I can just start talking to you, I can just start talking to you, I can just start talking
I think the thing I really love most about Turner is that we are an inclusive school.
We have kids who come to us from all over the world, we speak many languages.
The one thing I like about our Turner is how they really supported my band.
If it wasn't for them, I really wouldn't know what I wanted to do in my life.
Here at Turner, we are able to do great things with our students.
We take our students to the Northeast Texas Drama Auditions, which is a highly competitive audition
where 57 colleges send representatives and our students audition in front of the schools.
We also have METSA, it's our math, engineering, technology and science academy.
It's a STEM initiative school, part of the Texas High School Project,
and being funded with monies from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Dell.
We are so excited about what's happening there, it's the nation's first 21st century school
and the project-based learning and real life skills.
Being a student here at Turner has definitely been the best experience I could ever imagine.
All the AP courses I've taken, all the teachers, the students, the staff, the structure of it all
has really just prepared me for the outside world and I'm a senior this year
and I'm not scared to go on for the next chapter of my life and I'm ready for what it brings me.
But here's the deal, even if you don't take the real AP test, you're going to take the test.
Because I'm going to make the test.
It's that, three years, no rain, 25% unemployment, it's not good.
If you are the president, or rather the president, what's your solution?
We also have our Academy of Media Arts and Technology, which our students are running
radio station, a television station, filming short films, writing films.
We're journalists, digital graphics artists.
We're using industry software and really preparing students for what lies in that field too.
So, and our quest is a nation to develop scientists and thinkers and writers.
That works being done at our alternative high school.
I've gone through the internship experience in our old Turner.
I was lucky enough to have mine in office and I really put a good effort into the business.
They gave me a quality responsibility and I felt like I was welcomed into the working world.
It feels like we're looked up to at the school, the community, teachers, faculty.
It really feels like everybody's behind us and that's a really good feeling.
I interned at Dallas Sound Lab Media Tech Institute and this just gives you that little edge
and a little push to get further.
There's so many people looking for internships too, this opportunity gets you in there
and many more chances and opportunities in my business program.
And I interned at Dallas Police Department.
I interned at the City of Farmers Branch as a production assistant.
I interned at the Dallas North Ukraine.
And I interned at our old Turner as an English teacher's assistant.
We have a biomedical academy where students leave us as certified nursing assistants,
EMTs, pharmacy tech, veterinary technicians.
That work's being done at our old Turner High School.
We're in the process of high school reform.
Over the next year we'll be transitioning into four colleges.
Every student in our school will choose a major.
One of the things that we're the most proud of is that we've achieved a recognized status
in the state of Texas for our testing scores.
I ask a lot of open-ended questions and I expect everybody to have an answer
and it is not okay to answer with.
I think that because my mom said it has to be why they think it
and they have to back it up with evidence that they've learned.
I really like and I think that students do is story time.
Real, genuine stories.
Why? To show how vivid they can be, how detailed, how specific, how real.
The student can generate a really superb, personal, genuine and interesting personal essay
that's required by most upper-level colleges and universities.
We're not just reciting facts, we're going deeper for meaning.
Students have to grapple with complex issues that may not have right answers.
We often do this through large group discussions, usually as student-driven socratic seminars
where my job as the teacher is to back up and stay out of the way
so that the kids can grapple with the issues and come to a consensus about an answer on their own.
This is exactly what they'll be asked to do in college
where professors really want students to come up with original ideas without being fed the information.
We model professional writers, whole surprise winners like Leonard Pitts Jr.
We read his writing, we figure out what he does that makes his writing effective and we model it.
We blog in my class and expanded our audience from just me as the audience, now it's a worldwide audience.
You know, teenagers have a lot to say.
I am a lion, and I am proud. I'm so proud to be a lion. We are the king of the jungle.
I'm a lion, and I'm a lion, and I'm a lion, and I'm a lion, and I'm a lion, and I'm a lion, and I'm a lion.
Lion keepers, winners of the fashion!
