We’re Hiring! - Principal starting in 2020

METWEST HIGH SCHOOL OVERVIEW

MetWest High School ?is a small Oakland public high school currently serving 200 students. We have two campuses - the Dolores Huerta campus that houses 160 students, grades 9-12 and we have the Ericka Huggins campus that houses 42 9th graders. In the 2020-2021 school year, we are expanding the Huggins campus by adding another 42 9th graders, so that campus will have 42 new 9th graders and 42 10th graders. We will grow by 42 students for two more consecutive years. By 2022-2023 we will serve a total of 320 students at two different school site locations. In conjunction with their advisors, each student studies core academic skills with a cohort of twenty peers and also seeks out and secures an internship that is based within the student’s interests and passions. The internship gives students a deep sense of how their interests play out in the adult world and provides an authentic environment and audience for their work. Our curriculum is designed to teach students the academic skills and habits they need to successfully complete rigorous, complex, real world project work. Our work is rooted in a commitment to social and environmental justice and we equip our students with a framework for understanding local and global issues through an analysis of institutional, interpersonal, and internalized oppression and institutional, community, and personal libratory action.

MetWest High School is a partnership between the Oakland Unified School District and the Big Picture Learning network based in Providence, RI. For more information on Big Picture Learning, go to www.bigpicture.org. Our own website can be found at www.ousd.org/metwestg.

College and Career Prep through ‘Real World’ Learning: While MetWest is focused in part on students pursuing their passions in the workplace, it is not a vocational school. Rather than training students to follow a particular career path, the internship structure is designed to foster students’ intellectual development through first-hand experience and to develop habits of initiative-taking in their education. Our students spend two days a week working with a mentor at an internship of their choosing, learning professional expectations, communicating effectively with adults from different backgrounds, and producing real-world work. In addition to their integrated coursework at MetWest and their individualized, internship-based projects, many of our students take courses at Laney College. We expect all of our students to continue their education after high school, and internships, projects, and community college experiences are important opportunities for them to envision possible paths for their lives after MetWest.

Our educational philosophy

We learn best in the context of being known well. Real relationships between adults and young people are crucial to their academic development. To this end, each Advisor works with a core group of 20 students for 2 years and maintains regular contact with their families. 

We learn best when we are pursuing our own passions and interests. We design and teach a curriculum that is related to students’ experience and that helps them understand the world they are living in. Whether that means investigating the different environmental impacts local freeways have on surrounding neighborhoods or analyzing Oedipus to make sense of human motivation, we work to connect curricula to students’ lives and experience. 

We learn most deeply when we connect “mind” work and “hand” work. High schools in this country have traditionally separated mind learning and hand learning, yet we know that in order to learn things deeply, we need to study and try them out. Our students take this powerful opportunity when they study health and the causes of premature birth while interning at Highland Hospital, or when they study Government while interning with a member of City Council.

We work harder when our work has real meaning and value to others. Two days a week, students are doing real-world work that supports their internship site. At the end of each quarter, our students demonstrate their learning through formal public exhibitions. They answer questions and receive feedback from a panel of peers, teachers, parents, mentors, and community members.

Principal Job Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Any combination of education and/or experience equivalent to: Master’s Degree or higher from an accredited college or university with graduate courses and a minimum of three (3) years teaching experience;

• Valid California driver’s license.

• Valid California credential authorizing service as a principal.

• Employment eligibility may include fingerprints, health (TB) and/or other employment clearance.

Preferred Qualifications

    An educational leader who...

• has worked in a small school as an administrator and/or teacher

• has at least six years of teaching experience.

• has at least three years of experience as an administrator

• has experience working through a campus expansion process

• has capacity and vision to manage school expansion so that both campuses are equitably resourced and all students and staff thrive 

• knows and understands the Big Picture Model and hands-on individualized project-based learning

• is culturally responsive and eager to serve a diverse student population.

• believes in social justice and holds it as their core value.

• can foster relationships with district and community partners and with the Big Picture Network.

• thinks innovatively to realize and foster new ways of improving students learning.

• has grant writing experience.

Cover Letter Instructions

    In your cover letter, please describe: 

1. Why you would be a good fit to lead MetWest

2. How you have supported improved student achievement for African American and Latino students

3. Ways you led teachers in a professional learning community

4. Your beliefs about the role of education in social change