Five OUSD high schools are currently in the process of drafting school-wide site plans that integrate civic and digital literacy learning opportunities into the curriculum across the four grade levels. This will ensure that all students have these opportunities in their classrooms beginning in 9th grade. Below is a draft of Oakland Tech’s site plan.

2014-15 DRAFT Oakland Tech Site Plan for Civic Engagement

Authors:

• 12th Grade History – Humberto Cruz and Maryann Wolfe
• 11th Grade US History – Nathan Gong and Elizabeth Haugen
• 10th Grade World History – Marietta Joe and Doug Stubblefield
• 9th Grade California Studies – Jessica Tyson and Lauren Hurlbutt

Overview

Connection to Your School:

The Social Studies Department of Oakland Technical High School believes in the mission of our school wide system, that “our graduates should be college, career, and community ready.” In effect, when our students leave Tech we want them to be prepared for college-level work, or if they enter the work place we want them skilled for a particular vocation, but we also want our students “community ready,” that is able to participate in the political process so that they can communicate their needs to government and have those needs met as well as to engage in humanitarian projects to improve their communities. Historically, Tech teachers have encouraged students to seek change and improve society by working in presidential, gubernatorial, and mayoral campaigns, by lobbying the California state legislature to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a state holiday, by successfully petitioning the Oakland School Board to prevent the reduction in the Oakland Tech teaching staff, by grassroots efforts to pass initiatives and referendums to provide additional funds for the Oakland Public Schools, and to engage in philanthropic endeavors ranging from canned food drives for the needy to fundraisers to stamp out leukemia. Now we would like to make civic engagement a more integral part of our curriculum so that all students will have this experience at each grade level before graduation. To read more see: Tech Site Plan