School Environment Narrative

Washington Elementary School District is located and offers education for students located in
the north central Phoenix and east Glendale area. It serves about 23,000 students and is split up
between 32 schools. Washington Elementary School District is the largest elementary district in
all of Arizona. Under the Community Eligibility Program, all students receive free breakfast
and lunch.
Mountain Sky Middle School is a Title I school. The median household income for the
community is $46,646. The school contains 737 students in grades 7-8. The student population
contains 49% White, 39% Hispanic, 6% African American, 3% Asian and 2% Native American.
The school consists of 46% of the student population being female and 54% being male. The
ages ranges between 11 and 14. In 2016, Mountain Sky Middle School ranked better than 69.7%
of middle schools in Arizona. It also ranked first among 5 ranked middle schools in the
Washington Elementary School District.
The Washington Elementary School District acknowledges the fact that not all students and their
families have internet in the home so they could do homework and use other resources that
would be beneficial to their education. There is a program called Internet Essentials that is
provided by Comcast that allows families to have internet in the home for just $9,95/month (plus
tax). They even offer the ability to buy a low cost computer for $149.99 (plus tax) and receive
free Internet training. They have tried to make it as affordable as possible since technology is an
important part of a childs education.
I am one of the 7th grade social studies teachers at Mountain Sky Middle School. The amount of
studies I have are 153 split up between six class periods. Class periods are around 51 minutes
long and there is a short homeroom before lunch, which is seven minutes long and lunch is 30

minutes long. Since there is a high amount of English Language Learners at my school, the
English department and Social Studies department tries their best to work together with content
that can be used in both classes. For example the students will learn about the Civil War in social
studies and then they are to write an essay about it for English. Unfortunately there is not much
technology in the school so students are stuck with reading worksheets and the outdated, battered
textbooks in order to obtain information.
Our school has the following technology available for teachers and students:
One SMARTboard in every classroom.
A computer for every teacher.
A computer labs with 34 Dell Computers available for students and then one teacher
computer that is hooked up to the projector in front of the computer lab. The computers
are outdated and do not have updated versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel.
8 Dell Computers in the library/media center. These computers are available for students
to use before school, during lunch and after school. They also have very limited resources
downloaded on them.
Our school has wireless Internet access which works fine most of the time. Occasionally it
slows down when there are too many serves using the internet, but that is to be expected of any
network.
Technology tries to be integrated into the classroom as much as possible, however it is difficult.
There are not many opportunities to get into the computer lab since it is booked from weeks up
to months in advance. There are only opportunities to get in for once or twice a semester. Most
lessons are used with the SMARTboard by showing PowerPoints, videos and other useful
resources. The lessons try to be as interactive as possible using the resources at hand but when

the students are able to use technology, they show increased interest and then later they
demonstrate a higher understanding of the material. There are many ways that social studies and
technology can be intertwined in order to better engage the students. With the use of technology,
technological skills, content and literacy can all be connected for the benefit of the students.