Welcome Back and Happy New Year

Over the next month or so students will need to start making decisions about the courses they want to request. Did you know Helix determines the elective and pathway classes they run the next year based off of student requests? So make sure you have plan because it might be too late to request a class in May or August when you return back to school. If you need help picking your pathway classes, click our pathway flyers below.

We have:

Computer Science

Education

Business/Entrepreneurship

Sports Medicine

Engineering/Architecture

A new report from Computer Science for California (CSforCA) coalition and Kapor Center that analyzes K-12 computer science education in California, revealing significant disparities by race/ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, and geography of California students who have access to, enroll in and succeed in computer science courses. Such findings include:

• Just 3% of California’s 1.9 million high school students took a computer science course in 2017.
• Low-income schools are four times less likely to offer Advanced Placement (AP) computer science courses.
• Female students comprise 50% of California’s high school population, but just 29% of students taking introductory CS courses.
• 60 percent of California’s high schoolers are Black, Latinx, and Native American/Alaskan Native students, but they comprise just 16 percent of students taking the AP Computer Science A exam—and shockingly, Black students comprise just 1 percent.
• There are significant disparities for Black and Latinx students in rates of passage of Advanced Placement (AP) computer science exams.

Speaker: David Espinoza, Encuentros Program, explaining the Encuentros Teachers Academy for Latinx males interested in pursuing a career in the field of Edcuation.

Mr. Tony Mora Encuentros Board member who founded the Encuentros summer academy programs over 15 years ago.

The Sports Medicine Classes have completed over 200 hours of service to our athletic teams. Helping tape, stretch, evaluate and treat injuries on the sidelines and in the Helix Athletic Training Room.

Our Advanced Sports Medicine Class is gearing up to compete against 13 other local high school Sports Medicine Students in the San Diego Sports Medicine Student Quiz Bowl on Feb 1st, at SDSU

This week in CAD 3/4 students learned about the 10 Technology trends that will shape their future.

Helix was awarded $5900 from the Goodwin Family Trust to support programs to benefit special populations and high need, high wage, high skills development for our students!

Did you know this year that Helix Charter adopted an online curriculum teaching program called Solid Professor? Solid Professor is a local San Diego company and their goal is to help professionals and students get industry certified in a myriad of Design and Engineering software. CAD 3/4 students are working on Revit (structural engineering/architecture) and Inventor (parametric 3D modeling). During this semester (3rd Quarter) they are working diligently to get through 9 hours of curriculum plus drawing and taking notes. Later in the year they will go off site and take a proctored exam to hopefully get industry certified in their software of choice. We think the more tools in their belt, the better equipped they will be to get internships, jobs, and understand their upcoming college curriculum.

Got a computer at home? You can download free Autodesk Software and contact the EDGE department at edge@helixcharter.net and Helix will help set up a course for you to teach yourself. Several students have already signed up.

ACE Club (Architecture, Construction and Engineering) is working hard on their new mock building project this year. This year ACE has chosen to do a Community Center in El Cajon. Each year ACE students are mentored by industry professionals and learn about the different careers in both Engineering, Architecture, Landscape Design and Construction. They are even mentored by two Helix Alum, Bryan Wayne and Johnny Rivera. They take field trips to job sites, listen to our mentors speak about their position and life in the workplace and collaborate on a building design that benefits the community. Like most clubs we have leadership roles. ACE has a Project Manager, who is our very own Nick Smith, an Engineering Lead, Fernando Pluma Architecture Lead , Alex Chau and Construction Lead, Isaac Reveles and Uriel Lopez.