Students’ Dream Schools
Every week, our Week in Rap Shout Out Contest gives students an opportunity to win a shout out for their school in the next Week in Rap. Last week, in honor of the new school year, we asked you to describe your ideal school. What would students study there? What courses would it offer? What would be the school’s mission?
Our winning entry comes from Normandy Middle School in St. Louis, Missouri. They took us to “Low Down Middle School,” and they created both a school pledge/song and a course list.
I’ll be reading all them books. I’m about to kill this paragraph. Now watch me when I work. Ok we bout to break down this problem. How you feelin? Yeah we chillin, in this LOW DOWN middle school. We learning it, we real in it, turn it up, that what we bout to do.
Chorus: Now we representing LOW DOWN middle school. Now we be representing RED, WHITE, and BLUE. Now we representing LOW DOWN middle school. Now we be representing RED, WHITE, and BLUE.
Course listing for LOW DOWN Middle School:
- Math: Students will learn about money and how to spend and budget it by running their own class business. Students will be assigned jobs and will have to complete company projects. Students will keep track of payroll and transactions.
- Science: Students will practice the scientific method through experimentation. Students will enter science fair contest with projects such as volcanoes explosions and rocket, robot or car competitions.
- Social Studies: Students will learn about geography and maps. Students will be able to create their own map videos and raps that help other students recognize states, countries and continents.
- Language Arts: Students will learn about different role models and heroes. Students will create a class book that will focus on reading, research, and writing skills. Students will work together to produce book that can be seen by other students.
- Gym: Students will design an obstacle course for other students to complete for their physical fitness test. Students will also get meet famous athletes who are from the Saint Louis area.
- ART: Students will learn about art from all around the world and try to recreate some of that artwork in the class.
- Music: Students will listen to and sing new artist and music and compare it to older artist and music. Students will put on a multiple concerts during their year highlighting old and new music.
We love the emphasis on well-rounded, practical, hands-on learning. This would be an incredible school. Congratulations, Normandy Middle School!
We received so many great entries this week that we wanted to share the runners-up as well. Howard Middle School introduces “Mandatory Fun Middle School,” where the learning is both ambitious and engaging.
Although we have plenty of pride in our own Howard Middle School in Orangeburg, SC we also know that if we could create it all over there are some things we would want to do. To begin with, our school would be a boarding school with satellite campuses in LA, New York, Miami, Atlanta and an abroad program in Paris, as well as our main campus in Orangeburg. Physically, there are several key things that will make our school stand out. First of all, we will have a large park on each campus that students will be able to study, eat, and play sports in. Our schools will be skyscrapers and students will move between floors via escalators and elevators. Each floor will have 20 individual bathrooms so that students won’t have to wait in a crowded bathroom or stray far from their class. Instead of a traditional cafeteria we will have various restaurants.
Even just as a class we noticed that we have a large number of different interests and types of courses that we wanted to take so our school will be split up into different academies. The academies will include, math and science, medical, humanities (such as social studies and language arts), arts, sports, and life skills. Students will be able to take courses in all of the different academies since many of the students at are school have multiple interests. Classes will be hands-on and will put students on track for careers in different fields. For example, our medical academy will include courses geared towards different types of doctors, nursing, and pharmaceutical studies. We will have a very large arts academy that will include courses in all of the fine arts, cosmetology, and a strong performing arts program. Each academy will give students the opportunity to show off their hard work through performances and showcases. Top professionals in each field will teach the classes but instructors will break things down so that they aren’t too challenging for students at first. This way, when our students graduate they will be able to succeed in these careers and will not be intimidated by top positions.
Finally, our school will be called Mandatory Fun Middle School because that is our mission. We recognize that learning can be fun and we want our school to be a fun and safe environment that allows students to learn and enjoy themselves at the same time.
We asked you to think big with your entries, and Howard Middle School really did!
Many of you also submitted schools with specific specialties and less focus on academics—dreaming big in another way. Mary from St. Francis de Sales School in Lebanon, Ohio, let her imagination run wild with her submission of “Animals Intermediate.”
If I could create my own school it would be called, Animals Intermediate. Only boring people don’t like animals, so hopefully the school would be very popular! The main course would be animal science, so you would learn about all kinds of animals! This school would also be for all grades kindergarten to sixth grade, so all little kids and older kids can learn about animals like zookeepers do!
This school would take place from 9:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon. It may seem like a long time, but the kids would have fun because of the animals they are with! Than school buses will take the kids home by 5:00, for any afternoon activities. The transportation will also help the parents because they don’t need to drive their kids to school, and they can ride the bus. So everything but the time is the same, for arrival and dismissal.
The school would sort of be like a zoo, except everything would be inside. So you don’t have to take a field trip to the zoo, you’ll have one right with you all day at school! I personally would think that would be VERY cool, because our school doesn’t go to the zoo a lot.
All floors of the building would hold a different type of animal. One floor of the building would be amphibians, and another would be reptiles, and so forth. The highest floor of the school would have a GIANT slide that slides into the underwater animal’s room so you could swim with them! (of course it would be the tank with the nonviolent water animals)
For recess you could either go into the boring gym, or go play with the animals of you choice! You could even go play with the lions and tigers because they would be trained to have fun playing with you. The animals are even trained to play games like kickball, tag, capture the flag and more. So if you are lonely and have no one to play with, ask a monkey to jump rope with you! How exciting would it be to jump rope with a monkey?
Also for more fun things, every kid can have their own pet (that stays at school at ALL times) Each grade can have a different type. The sixth grade would have lions/tigers, while the little kindergarteners would have small fish.
Even each teacher would be able to speak animal! (This school would never happen so this can be made up!) Let’s say a giraffe is rubbing his butt against a tree, the teacher could say, “Stop being a bad example to the children!” Then the giraffe would stop.
For the money, this school would need a lot of money, there would be fundraisers that the school is a zoo and the children were the zookeepers! Now zoos make a lot of money, but the kids as zookeepers, who wouldn’t want to come to that!
The main purpose of this school is so people connect with animals, some animals are becoming extinct, so we want to preserve as much as possible! With these kids interacting with animals, they will not want to kill any, so more species can stay alive, and more species can be created.
“Animal Intermediate” would be a one-of-a-kind school for sure!
Thank you to everyone who entered this week. Don’t forget to enter this Friday’s Week In Rap Shout-Out Contest for a chance to win a shout out next Friday.