Alief Kerr High School

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**Alief Kerr High School**
Principal	Pat McCutcheon
School type	Public
School district	Alief Independent School District
Founded	1994
Location	Harris County, Texas
Mascot	Tigers
School colors	Purple and White

Alief Kerr High School is a secondary school located in the unincorporated area of Harris County, Texas, near the Alief neighborhood of the city of Houston.

Kerr is a part of the Alief Independent School District and it serves grades 9 through 12. Kerr first opened in the fall of 1994, and did not accept any incoming seniors its first year. In May 1996, its senior class of approximately 55 students were the first to graduate from Kerr. Kerr has approximately 770 students as of September 2005.

High school students to be must apply their 8th grade year in order to attend Alief Kerr High School. Traditional high schools are assigned by a lottery, which can result in the student going to either Alief Elsik High School, Alief Hastings High School, or Alief Taylor High School. Alief Kerr and Alief Taylor are across from each other, and the smaller Kerr shares transportation vehicles with Alief Taylor.

The school's mascot is the tiger and the school's colors are purple and white.

1 Instruction
2 Clubs and Organizations
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Instruction

Alief Kerr follows a 4x4 block schedule, where the 4 classes are assigned for the first semester, and the other 4 in the next semester. A student has 8 periods (class slots) available in total. Each class period is about 90 minutes in length.

Instead of traditional small classrooms, Kerr has large "centers" for each core subject. Every class in that subject is held in the core subject's center. There are many different classes held in one room. Each of these centers can hold 50-150 students. Teachers teach more than one specific branch off the core subject. At times one teacher can have multiple branches of the subject to manage. Centers include Math, Science, Art, Business, English, Social Studies, Foreign Language, and speech.

Each of the centers have an area of the room designated as a "quiet center" where the teachers can separate the class for instruction or for students to work in quiet. Seminar rooms are also available for a teacher to pull out the class to give instruction or seminars. Kerr is mainly independent learning, with little input from the teachers.

Instead of regular worksheets, students at Kerr have PAKs (Personal Activity Kit) [1]. They include all the work for the chapter or section of learning. The students can choose to work in class or do them at home, and teachers encourage work in both environments.

Kerr is the Alief equivalent of HISD's DeBakey High School except that the school lacks a specific concentration in an area (like that of Houston Independent School District's DeBakey High School for Health Professions or Fort Bend Independent School District's Hightower High School health program).

Other abnormalities with Alief Kerr's educational system is its lack of competitive UIL sports. The school has intramural programs through out the year that allow students to form teams and compete against one another in different activities including basketball, tennis, hockey and volleyball. The school has a bowling team that competes against different schools in the Houston area. Students may also compete in speech and debate tournaments and, competitions through theatre arts and art. Some students may also compete in academic UIL which is common for most schools.

Kerr also has a semester time schedule. Instead of the traditional AB days (block schedule) or 8 classes each day, Kerr has 4 periods each everyday each semester [two nine week periods] and have interchangeble classes which change every term (nine week period). The nine week classes consist of Communication Applications, Physical Education, Health, Survey of World Literature, Creative & Imaginative writing, Economics, Government, Sociology, Psychology, AP Psychology, AP Human Geography, Keyboarding, Intro to Business, Recordkeeping, Business & Cons Law, and SAT prep. Almost all of the centers offer a nineweek course in which students get full credit for the class they choose for the nine week period.

Kerr also has an annual "Kerr Karnival" which anyone can attend.