In the San Mateo Union HS District we believe in Excellence and Equity, which we define as all students having authentic access to a rigorous and relevant academic experience grounded in schools and a district that are culturally responsive.

San Mateo Union High School District provides professional learning to strengthen and support teachers standards-based instructional practices to maximize the academic potential of all students particularly of students who have historically underperformed in SMUHSD.

San Mateo Union High School District, working in collaboration with each school site’s instructional teams, supports schools and their PLCs/LTs in aligning and implementing a literacy-based, California State Content Standards and Framework instruction, for the purpose of increasing student achievement, providing students equitable access to curriculum, and producing college and career-ready graduates.

Our teachers participate in data-driven and research-based professional learning grounded in the core values of adult learning theory: teachers learn when engaged in professional development that is authentic and relevant to their practice; professional development is differentiated to the needs of individual teacher teams and content area groups; and that professional development is effective when it is teacher-led and continuous.

TIER 1 Instructional Foci: First best, standards-based instruction for all subjects, all teachers

An Instructional Framework provides SMUHSD the opportunity and support to use common definitions to talk about the effective components of teaching and learning, give and receive feedback, and collect and act upon data monitoring student growth. A multi-tiered system of support will be used to help implement this framework.

In particular, SMUHSD strengthens teaching practices in the following instructional foci areas.