’s creative propulsion system.

Read about all the SBISD OM Teams at SBISD Snapshots



Friday, April 10, 2015

2015 Duke TIP Talent Search Results

This year we had a total of 15 seventh grade students take either the SAT or ACT through the Duke University Talent Identification Program.  These are the same tests that high school students are given. Of these 15 students, 11 received at least one form of recognition.  7 students qualify for State Recognition and 1 student qualified for Grand Recognition.  This is the largest group of students to be recognized in recent years.  It is also only the 2nd time we have had a student qualify for Grand Recognition since 2007.  Our previous Grand Recognition student graduated last year. 

Based on their scores, 6 of these students were invited either to attend the Academy of Summer Studies and 5 to the Center for Summer Studies.  You did not have to receive State or Grand Recognition to get those invitations, but it does indicate they did well on the test. 

Students that are receiving State Recognition scored at or above the national average of high school graduates on at least one part of the ACT or SAT and are invited to a special recognition ceremony held at a university in Texas.  In the past this has been Lamar University. 

Grand Recognition indicates the student scored at or better than 90% of high school graduates on at least one part of the ACT or SAT and are invited to a special recognition ceremony at Duke University. 


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