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Chicago Tribune
6 days ago
- Health
- Chicago Tribune
New zero-hour PE class, Spanish course materials coming to East Aurora High School
At its meeting on Monday, the East Aurora School District 131 school board approved two curriculum-related items that students at East Aurora High School will see when they return to class in the fall. The first is a hybrid physical education course for 11th and 12th grade students that will take place during the school's zero hour. Zero hour at East Aurora High School is held from 8 a.m. to 8.45 a.m., with the first class period beginning at 8:52 a.m., per the district website. The course will feature the same curriculum as other PE courses, East Aurora High School Principal Jennifer Mitchell said at a curriculum meeting in May, but will be offered during zero hour for the first time next year. According to a presentation from the district explaining the course, the class will be called the 'Tomcat Morning Prowl – Hybrid,' so as to differentiate it from other course names and ensure students understand what class and time they're choosing. The course will also be different in that it will function on a hybrid schedule, Mitchell said. Students will spend two days a week at the school for the course, but can choose their own workouts and complete them away from school the other days the class meets. They'll be given heart rate monitors to track their activity, and will submit the data from their monitors to their teacher. There will be no additional costs to take the zero-hour course, Mitchell said. In addition to functioning as a traditional physical education class, part of the goal is to teach students 'personal responsibility and accountability for their health and fitness,' Mitchell said, particularly as students prepare to graduate high school and transition away from structured PE classes and high school sports in favor of planning and doing their own workouts. The other change coming to East Aurora is new materials to be used for Advanced Placement, or AP, and Heritage Spanish courses at the high school. The materials being used currently date back to 2012, the district's Executive Director of Language Acquisition and Early Learning Rita Guzman told school board members at the May 19 curriculum meeting. In a memo to district Superintendent Robert Halverson, Guzman noted that the district needs updated materials in order to comply with language development standards related to the four domains of language: listening, speaking, reading and writing. The new materials will be used by students in grades nine through 12. The district implemented a pilot program to test out materials, Guzman said, and then collected teacher and student feedback. Based on that, they decided on materials from Vista Higher Learning for both courses. These new materials will come at cost of $92,451 for the district, Guzman said. Both updates were approved by the school board Monday, and are set to move forward for next school year.
Chicago Tribune
21-05-2025
- Sport
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Work ethic on and off tennis court serves three Harvard-bound East Aurora students well
Jesus Fernandez might not have bragging rights when it comes to his win/loss record this year, but the East Aurora High School boys varsity tennis coach has yet to find anyone who can match this newsworthy statistic: Three members of his team are heading to Harvard University after graduation. To say he's excited would be a bit of an understatement, and in fact, when I spoke to Fernandez about the accomplishments of Kevin Martinez, Hector Montellano-Bahena and Paul Perez, the coach was as proud as any parent could be. That's because he's seen up close the work ethic and determination that not only propelled this trio to the top of the 2025 graduating class but also got them full academic rides to one of the most prestigious universities in the world. 'None of them are afraid to face a challenge,' Fernandez said, noting all three are students who come from humble backgrounds with far more love than money in the home but whose immigrant parents sacrificed so much so their children would have a chance at a better life. It's no surprise then that all three soon-to-be-grads point to their parents as the inspiration for their remarkable accomplishments. For Kevin, who is East High's valedictorian, it was seeing the 'blisters and bruises on the hands of my father,' whose long days of manual labor 'fueled my ambition.' For Hector, it was watching the tears on his mother's face after losing her father and brother within a few months but not being able to go back to Mexico to say good-bye that made him work harder. For Paul, the 2025 salutatorian, it was the 'backbreaking work' his father put in, day after day, as well as all those 'speed bumps in life my mother took.' 'Their parents were superheroes,' said Fernandez, noting that, from the moment the boys stepped onto his tennis courts – Paul as a sophomore, Hector and Kevin not until their junior years – 'they were determined' to be successful, working long hours to hone their skills while also showing respect and kindness for everyone else on the courts. Their energy, he added, 'was contagious to the whole team.' Kevin, the first to be accepted by Harvard, harbored the longest desire to attend the elite school. The youngest of five siblings, he remembers being about 10 when he first told his mother, who worked as a housekeeper, about his future college, although he knew little else about it except that it was considered the best of the best. Kevin, a Coca-Cola and Bill Gates Scholarship winner who was student representative on the East Aurora school board, admits to being stressed out at times as he worked 'to be the best version of myself,' maintaining two restaurant jobs, participating in numerous sports and extracurricular activities while also keeping up his 4.9 grade point average. As hard as it sometimes got, he told me, 'it can't be as bad' as what dad Jose and mom Rosa went through to make sure he was given so many opportunities. A big weight was taken off his shoulders, however, when Kevin, who wants to study economics, learned in December he had been accepted into Harvard's early admissions program. And he really 'flipped out' three months later upon hearing that Paul – and then Hector – also were greeted with congratulations when opening that portal displaying their much-anticipated Harvard response. 'We were accepted as change-makers,' insisted Kevin, who is convinced that all three are 'motivated by something bigger than ourselves,' representing not only their hard-working immigrant families but also East Aurora School District 131 and its too-often stigmatized minority population. 'The Hispanic community is suffering a lot,' agreed Hector, whose parents are Noemi and Celzo Montellano. Hector plans to study political science and become a business or immigration lawyer. Paul, on the other hand, is not sure of his major, only that he wants to 'create a better future' for himself and his parents, Tomas and Francesca, who taught him the value of hard work. 'I am not looking for approval from the outside,' said Paul, who admits he's the more reserved of the trio. 'I did this for my family.' While he and his Harvard-bound buddies do, indeed, give all the credit to their parents for such remarkable success so far in life, they found plenty of inspiration from their tennis coach, who was a lawyer before immigrating from Spain and now is the bilingual preschool teacher at Oak Park Elementary School. He is, they all agreed, the reason they came so far so quickly in a sport they had never before played, and why they developed such a love for tennis, which they hope to continue playing at the intramural level in college. 'I had a lot of coaches growing up' who only paid attention to the stars, said Paul, whose senior year on the courts was interrupted by a shoulder injury. 'But Coach looks after everybody, treats every player the same no matter what their ability.' Fernandez and all three sets of parents were in attendance on Monday when Kevin, Hector and Paul were honored at this week's District 131 school board meeting. While these top-level grads have earned too many awards to list in this column, I got the impression this evening was special because it was filled not only with recognition and pride but also tremendous gratitude. 'That was truly beautiful to me,' said Hector, referring to his father's presence in the audience, who he knew was dead-tired after putting in one of his usual 15-hour work days. 'He sacrificed so much to make sure we were OK.'
Chicago Tribune
04-05-2025
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Walk from Aurora to Elgin puts focus on experience of immigrants
A pair of English teachers at East Aurora High School, along with about three dozen of their students and other faculty members, spent Saturday walking from Aurora to Elgin to put the spotlight on the experience of immigrants. When it comes to the topic of immigration, students like Ashley Martinez, 18, of Aurora, know something about it first-hand. 'We read this book about someone who immigrated to the United States when he was 9, and for me this was something about not just connecting with the book but with my dad who immigrated when he was 4 years old,' Martinez said Saturday morning as students from East Aurora High School waited in Wilder Park in Aurora for the walk to Elgin to begin. 'Taking this walk today is kind of like symbolically walking in both my dad and the author's shoes.' Shane and Sarah Gillespie, a married couple who teach at East Aurora High School, each teach sections of a course known as Survivor Literature, organized the walk to offer students the chance to experience what an author of one of the books they read in the class went through as an immigrant himself years ago. Shane Gillespie explained that this spring, students read 'Solito' by author Javier Zamora, who actually came to the school late last month and spoke to the students about his own experiences while coming to the United States. Gillespie, who also is the coach of the boys' and girls' cross-country and boys track teams, said there are about 110 students enrolled in the four sections of Survivor Literature and that about 40 of them as well as more than a handful of faculty members were making the walk from Wilder Park to a place in Elgin that was over 20 miles away. 'The Survivor course has units on survivor situations like the Holocaust, Sept. 11th, things like that,' Gillespie said. 'This year, one of our units was on immigration and we read 'Solito' and the kids really connected with it and we built this service project. We created this walk as a sort of put ourselves in Javier's shoes sort of thing and raise some awareness for this topic that's important to these kids.' The book itself tells the story of Zamora as a 9-year-old who travelled to get to America. 'I was a big fan of the book. I loved how it was written. It was easy for me to read and it was very captivating,' Martinez said. 'Meeting the author was really exciting. You forget they're like normal people, so meeting him was refreshing in a way and hearing about his experience and post journey was exciting.': The destination for the walk on Saturday was Centro de Informacion located 23 miles away at 1885 Lin Lor Lane in Elgin. 'The Centro offers services for immigrants and that sort of thing. We did a similar project in 2018 and this is sort of modeled after that,' Gillespie said of the walk which began at 8 a.m. 'We'll have transportation back but we're hoping to get up in Elgin sometime around 4 or 5 p.m.' He said 'one of the things that we tell the kids is that hopefully they learn some English stuff in our classes but also learn something about themselves too.' 'I think that's what you get here – you build empathy, you build leadership skills – you build those things that are hopefully going to be useful through the end of their lives,' he said. School nurse Kara Patrick was asked to attend in case any issues developed along the way. 'It's good to experience something unique like this. It's for a good cause,' Patrick said of the walk. Kate Hala, who teaches French at the high school, said she was a big fan of the Gillespie couple 'who have run this program before with the English department and it's a wonderful experience.' 'I got the opportunity to do something with them before when an author came and it's very impactful for the students to see someone outside of the classroom,' she said. 'Educationally this is a very experiential thing. You can immerse yourself in it in a very different way, and it connects with the students in a different way.' Student Sinclair Zackery, 17, of Aurora, said the book 'Solito' was impactful to read. 'I think it brought into reality what so many have to go through because of the country that we live in,' Zackery said. 'People should not have to put their lives at stake just to live a better life. I was honored that the author chose to come and share his story with us. 'As far as this walk, it's nothing compared to what these other people have gone through but at the end I hope I'll have a little more understanding of what they were forced to go through,' Sinclair added. 'This experience and this class are definitely in my top three things I've experienced over my four years at East Aurora.'
Chicago Tribune
09-04-2025
- Sport
- Chicago Tribune
East-West Alumni Basketball Game set for Friday at East Aurora High School
The 27th East-West Alumni Basketball Game is set for Friday, April 11, at East Aurora High School, 500 Tomcat Lane in Aurora. The women's alumni game will begin at 6 p.m., with the men's alumni game immediately following, according to organizers. All proceeds from the evening will benefit the Marie Wilkinson Child Development Center, organizers said. Tickets can be purchased online at Tickets can also be bought at Sophisticated You Hair Salon and the Marie Wilkinson Child Development Center, both in Aurora. Tickets bought in advance are $10 for adults and $8 for students. Children under 5 years old will get in for free, according to organizers. Admission at the door of the event will be $12 for adults and $10 for students. The West Aurora High School roster for the women's alumni game will include Essence Rayford, Breianna Jones, T'yon Meeks, Carley Frauenhoff, Sky Joyner, Kiki Towes, Kiyanna Rodger, Devin Vaughn and Kate Martinez. Kina Miller will be a player/coach with Pam Rangel as the coach. The team sponsor is Leave Me Bee Pest Control, Inc. The East Aurora High School roster for the women's alumni game will include Yessenia Cabadas, Felicia Mercado, Tatiana Ocasia, Alasha Moore, Araceli Cepeda, Aliyah Griffin, Alicia Griffin, Jeanette Villezcas, Tyshee Towner, Jasemine Shipp, Amber Carroll and Brelyn Brannon. Coaches for the team will include Candice McAlister, Will Anderson, Tasha Cameron and Toni Savage. The team sponsor is the Law Office of Geneva L. Penson. This year's men's alumni game roster for West Aurora High School includes TJ Marion, Tommy Goulding, Markus Cocroft, Hezzy Salters, Traevon Brown, Andre Newson, Kel Balfour, Montrel Billups, Latrell Slater, Jared Crutcher and Derrick McCullough. Former West Aurora star Kenny Battle will coach the Blackhawks men. The team sponsor is Royalty Infused Culture and Heritage. This year's men's alumni game roster for East Aurora High School includes Latron Kirkwood, Steve Green, Jonathan Villezcas, Justin Tiner, Maurice Judon, Tom Okapal, Davonta Faulkner, Terry Jeffries, Jamario Taylor, Adrian Smith, Omar Hernandez, Ryan Hayden and Snoop Viser. Coaching the team will be Wendell Jeffries, former boys basketball coach at East Aurora. The team sponsor is Sophisticated You Hair Salon. Halftime events will include moments of reflection honoring East Aurora Class of 1984 basketball standout Clifford Williams, event organizers said. There will also be three-point contests featuring alumni shooters Jean Akin Williams, Melinda Spearman, Cecelia Turnage and Carley Frauenhoff, and current students Yaritza Servin, Alyssa Adeoti, Ziah McDowell, Javion Spivey, Angel Carmona, Yurem Horta, Serenity Evans and Brooklynn Johnson.
Chicago Tribune
26-03-2025
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Five years since start of pandemic, Aurora school districts talk technology, mental health and lessons learned
When students showed up to their junior year English class at East Aurora High School remotely in the fall of 2020, their teacher, Melinda Thomas, had not met them face-to-face. The seniors she'd met the year before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but this group of students was new to her. As the year went on, she continued to face obstacles getting face-to-face interaction with her students. 'A lot of students were either reluctant to turn on their cameras or, for various reasons, you know, maybe their technology didn't allow them to turn on the cameras,' Thomas recalled. She said sometimes she would work one-on-one with a student and ask them a question, and they would type a response instead of answer out loud – sometimes because their microphone didn't work, and sometimes because they didn't want to speak in the remote class. Even when her school returned to in-person instruction, Thomas said it was difficult to communicate with students without seeing their facial expressions and difficult to convey her own emotions as she wore a mask herself. Those days are over now, but some of the difficulties still persist, Thomas said. She said she sees more social anxiety and mental health issues in her classrooms, which she attributes to both the pandemic and to an increased prevalence of technology use. She still has trouble getting students to participate like they used to. 'We've always had students who said, 'I don't want to work in groups,'' Thomas said. 'That's not new. But, having students who won't talk to anyone else in the room, that's more unusual.' A lot has changed in the five years since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Life has largely returned to normal, as has classroom instruction in local schools. But, in many ways – from technology use to student mental health – Aurora-area districts say the pandemic forced great change in their schools, and accelerated changes that were already underway. Technology was one of the first major shifts. To adapt to the district's remote learning policies, which lasted from the start of the pandemic to the following spring, East Aurora School District 131 had to rapidly play catch-up on technology access. The district scrambled to get computers out to all middle school and high school students, said Jennifer Norrell, who was superintendent of the district through the pandemic up until earlier this month. Unlike some nearby districts, students didn't have 1:1 access to a district-provided computer. East Aurora gave out physical packets of classwork to elementary school students, Norrell said. Federal pandemic relief funding not used for health and sanitation measures in the district immediately went toward buying iPads for elementary school students. The district also began using Google Workspace, a system the district continues to use, according to Andrew Allen, East Aurora's executive director of information systems. 'Normally, that's kind of a slower rollout,' Norrell said of the transition, saying that the district would have ordinarily done a smaller pilot of the technology if it weren't for the pandemic. 'But, I mean, we couldn't. … That was the only way for them to teach with the kids.' They also provided hotspots to students without reliable home internet access, another school policy that has continued, Allen said. East Aurora's enrollment is roughly 12,000, down about 1,000 students since the start of the pandemic, according to data from the Illinois State Board of Education. Allen said just over 3% of students still use hotspots to complete their coursework at home. At Indian Prairie School District 204, families were encouraged to enroll in T-Mobile's Project 10Million, which provides free internet to students, according to Rod Mack, the district's chief technology officer. Now, the district pays for a number of hotspots that students can use if they don't have reliable internet access at home. Indian Prairie had recently shifted to 1:1 computer access before the pandemic, so they didn't have to make a total technology overhaul, Mack noted. But they have since moved to primarily submitting assignments online, Mack noted, a shift that might have had a greater impact on the staff than the students. 'Teachers learned that on the dime,' Mack told The Beacon-News. 'Students kind of grew up with it.' He said his office devoted considerable time to helping teachers learn how to use technology for remote teaching – instruction that also had to be done virtually. Zoom, for example, was updated with new tools constantly, Mack said, which required teachers to learn new functionalities for remote classes. Now that schools continue to use this technology, it can be used on an as-needed basis, noted the Indian Prairie Parents' Council, which oversees the district's Parent Teacher Associations and Parent Teacher Student Associations. It means the end-of-year school calendar is 'not as fluid as it used to be,' the Indian Prairie Parents' Council said in a statement to The Beacon-News, because snow days can be conducted remotely. But the downside is kids may not get to experience a true 'snow day,' they noted. During the COVID-19 pandemic, school districts across the country received federal money from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, which is commonly referred to as ESSER funding, to help them operate during the pandemic. At Indian Prairie, the first installment of that funding went toward cleaning and social distancing efforts, said the district's Chief School Business Official Matthew Shipley. Subsequent waves of federal funding went to capital projects and additional programming to support student learning for the more than 25,000 students in the district, according to data from ISBE. The district received around $13 million from 2021-2024, Shipley said, but it had to be spent by Sept. 30, 2024. 'There was always a challenge of, 'How do we provide programming that addresses, that directly addresses, the concerns we're having coming out of the COVID period – so, the specific learning recovery that needed to be accomplished – but also recognizing these funds were temporary,' Shipley said. Indian Prairie reduced class sizes in kindergarten through second grade, for example, by hiring about 20 teachers across the district, Shipley said. Although the pandemic-era federal funding has run out, the district decided to continue with these class sizes using local funds to pay for the additional staff. They also added summer school and after-school programs to catch students up academically to account for interruptions in learning from the pandemic, and offered 'take-home tote bags' for elementary school students over the summer with books, arts supplies and math resources. Those programs won't continue now that the COVID funds have expired. West Aurora School District 129 also instituted new programming to address learning challenges during the pandemic, according to a district spokesperson. They created a supplemental program called Success Through Academic Recovery for high school students, offer small-group virtual tutoring and provide supplemental instruction in reading and math through an online program called iReady. East Aurora, too, implemented summer school programs and new curriculum initiatives, Norrell said. They also used pandemic funds to build a new facility at their old district office called the Resilience Education Center. It opened in March 2024, according to the district. It has mental health counseling with social workers and clinicians, career programming – including a recording studio and broadcast journalism studio – and art and physical wellness offerings. Norrell said the district was deliberate in using pandemic funding toward long-term investments like capital projects and training for teaching staff. 'By doing that … we were able to make sure that when the money went away, we didn't have to change gears,' Norrell said. Instead of having to add a significant number of new staff, for example, Norrell said the district provided training to classroom staff to support student well-being. 'We needed everybody to be a social worker, so to speak,' Norrell said about the training given to teachers during the COVID period and the district's attempts to avoid what she called an 'intervention cliff.' At East Aurora High School, the district also instituted 15-minute office hours in the morning once learning resumed in a hybrid format, according to Jonathan Simpson, who was the principal of East Aurora High School during the pandemic and now works as the principal of Allen Elementary. During office hours, students could get one-on-one academic help, talk to their social worker or speak with a coach or other staff member. Addressing mental health challenges was top-of-mind for the districts, officials said, and a lasting legacy of the pandemic. Indian Prairie recently began offering free after-school counseling via a grant from Endeavor Health, Shipley said. Last year, West Aurora opened the Jeff Craig Family Resource Center, which provides physical and mental health services and a small food pantry for its students, in partnership with VNA Health Care. They are also in their third year of having 'restorative practice counselors,' who help with handling disciplinary issues and conflict resolution in the district, a district spokesperson said. The causes of student mental health concerns upon returning to in-person classes were wide-ranging, Norrell said. Not only did students miss out on a year of socializing with their peers, some had lost loved ones to COVID and others had family who lost work. 'There was so much social-emotional wellness … that was equal to what we experienced in terms of learning loss,' Norrell said. She also noted the impact of racial tensions in 2020 following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. 'That too was a huge part of the trauma.' Nevertheless, officials at East Aurora said the return to in-person learning was a formative memory. Former East Aurora High School principal Simpson said the 2021 graduation – which the district held outside at Northern Illinois University's football field to comply with COVID restrictions – was a notable turning point in the return to normal. 'I can't even begin to describe it in words,' Simpson said. 'It will be an image I remember forever.' Still, despite COVID-era programs and changes, some of which have continued through today, some issues have persisted. Thomas, who continues to teach English at East Aurora High School, said distraction during class and attention span remains a problem in her classroom. 'We've always struggled with, 'OK, we're going to assign this book, and what do we do with the kids that don't read it?'' Thomas said. 'But, now, it's, it's almost like, 'OK, we're starting on the assumption that almost nobody is going to read it? So, how do we teach it instead?'' Thomas said teachers will sometimes show movies to accompany the books they read, or break up class time into multiple segments to keep students' attention, or do close readings of sections of books. But it's not all due to the pandemic, she said. 'COVID exacerbated a lot of issues that we were already beginning to see,' she said. 'COVID sped up the process.' But some district officials say the pandemic has offered some valuable lessons in adapting to technology – and adapting in general. Mack said he doesn't think school districts would have been ready for the explosion of AI use otherwise. 'If AI happened before a pandemic, teachers would be like, 'Turn the internet off … I'm not ready to handle this,'' Mack said. Going forward, the districts hope they'll be able to continue adapting, no matter what uncertainty they face. 'I think COVID taught us some valuable lessons,' Shipley said. 'Pivoting, and being flexible and ensuring we were able to meet the needs of our students and our families. … Hopefully, we kind of take some of (those) lessons learned and take some of that spirit, if you will, that allowed us to function during that time.'
