They have WHAT at other KIPP Schools?

Both KIPP high schools in California – KIPP King Collegiate and KIPP San Jose Collegiate – despite the 45 minute distance between them, have lots of similarities and differences.

I’m a sophomore at KIPP King, and two weeks ago, I shadowed a sophomore named Trisha at KIPP San Jose Collegiate.  My first impression wasn’t what I expected as I walked on the campus.  I've never been to a school that has to share their campus with a much larger school of 3,000 people.  KSJC shares space with their neighbor school, Independence High School, and the entire KSJC campus is portables.

I was expecting KSJC to be different, but I wasn’t sure how different it would be.  I went to Anatomy, Spanish, and Chemistry classes.  In Spanish 2, the teacher gave us a quiz on indirect and direct pronouns, vocabulary, and the "a" persona.  I took the quiz with everyone else and received a passing grade. Then, he taught about the "Day of the Dead" or Dia de los Muertos, which was interesting because my Spanish teacher has discussed this topic with us as well earlier this same week. 

It was interesting to hear Trisha and her classmates describe what it was like to go to KSJC; the rules, the activities, because I was comparing everything to KIPP King.   So many of the details are different:

•           For one, both schools have plenty of sports programs like soccer, baseball, basketball, and cross country. In addition to these sports, KSJC also has softball and volleyball and cheerleading.   If you’re not a sports person, both schools have lots of extra-curricular clubs to join.

•       As for uniforms, here at King, students in the senior class wear professional dress on Mondays, and on Fridays, the rest of the school has the opportunity to wear jeans and college t-shirts. Similarly, our neighbors in San Jose have formal Mondays and earn the privilege to wear jeans and college shirts on Fridays.

•       After all their hard work in school, both King and KSJC both have all-school games for fun! Once a year, San Jose students have the House of Olympics games, where the teams are divided by the schools’ four core values: leadership, resilience, excellence, and responsibility. At King, we host the Quarter Games every quarter (of course), and the teams are divided by prides, and compete against each other.  

After a day of shadowing at KSJC, it was definitely worth the drive, and very fun because I had the opportunity to meet new people, especially my shadow Trisha.  Despite the similarities and differences, in the end, it’s good to know we are all still a team and family.