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Morgan Hill Unified School District
A Pathway for Young Tech Innovators
This year, Lewis H. Britton Middle School partners with the
Silicon Valley Tech Museum (“The Tech”) to become a Tech
Academy of Innovation (2016-19). In doing so, Britton joins
Brownell Middle School (a GUSD school), creating an engineering
education pathway for students from their “feeder school,” P.A.
Walsh Elementary, which became a tech academy in 2015.
Principal Chris Moore told
TODAY that Britton went
through an extensive application process to become a tech
academy. He said the Silicon Valley Tech Museum made a major
financial and resource commitment as the school’s tech academy
partner and mentor. This includes training and resource
materials for Moore and four of his teachers, over the course of
the three-year partnership.
“I spent years in Cupertino school district before coming to
Morgan Hill,” Moore said. “I’ve seen the power that STEM has
in producing new generations of innovative thinkers who will
lead Silicon Valley in the future. Our students are just as gifted
and capable as those to the north and they deserve to have the
same real-world, hands-on learning opportunities.”
Principal Moore added that construction of the new Britton
campus began during the summer, and that the new facility
“will serve this STEM program very well.”
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GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN
The Tech’s Director of School and Afterschool Partnerships,
Christina O’Guinn, said they look for school districts with
collaborative STEM program development and training efforts,
and schools with strong teams motivated to teach and integrate
engineering into school curriculum and activities while meeting
Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards.
Students and teachers at participating schools are also
encouraged to participate in The Tech’s annual Tech Challenge.
Visit thetech.org to learn more.
Britton also received a Golden Bell award last year for “Data
Driven Student Supports, From Intervention to Enrichment.”
Through effective and systematic use of data, the school was
able to quickly pinpoint needs of students for things like
accelerated or remedial coursework in order to support
student achievement.
Moore said data-driven thinking permeates all kinds of
campus activities. “We partnered with Specialized, which
has donated fifty bikes to Britton. We’ll be using them in our
physical education program, including a new spin (indoor
cycling) class. Through a grant, we also purchased Polar heart
rate monitors that students will use during workouts to check
their heart rate, assess their fitness level, and set goals to main-
tain or improve their fitness over the course of the school year.”
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016
gmhtoday.com
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