Written by: Chad Shaner

Curiosity took the better of me as I walked by Ms. Post’s moderate to severe functional skills class one recent afternoon. A quick glance revealed smiling students glued to Chromebook screens; one student clapping joyfully at his desk while others seemed unphased by his antics. Rachel Post, one of our special education teachers at Perris High School teaches a self-contained functional skills class for students with moderate to severe disabilities. Somebody who might not have known better might assume that students were cheering at an entertaining video on their Chromebooks, but knowing Ms. Post, I knew that wasn’t the case. Upon closer inspection, I saw visual coding blocks displayed on the overhead projector, and I knew I had to step inside.

Ms. Post excitedly told me that her students were using tynker.com, an online visual coding website that teaches kids basic programming logic through a drag and drop interface. What makes Tynker great is the gamified aspect, taking students through levels of greater complexity using compelling characters that the user navigates through a series of obstacles. Ms. Post’s students were fully engaged in the activity, challenging one another to see who could pass the next level first. I was enthralled that these students were learning basic computer science and had the ability to understand the logic behind the coding blocks, but I was not surprised. Having taught a special education computer applications class for several years, I know that many students with intellectual disabilities have talents that are locked away given a traditional classroom setting. But given the right tools and proper guidance, these students can blow you away with what they can create.

According to the United States 2010 Census, approximately 2.4% of school-aged children in Southern California have a cognitive disability, defined as a child having serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions. Given these statistics, it’s not difficult to see why these students represent an often forgotten and underserved population. Despite these challenges, special needs students in the Perris Union High School District are granted access to technology tools that minimize accessibility gaps and unlock hidden potentials. In addition to free online sources like Tynker, Ms. Post uses Khan Academy to help her students learn basic math facts, and text-to-speech Chrome extensions like SpeakIt! to make text accessible to her students.


Some might question the value of teaching introductory computer programming to students with intellectual disabilities, perhaps assuming that these students would never have the capability of becoming professional software engineers or game designers. I beg to differ. Many scholars have speculated on the presence of intellectual and psychological disabilities amongst some of the world’s greatest geniuses. In today’s app-driven world, all it takes is the release of a simple smart-phone game (case in point, Flappy Bird), to turn someone with a little coding knowledge into an instant millionaire. Regardless of disability, socioeconomic status, race, or gender, all it takes is a little knowledge, patient guidance, and access to technology to unlock anyone’s potential genius. Ms. Post told me that once her students get good enough at the guided games on Tynker, they will start moving on to designing their own games using platforms like Scratch. Don’t tell Ms. Post’s students that they can’t learn computer programming. They’re already doing it!

Chad Shaner served as a special education teacher for 15 years and currently serves Perris High School as an educational technology coach. Find him on Twitter: @Chad_Shaner

Original Author: Princess Choi

This year is a very exciting year for me. I have six Algebra 1B classes and one Algebra 2 class. Algebra 1B consists of sophomores and upperclassmen who need to complete second semester of Algebra 1 throughout the whole year. Not too many teachers receive the gift of coaching the students who don't "play school" very well. To make sure I use this opportunity wisely, I made a list of things I need to follow at all times.

In the fast-paced digital world our children live in, the practice of reading is often overshadowed by a media-rich environment dominated by television, YouTube, and video games. The ironic twist in this new reality is that our children will increasingly need to rely on their literacy skills to have access to careers that demand a post-secondary education. The distractions of our tech-infused world make it ever more enticing for our children to stay glued to a screen rather than delve into a good book, yet this world cannot be sustained without a healthy supply of literate, educated young adults.

The statistics are alarming. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, 43% of adults read at or below an 8th grade level while 44 million adults, (23% of the population), are considered functionally illiterate. The same study found that 75% of state prison inmates can be classified as low literate, illustrating the vital importance literacy plays in our society. Perhaps most heartbreaking is the long term effect low-literacy has on children of these adults – children who never hear a bedtime story or receive help with homework because their parent can’t read. Low literacy becomes intergenerational. The strongest indicator of a child’s success in school is the mother’s level of education.

In light of these statistics, it is imperative that our teachers combat this dilemma. These battles are being fought and won by teachers like Ms. Julia Peacock, one of our English teachers at Perris High School. As a technology coach, I have had the good fortune of working with Ms. Peacock and hearing of the small victories taking place in her English and Reading Intervention classes. After helping her set up an online reading assessment that the students take on their Chromebooks, she relayed to me that most of her students read at least three years below grade level. “They didn’t understand vocabulary, and they couldn’t analyze literature. No matter how I tried to teach them, they gave me back blank stares,” lamented Peacock.


Ms. Peacock explains her plan of action: “I couldn’t actually teach students how to read. That was supposed to have been done all the years prior to them arriving at my classroom door. So, what to do? Monday through Thursday nights, students were required to read for twenty minutes. However, they could read anything they wanted. Anything. Graphic novels, fantasy, romance, science fiction, biography, memoir, realistic fiction, historical fiction, whatever they wanted was on the table as long as it read like fiction because, no matter how interesting, reading how-to manuals isn’t conducive to doing literary analysis! I helped them find books they liked by doing a book pass: Place a different book on each desk, ask them to read part of it in about 1 ½ minutes, then rate the book on a scale of 1-10 as to whether or not they would want to read it. This way, each student had a list of at least six books they were interested in reading.”

For the first fifteen minutes of class the morning after they read, students had to go on their Chromebooks and complete a reading log. The premise was simple: analyze what you had read the night before. Peacock explains, “It was complicated getting the students to do the reading log correctly, but I refused to “dumb down” the lesson so they could get better grades. Mastery was the point. Improving their reading levels so they could succeed in high school was the key. Making it easier did them no good. Eventually, they got the pattern and the classroom was silent as soon as they sat down and tapped away on their keyboards.”

Ms. Peacock had ten reading strategies with at least eight sentence-starters per strategy. For example, under “prediction reading strategies,” students would respond to sentence starters such as:

• “I think _______ is going to happen next because…,”
• “Since _______ happened, I think _______ will happen because… .”

For the first three days, her students would analyze three different strategies by writing three sentences for each strategy. “Fridays, when there was only one strategy left, I gave them the last strategy then an element of fiction to blog about (setting, plot, characterization, etc.) in Haiku,” (the learning management system we use at PUHSD).

After going through this process for a few months and administering the assessment again, the results were so very clear: reading improves reading. “As a bonus,” says Peacock, “the writing portion through the reading logs also improved writing, as I would edit them and give them guidance as to how to improve sentence structure, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. Overall, it was an amazing experience for my students and for me.”

Ms. Peacock talks about one student’s experience that stuck out the most. “Kathie” had a hard time getting to school first period, so her first semester report card was riddled with Fs. Her first assessment result was a lexile of only 840 Which is an approximate 6th grade reading level -- 3 grade levels below 9th grade. However, after just a couple of months of diligent reading at home and completing reading logs in class, her second assessment showed an improvement to a Lexile of 1020 -- a 7.5 grade reading level. “Certainly, that could have been a fluke,” states Peacock. “Sometimes the second test is a big drop or gain from the first one, which is why I always give at least one more assessment so the numbers can even themselves out over the course of three test sessions.” Yet the results were undeniable. Kathie’s end of the year assessment showed an amazing improvement: 1145 Lexile -- a 10th grade reading level!

Ms. Peacock’s joy is evident as she talks about several other students who had similar success. Through classroom blogging and daily journals, she gained valuable insights into her student’s learning process as evidenced by these student responses:

“I actually enjoy reading now and the reading logs.” - “Robert”

“I’m finding that this assignment is getting easier because we get to read whatever we want to read.” - “Rosetta”

“I start to read better within every chapter or page.” - “Omar”

Ms. Peacock’s passion is evident as she describes Kathie’s reaction to her improved scores. “There is no reward greater to a teacher than seeing the look in her eyes and the tears on her face when she realized how far she’d come in such a short time.”

Literacy matters. It has to.

Perris Union High School District joins the WeatherBug Schools Network. Check out any school site on the District website and you will now see a live link to a WeatherBug on-line weather station. Weather Stations with web-based education software tools have been installed at Perris High School, Heritage High School, Paloma Valley High School, Pinacate Middle School and the California Military Institute.

WeatherBug Weather Station at Perris High School

PUHSD is very excited about being part of a network of over 8,000 weather stations across the country. The WeatherBug Schools Program is the largest weather and climate sensor network that combines professional-grade weather stations at K-12 schools and universities. The weather stations will be used to enhance the science, technology, and math school curriculum using the WeatherBug Achieve program. Each station records more than 25 weather variables and updates every few seconds. This live, hyper-local weather information is exclusive to Earth Networks, enabling an unmatched view of current conditions.

High heat during the summer and early fall is one of the challenges our athletic programs face. The partnership with the WeatherBug Schools Program will also allow athletic directors and coaches to receive notifications for weather conditions, including the heat index through the StreamerRT tool. The dynamic interface enables users to create notification rules for specific locations. Notifications are sent through visual and audible delivery and delivered to desktop and mobile emails.

Original Author - Princess Choi:

I want to introduce you to my room. Inside my room, I have 36 students at any given time. I build relationships with 180 students everyday in this room. I don't know which ones are part of this data, but our School SARC says 90.6 percent of my students receive free or reduced price lunch. There was a time during my tenure in this school when I thought these students will not be able to compete against other students in this country. There are many reasons I felt that way, but that's not important because now I feel a little different.

Perris High School is the oldest campus in PUHSD. Having been built in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, the campus was opened for business in 1961 and had it’s first graduating class in 1962. The original Perris High campus has withstood the test of time and served the students of the Perris community throughout the 50 plus years that it has been an educational institution.  The majority of the campus has remained the same, with the exception of the addition of a two story science building in 2006, a two story 14 classroom building in 2007, and 2 classroom buildings completed in 2013 and 2014 in Phase 1 discussed below. The original campus reached the end of its intended life and the need to renovate Perris High arrived. The Facilities Department has embarked on the long needed campus transformation that will ultimately bring Perris High School into the modern era of high school campuses and provide the facilities our PUHSD students and staff deserve.

The Perris High School transformation has been broken down into 5 phases of construction. This is necessary due to the campus transformation being performed on a campus that is open and serving students during construction. The phasing of the Perris High transformation is dependent on funding and each phase will be planned and timed in a way that any funding opportunity is captured. The different phases are broken down to split the campus into 5 zones in which the phased work will occur, ultimately leading to completely rebuilt campus.

Phase 1:

The Perris High transformation began with the construction of a couple of two story classroom buildings which are located along Ruby Drive at the eastern edge of the campus. This phase was broken into an A and B phase. Phase A included an 18 classroom building that incorporates an elevator for compliance with ADA requirements. Phase 1A was completed in August of 2013. Phase 1B was the addition of a 10 classroom, two story building. This building was completed and occupied in January of 2014. The completion of Phase 1 provided a total of 28 classrooms for student use.  In order to make space for the Phase 1 buildings the former woodshop building was demolished along with an agricultural greenhouse and other outbuildings that formerly occupied the footprint of Phase 1.

Phase 1A & Phase 1B

Phase 2:

This phase has recently begun on the campus and is a big step in the overall campus transformation. Phase 2 has been described as the phase which transforms the heart of the campus. It was approved by the State Architect for construction in December of 2014 and contracts for construction were awarded in March. Like phase 1, Phase 2 has been split into an A and a B phase. Again, this is due to  the availability of funding for the project. The first portion of Phase 2, known as Phase 2A, includes the construction of the new boys/girls locker rooms, along with two 2 story classroom buildings and a satellite kitchen kiosk. These buildings will incorporate an open site plan which is a change from the closed and compartmentalized feel of the old campus. The creation of an open breezeway, known as Panther Parkway, will greet students as they enter the campus and provide a greater amount of visibility across the campus for security and aesthetics.  As part of the Summer 2014 work that occurred at Perris High, a total of 13 classroom buildings were removed from the center of the campus to make way for the Phase 2A project and ultimately 2B as well. Phase 2A is scheduled for completion in December of 2016. Phase 2B  will follow phase 2A and will include a new student union along with a kitchen. Along with the kitchen and student union, a new location for the Panther Den will be included. The Phase 2B building will also house an auto shop and other career tech classrooms. Finally, ROTC will also have their new facilities in this building, right next to the new campus supervisor office. A construction date for Phase 2B has not been identified and a construction start date will be decided as funding becomes available.

Perris High School Phase 2A and 2B Project Scope

Perris High School Phase 2A

Perris Agricultural Center for Excellence (PACE) Phase 2:

The second phase of the new agricultural program facility has been planned in conjunction with Phase 2 of the campus transformation. This new facility includes a 12,700 square foot, two story building. This new building will house the Perris High Agriculture program. This building will include classrooms, lab areas, a new floral shop, and have a very unique second story terrace garden. This second phase of the Agricultural facility renovation follows Phase 1. Phase 1 was completed in 2012 and included a new greenhouse, farrowing barn, and shade house. The PACE Phase 2 project has been designed with input from Perris High site staff and is currently being reviewed by the Department of State Architects office. This project will be constructed when funding is available  The goal of the Facilities Department is to build this project in conjunction with Phase 2B of the Campus PACE Phase 2

PACE Phase 2

Phase 3:

This phase will completely rebuild the library, administration office, career center and reconfigure the science courtyard.  This area is between the two story science building and the current library and will be expanded and designed as a gathering area for outdoor teaching opportunities. As part of Phase 3, the parking lot in front of the administration building will be reconfigured and expanded The anticipated capacity of the new parking lot will almost double the amount of parking currently available in this area.

Phase 4:

The Perris High campus will get a very exciting addition in this phase. A fully functioning visual and performing arts building is included in Phase 4. This building will house the theater, drama, band, choir, as well as an arts courtyard and service yard.

Phase 5:

Phase 5 will ultimately be the last construction project at Perris High. This phase includes facilities that are related to athletics and will augment the stadium complex. In Phase 5, the pool service building, tennis courts, basketball courts, dance room, and stadium team rooms will be built.

Completed Perris High School Transformation

Through this campus transformation, Perris High will become a modern educational facility with the capability to support not only the educational programs of our District but also the rich technological initiatives that our District has embraced. The recent start of the Phase 2A project was possible because of the community’s support of Measure T in 2012 and moves the campus one step further along in the campus master plan.

Perris Union High School District recognized Adrian Garcia, a student at Perris High School, at their monthly meeting on April 15, 2015. Adrian was commended for his quick thinking and prompt action in assisting Perris resident Paula Johnson in the incident described briefly below:

On August 1, 2014 about 6:00 PM, Ms. Paula Johnson walked across the street from her home to pick up her neighbor's mail.  When Paula reached the sidewalk, she felt something on her right ankle.  As Paula turned around to look what was on her ankle, she saw her neighbor’s German Shepherd.  Paula then felt something on her left ankle and saw another dog owned by the same neighbor.
Both dog’s started biting Paula, one on each side of her!  Paula began screaming and yelling for help as loud as she could but to no avail.  Paula could see that there were about six people on each side of the street that just stood and watched what was happening to her.
When Paula fell to the ground, she felt she did not have much time left because she began to black out, but then she looked up and saw a young man looking down at her.  The dogs had stopped biting her and Paula was able to get up. Suddenly, one of her neighbors pulled their car up to her so she could jump in.
A few days later, Paula wanted to find the young man but didn’t know where to find him because she had never seen him before.  Paula did not give up and learned that the young man lived a few streets over and that his name was Adrian Garcia.  When Paula thanked him for helping her, she asked “How did you get them to stop?”  Adrian replied “I just started kicking the dogs.”  

Adrian was 15 years old at the time.

PUHSD and Perris High are very proud of Adrian for aiding someone in need of help and for his quick action in the face of danger.