11612 Belmonte Rd
Fontana, CA 92337

I enjoyed my time at Bloomington High. Great students and teachers.

I was an eighth grade English teacher at Harris Middle School a few years ago. I immediately found out that the students were working at the fifth/sixth grade level and did the best I could to help close that huge achievement gap. Students at the school are not used to a quality instruction with high expectations. I found the other teachers thinking that low achievement was normal and did not use differentiation that much to push students to achieve at grade level. One long time teacher at the school blamed the students for not doing well instead of himself and other teachers. That is not how it works; it is the teacher that makes students achieve. The administration was accepting of low achievement and that all was fine with them and the counselors were ineffective to say the least. I see since I had left that it has even went down in achievement. A total change needs to occur and get some administrators and teachers with high quality training and high expectations to change this school. I suspected the low expectations start at the district office with low quality administrators there and them hiring low quality friends to fill administrative positions. I could not wait for the school year to end and leave the Colton district and to move on to a high quality district where high achievement and student support is the highest priority.

My child’s 2nd Grade year was not great and left us to our own devices at home. We came up with our own science experiments, art projects, and journal writing. Whether children benefit much or not from homework the biggest gain is learning the structure of responsibility outside of school. If reading is the only homework I suggest assigning the class the same book, questions to follow-up with, maybe a book report at the end? And if possible please keep teachers in the classroom more. My child is only excused a small amount of absences, teachers should try to maintain the same attendance record.