Vision

The School of Communications, New Media, and Technology (CNMT) will prepare all students for college, career, and civic engagement. We will be a social justice-focused community school utilizing a Linked Learning approach with a thematic emphasis on communications, new media and technology. We will establish and maintain programs of excellence and creative activity, to provide quality instruction and produce college-bound communicators who can excel in a variety of contexts and serve their community.

Mission

Connecting the community to our school, CNMT will bring wrap-around services, including health, mental, family and social support, to our students and their families. CNMT will engage our students in the community through high-quality service learning and work-based learning opportunities. Students will work with mentors, identified through our university, industry and community partners, who will guide them through their high school careers and into college.

CNMT will implement the Linked Learning approach to support students’ preparation for life beyond high school. Students will engage in project-based learning connecting communications, new media and technology-focused technical courses with the core A-G academic sequence, culminating in work-based internships, apprenticeships and job shadowing in their chosen specialization. We will partner with industry and post-secondary institutions to provide a bridge to life beyond high school.

By infusing the curriculum with the use of media and technology, CNMT will develop articulate students who can communicate effectively in both interpersonal and mass media contexts. They will create their own knowledge through inquiry and problem-posing. This implies a constructivist approach to instruction that is grounded in sociocultural learning theory. Teachers will serve as guides who lead students to understanding, rather than following a banking model of imparting knowledge of facts. We believe that students learn best when they discover meaning for themselves. To this end, teachers will backwards plan using thematic units and essential questions, and projects will emphasize open-ended inquiry, cooperative learning and class discussion.