Arroyo High School

You make the best of your high school experience. Arroyo is known to be the dry high school in the distinct, but education is the key here. You have a variety of teachers and unfortunately at arroyo they are either great, outstanding professors or horrible new ones.
Advise to all incoming freshmen and concerned families don’t let the academies get to you. They are useless in college and yes they are a great help, but all you can gain are connections to great people. Academies are a great way to specify a career goal, but come on at 14? Do they know what they want probably not. Save that big decision for college and to be quite honest the academies are just a lazy system to keep students clustered and assigned to certain teachers to make it easier for scheduling purposes. Tad bit.
Now to the teachers. As a recent graduate I recommended these teachers. As I have said you only get the outstanding or the complete newbies. Get these teachers before they retire!
MR. IRONSIDE: One of the most genuine mathematicians on campus. He cares so much for you as a student and was one hell of a geometry teacher.
MS. OSTRANDER: Take her class. Her teaching is outstanding and she is an amazing English teacher. You will fall in love with her class and her appreciated for the English subject.
MR. VINCI AND MR. GUARINO: These two seriously are twins (not looks wise, but they are pretty much always together) Very different teaching style, but their love for the English language is great. Can I say these two will have you crackin.
Now these are some of the great, sophisticated teachers on campus. There are plenty let me reassure you, but I haven’t had the pleasure to experience all the great talents on campus due to academies. I’m academies you are pretty much assigned to a certain group of teachers. So I can only speak for the H&M academy! So to say.
These classes I do not recommend. Sadly to say but these courses are just not worth your time.
AP PSYCHOLOGY: This is a brand new course. And so to speak the teacher wasn’t great and yes, it may be the first year teaching it. But you can’t change teachers skills in a classroom. Don’t blame the subject, blame the teacher for teaching the subject in a non passionate or effective way. With my experience with teachers and classes you can just tell.
AP CALCULUS: My god was this a hard course! Ms. Mountain is a great teacher and don’t let her size fool you this is a tough course. If you are not that strong in math do not take this course if you don’t have too! If you guys think I hate this course cos of my bad grade I did not I received a B.
ANY ACADEMY CLASS: Save yourself some time they’re not worth it at all on college and you don’t need them. Haha they are seriously useless.
Enjoy your time in high school. Make the best of it and be opened minded. As a recent graduate this is my take and what I received at Arroyo.
Classes (cleanliness/​student ratio): ³⁄₅
Teachers: Varies
Spirit: ²⁄₅
Athletics: ²⁄₅ [Check your sports team ranking, but overall Arroyo isn’t known for their outstanding sports program]
Experience: ³⁄₅

I attend the future academy at this school, I have to say, the teachers of the future academy will probably be the best teachers you will ever have. I can’t say the same for the other academies, I won’t use any names, but every other teacher I’ve had outside the future academy has been horrid.
I also find this school very difficult for teens that learn at a slower pace. Most of the time, the children aren’t being helped, instead they are put down for not learning the material as quickly or fluently.
This school also lacks spirit and positivity, from both students and staff. And they keep all doors open all day long. We’ve had robberies on campus and nothing has been done about it. It’s a depressing, unsafe environment, I would NOT recommend

I attended Arroyo from 2000 – 2004. I’d like to thank all the wonderful teachers that made an impact on my life at this school! While I was here, the principal was Mr. Dick Lloyd. Mr. Lloyd was a nice guy, he cared about the school, and was a good principal that connected with the students. He supported the extra-​curricular activities at the school and having been in leadership, I know he gave the student body the benefit of the doubt even when there were problems at school functions such as dances.
The library here could use a face-​lift, but given the state of the economy, I know that won’t happen anytime soon. The school could improve on how it handles registration. I’ve never worked behind the scenes for registration, but every year it seems like it was unorganized and there was always confusion and several changes had to be made the students’ schedules the first week of school.
Since six years have passed since I attended school here, I don’t know what types of classes are offered. I heard they cut the cooking class, which I find disappointing. I know it seems like it’d be one of those «easy A» sorts of classes, but Ms. Lawrence, the lady who taught this class, was amazing. She had great knowledge of food and had traveled extensively and shared her knowledge of international foods with the students. She held the students accountable to clean up their mess and kept the students’ attention by having them cook at least once a week.
Other outstanding teachers include Ms. Ostrander, Mr. Baughman, Mr. Miyata, Ms. Lydon, and Ms. Ellis. I know some students find strict teachers to be jerks, etc, but they’re really just trying to instill some discipline in these kids. If your sending your kid to Arroyo, I strongly suggest trying to take English with Ms. Ostrander. She’s by far the best English teacher I had in all four years I spent at Arroyo.

I graduated from this school in 2003. While it’s not an exceptional school, the education I received there was good. I got into UC Berkeley afterwards and managed to excel in my studies there, and I owe that in large part to my time at this school.
I was able to form a set of electives that suited my interests, and this allowed me to explore a varied set of subjects from year to year. At the same time, I was able to delve into two things I loved and would have been disappointed not to have been able to study back then: French and German. A lot of schools are doing away with these languages, particularly German, for reasons of practicality in light of the relative lack of usability of the two languages in the immediate region. This is a shame for many reasons (for example: why does it even matter WHAT language class you’re in when you’re not really dedicated to learning the language fluently anyway), but I find it especially tasteless in that it conforms to the idea that studying just one foreign language is sufficient. I feel privileged to have been able to study both of them in a working class high school and to have come out of the three years of studying each language speaking both of them very functionally (although this was also helped in large part by independent study).
So I went on to live and study in Germany for a year immediately after finishing school at Arroyo, and I owe my motivation to do such to both my German teacher Mr. Burnett and my French teacher Mr. Goodman. This allowed me to achieve fluency, which helped me greatly at UC Berkeley. It also allowed me to explore other modern languages I had a burning interest in, like Spanish and Chinese. My Spanish is just as good as my German now, for which I can thank my UC semester abroad in Chile. Without my motivation fueled by Arroyo teachers, I would have waited until college to study in Germany, thereby missing out on the chance to study in Chile and learn an additional language while exploring another continent. I know that I owe my minor in German to my already knowing German before coming to Berkeley. I also know that I owe my high honors degree in linguistics to being able to study multiple foreign languages at a time in high school, so I could study more when I got to college, and not just fudge my way through understanding what a retroflex consonant or syntactic ergativity is.
I also managed to take honors and AP classes here which definitely gave me an edge for college admission. When I was there, they offered AP Chem, Physics, Calculus, English, US History, Spanish, Economics, and possibly other subjects I’m forgetting. They also had honors English, Chem, and History classes. I have no way of knowing what they offer now.
So yeah, this school is not too shabby… at least it wasn’t 7 – 10 years ago.