Alief Kerr High School
Alief Kerr High School is a secondary school located on 8150 Howell Sugar Land Road in an unincorporated area of Harris County, Texas, near the Alief neighborhood of the city of Houston. The school has a Houston address and it has the 77083 zip code.
Kerr is a part of the Alief Independent School District and it serves grades 9 through 12. Kerr has about 770 students as of the September 2005.
High school students can apply to Alief Kerr High School, which is a magnet 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 depends on Alief Taylor for security and transportation needs.
The school's mascot is the tiger and the school's colors are purple and white.
Instruction
Alief Kerr follows an abnormal 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) avaliable in total. Each class period is about 90 minutes in length.
Instead of tradional 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. One of these centers can hold up to 100-150 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, and Foreign Language.
Each of the centers have an area of the room desinated as a "quiet center" where the teachers can seperate the class for instruction or for students to work in quiet. Seminar rooms are also availble for a teacher to pull out the class to give instruction. Kerr is mainly independent learning, with little input from the teachers.
Instead of regular worksheets, at Kerr, students have PAKs (Personal Activity Kit). 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, usually it is a combination of both.
The school lacks a specific concentration in an area (like that of Houston Independent School District's DeBakey High School or Fort Bend Independent School District's Hightower High School health program). Alief Kerr is well-known for the quality of numerous specific courses.