Sheboygan is situated on the shores of Lake Michigan, approximately fifty miles north of Milwaukee. With a population of just over 50,000, Sheboygan is considered an urban school district and has a racially diverse population. Along with its lakeside locale, Sheboygan is an industrial center as well as a tourist destination. The Sheboygan area has several championship golf courses. Whistling Straits will be home to the PGA championship in 2004. The Sheboygan area has several colleges, universities and technical schools located nearby.

The Sheboygan Area School District serves over 10,000 students. Urban Middle School is one of three middle schools in the district. In addition to three middle schools, my district's facilities include two high schools, an alternative high school, twelve elementary schools, and an early learning center. Thirty percent of the student population includes minority students with southeast Asian students accounting for a large percentage of this group. English language learning programs and services are available to students in every building.

Urban Middle School is the oldest and largest middle school in Sheboygan. A recent community referendum funded major facility upgrades including a new gymnasium and computer lab. Urban has three grade levels and uses the team concept. The eighth grade has three teams with approximately twenty-five students to one academic teacher. My eighth grade team is comprised of three academic teachers; one social studies & language arts, one math & one science. Students have 75 minutes of instruction time with each academic teacher daily. Literacy development and content reading are the responsibility of all academic team members. The reading specialist and the team members meet regularly to coordinate lessons and units so that each academic area contributes to literacy skills.

The students we serve on our team reflect the population in our community. Students are placed in heterogeneous groups and are only “tracked” for mathematics instruction. Depending on English proficiency, English Language Learners (ELL) are placed in academic classrooms and may have a resource period where they receive academic support services. Learning disabled students and students with other exceptional needs are generally placed in our classrooms with the support of an educational assistant or an EEN (Exceptional Educational Needs) teacher, depending on the services required. Academically gifted students receive support outside of the academic program from a full-time gifted and talented teacher.

Urban has over 200 iMac™ computers located in labs and classrooms. There are three iMac™ computer labs. One lab is used exclusively for business education and two labs are available for classroom use. Each classroom has one networked computer that is primarily designated for teacher productivity and record keeping. The computers are on a three- to four- year replacement cycle. Digital still and video cameras are available for checkout, and scanners are available for teacher and student use in each lab. A school fundraiser provided three extra LCD projectors for classroom use.