Furness High cultivates high achievers

“Our ESOL population has also increased,” he added. “About 53% of our student population is our ESOL population, which is wonderful. Our Special Olympics team just recently won the championship, so we’re extremely excited about that. While we have been doing some amazing things at Furness, we still have work to do. We want to continue to build on what we’ve done so far.”

One of Furness’ goals for the new school year is to have students come to school 95% of the time. To help get the word out about this, the school held a rally Oct. 4.

“We have three categories for attendance,” Assistant Principal Beverly P. Wallace said. “The 95 percent club are for students who are on track. We have a 94% club for students who are almost there and for any student who is below Tier 1 and Tier 2,we’re going to work to push those students so that they get to the 90% club.

“We recently held a rally for our 95% club in early October,” she added. “The timing of the rally was perfect because it was also on the same day that the School District of Philadelphia held its district-wide dress down day. On that day, we had a pep rally and some other incentives for our 95-percenters.”

Located at 1900 S. 3rd St., the school’s vision is to provide a culture of success that focuses on developing students into leaders who are equipped with the key 21st-century skills of critical thinking, problem solving, self-empowerment and multicultural competence in order to excel academically and as community leaders.

Known for being a diverse school, there are about 33 different countries represented at Furness with students speaking 23 different languages. Some of the languages spoken at Furness include Vietnamese, Swahili, Spanish, Arabic, Burmese, Chinese (Mandarin), Chinese (Yue/Canto) and Indonesian.

“My hope is that our students will take away their experience of diversity and the cultural experience that they’ve experienced,” Wallace said. “I also just want them to understand how important it is to be college and career ready.”

During the Tribune’s Learning Key visit, students in Alicia Moore’s African-American history class were learning about Ancient Africa through a hands-on project.

“Before we get into the history of Africans in America and slavery, I started the school year off looking at Ancient Africa, because I wanted students to understand that Africa is more than just the place where slaves came from,” Moore said. “I explained Mansa Musa to them and how he was rich and powerful that he devalued gold as he traveled across the continent.

“We will be looking at different cultures and how they changed among civilizations. Right now, they’re working on a project that is called a passport to Ancient Africa.They’re looking at Egypt, Kush, Ghana, Mali, Songhai and West Africa and the students are creating a passport as though they traveled back to these places.

“We’re also working with maps, because geography is one of the things that the students are struggling with a bit,” she added. “We’re pushing into the second part where they’ve already done their research and now they’re actually creating their passports.”

Sophomore Michale Redulla said he has learned a lot since being in Moore’s class.

“We’ve been learning the history of the African continent and its cultures and different civilizations,” Michale said. “We’ve also been looking at two major achievements on each civilization. We’ve been using that information to create our passport projects.

“Since being in Ms. Moore’s class, I’ve learned so much about the different countries in Africa and the different African cultures,” he added. “I’m really enjoying this class.”