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GATE
Cal’s GATE program focuses on developing the potential in young scholars. The seventh grade program opens with the study of world history and language arts. In both classes, students develop their ability to think analytically through essay writing. In seventh grade, they read works like Ishi, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and Sophie’s World, a novelized study of Western philosophy, in addition to the Holt curriculum. Similarly, Cal’s eighth grade GATE students write essays as they plunge into primary source documents from American history as they confront the Constitutional crises of America’s earliest Presidents and read works like The Scarlet Letter and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. However, what truly distinguishes Cal’s GATE program is its emphasis on taking learning outside the classroom. Each year, the Seventh Grade GATE class sponsors the Cal Poetry Jam in April, just as the eighth grade class puts on a Shakespearean play in January. These shows involve hours of after school writing and line learning, experiences that trasform good students into scholars. Their reward for this in-depth study in the additional enrichment of a May trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. During the second semester, Cal’s GATE students are also strongly urged to join the Cal Forensics debate team as reinforcement of their unit on persuasive speaking. In the last five years, Cal students have twice gone to the State Finals in the National Geography Bee. Also, Cal's science students won the MESA science contest for both seventh and eighth grade. Cal’s excellence in dramatic arts resulted in a first place win in the dramatic interpretation category at Sam Brannan's Debate and Speech contest, as well as a recent alumnus’ production and direction of Electra at C.K. McClatchy. Not only that, but Cal claims McClatchy’s 2003-2004 valedictorian as one of its own, as it does many students currently excelling at pretigious high schools throughout California, including Thacher Academy in southern California and Christian Brothers and St. Francis locally.
For more information:
Contact Michael Holt, pigletsu@hotmail.com
Ellen Anderson Holt, ellenandersonholt@yahoo.com.
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