Meet the Team: Eagle Rock’s Director of Curriculum Janet Johnson

Today, we come full circle with Janet Johnson, who has been our Director of Curriculum since mid-June, and now becomes the first Eagle Rocker to be profiled for a second time on Meet the Team.

Back in August of 2014, in a post titled Meet The Team: Eagle Rock’s Science Instructor and House Parent – Janet Johnson, we spotlighted Janet, who at that time was well into her 13th year at Eagle Rock, serving as a science instructor and one of the house parents at Aspen House. She later supported the school’s new instructors for two years as they transitioned into our community.

Janet left Eagle Rock four years ago to become Director of Competency-based Learning and Director of Curriculum at RiseUp Community School in downtown Denver. While there, she helped develop and direct RiseUp’s learning competences — Think, Advocate, and Grow — as well as supported teachers in their efforts to create classes that push students’ learning and growth.

Now back at Eagle Rock as our Director of Curriculum, Janet leads an academic team made up of nine instructional specialists and their Public Allies Instructional Fellows, as well as recruits, hires, supports, and mentors new instructional specialists. She also conducts performance reviews with all of our instructional specialists, coordinates course scheduling and instructor workloads, as serves on our in-house leadership team.

Recently, we sat down with Janet — for a second time — to find out a little more about her professional background and some personal stuff. We love the personal stuff. Continue reading…

Eagle Rock School Now Equipped with FUSE Studio

If you were to ask a group of high school students to raise their hands if they were interested in, or thought they were good at math or science, recent statistics claim that few of those students would be excitedly waving their arms and shouting, “Me! Me!”

That’s because, when it comes to mathematics and the sciences, American teen-agers rank at about midpoint — and behind many advanced industrial nations — when faced with such things as chemistry flasks and quadratic formulas.

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In fact, results from the most recent PISA testing (Programme for International Student Assessment) place America’s high schoolers in 38th place out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. U.S. students ranked 30th in math and 19th in science among the 35 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

So you can understand our excitement at being selected to partner with Northwestern University to bring a FUSE laboratory to our campus. As part of its NextUp initiative to interest teens in tech careers, CompTIA has partnered with FUSE at Northwestern University in a program that is equipping 21 schools in nine states with Continue reading…