Crosswinds East Metro Arts and Science School

Last updated March 22, 2019

Crosswinds East Metro Arts and Science School is a year-round arts and science magnet school located in Woodbury, Minnesota, United States. Crosswinds focuses on cultural diversity, alternative learning styles, and environmental science as the foundations of its education. It provides academic and artistic opportunities for students from urban and suburban neighborhoods to achieve continuing success in a year-round program. The Perpich Center for Arts Education manages Crosswinds. Crosswinds teaches students from ages 11 to 16 (grades 6 through 10). In the beginning of the 2000's there was large gains for students of color, and with the recent conveyance student achievement has declined significantly according to standardized state testing results.

In the U.S. education system, magnet schools are public schools with specialized courses or curricula. "Magnet" refers to how the schools draw students from across the normal boundaries defined by authorities as school zones that feed into certain schools.

Woodbury is a suburb of St. Paul and the largest city in Washington County, Minnesota. It is part of the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Woodbury is situated east of Saint Paul along Interstate 94. The 2016 population for Woodbury was 68,349, making it the 8th most populous city in Minnesota.

The term multiculturalism has a range of meanings within the contexts of sociology, of political philosophy, and of colloquial use. In sociology and in everyday usage, it is a synonym for "ethnic pluralism", with the two terms often used interchangeably, for example, a cultural pluralism in which various ethnic groups collaborate and enter into a dialogue with one another without having to sacrifice their particular identities. It can describe a mixed ethnic community area where multiple cultural traditions exist or a single country within which they do. Groups associated with an aboriginal or autochthonous ethnic group and foreigner ethnic groups are often the focus.

Houses

The student body of Crosswinds used to be divided into six houses before Perpich Center for the Arts took over. Those houses were called Sun, Sol, Earth, Pangaea, Water, and Aquarius.

Schedule: The Crosswinds calendar is divided into four quarters, and each quarter is separated by a break. The effect of this is that Crosswinds is a year-round school, with school in June and July. Instead of a traditional summer vacation, Crosswinds students have part of the months of November, February, May, and August off. Students have the option to take elective classes called "intersession" during these break periods.

Mission

Crosswinds aims to offer artistic and academic opportunities to children from urban and suburban neighborhoods. Crosswinds strives to create a culturally diverse environment where each student's individual learning style is recognized. The school also places emphasis onto the study of the environment.

Arts and the Performing Arts

Students at Crosswinds can take one of four visual or performing art tracks. The tracks consist of Visual Art, Band, Orchestra, or Theater. The visual and performing art classes meet every day. All art areas teach the human experience through their own lenses.

Science

Crosswinds teaches science with hands-on, inquiry-based experiments.

Administration and faculty

Administration is shared between Perpich Center for the Arts and Crosswinds, although there is a full time administrator at Crosswinds.

Environment

Crosswinds is located next to a farm in Woodbury, MN. The building is surrounded by forest and wildlife. The school was designed specifically as an arts and environmental science integration magnet and its architecture has won awards. It sits on a beautiful 37-acre property just off I-94 and I-494 that includes wooded areas, a lake and wetlands. Students maintain a vegetable and herb garden that provides fresh produce for use in the school’s kitchen. The site also includes a peace garden, butterfly garden and tree nursery, all maintained by students and staff.

A forest is a large area dominated by trees. Hundreds of more precise definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing and ecological function. According to the widely used Food and Agriculture Organization definition, forests covered 4 billion hectares (9.9×10⁹ acres) (15 million square miles) or approximately 30 percent of the world's land area in 2006.

Wildlife traditionally refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife can be found in all ecosystems. Deserts, forests, rain forests, plains, grasslands and other areas including the most developed urban areas, all have distinct forms of wildlife. While the term in popular culture usually refers to animals that are untouched by human factors, most scientists agree that much wildlife is affected by human activities.

Statistics and Data

Crosswinds has a student body of 179 students. The student population by race is divided into 46.9% Caucasian, 19.0% Black, 20.7% Hispanic, 12.3% Asian/Pacific Islander and 1.1% Native American.

History and Facilities

While its core curriculum and values have stayed the same, Crosswinds has gone through many structural changes in its history.

In 2001, Crosswinds moved to its current location — A $17 million 34.5-acre (140,000 m²) site in Woodbury, Minnesota. At that time it was known as the Crosswinds Arts and Science Middle School. Before 2001, classes were held at Arlington High School in Saint Paul. During the first several weeks of the 2001-2002 school year, classes were held in the 3M headquarters in Maplewood, MN. From when the Crosswinds building opened and up until 2004 the houses of Sun, Water, and Earth each taught students from the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades in one integrated classroom. The Sol house was created the year after, to accommodate more students. As such, Sol house had only sixth and seventh graders during the 2002-2003 school year.

The 3M Company, formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation operating in the fields of industry, worker safety, health care, and consumer goods. The company produces a variety of products, including adhesives, abrasives, laminates, passive fire protection, personal protective equipment, window films, paint protection films, dental and orthodontic products, electronic materials, medical products, car-care products, electronic circuits, healthcare software and optical films. It is based in Maplewood, Minnesota, a suburb of St. Paul.

At the beginning of the 2004-2005 school year, the school was reorganized and the Sun house was re-purposed to contain only sixth graders, while Sol, Earth, and a new house called Pangaea became for the seventh and eighth grades only. The 9th grade was also added in the 2004-2005 school year, and the Water house was re-purposed to accommodate the high school students. In the 2005-2006 school year, the tenth grade was added and given a portion of the water house that was christened the Aquarius house.

Pangaea or Pangea was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. It assembled from earlier continental units approximately 335 million years ago, and it began to break apart about 175 million years ago. In contrast to the present Earth and its distribution of continental mass, much of Pangaea was in the southern hemisphere and surrounded by a superocean, Panthalassa. Pangaea was the most recent supercontinent to have existed and the first to be reconstructed by geologists.

Aquarius is a constellation of the zodiac, situated between Capricornus and Pisces. Its name is Latin for "water-carrier" or "cup-carrier", and its symbol is , a representation of water. Aquarius is one of the oldest of the recognized constellations along the zodiac. It was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations. It is found in a region often called the Sea due to its profusion of constellations with watery associations such as Cetus the whale, Pisces the fish, and Eridanus the river.

Crosswinds has been under management of Perpich Center for Arts Education since Spring 2014. Crosswinds originally was created as part of the East Metro Integration District (EMID), made up of the St. Paul and the school districts listed above. The EMID board at several points in its governance of the school reduced funding for the school and considered closure in order to focus its integration services within its districts. In late 2012, when none of its member districts wanted to take over running the school as an integration magnet program, EMID approached Perpich to request a proposal. After managing the school under a one-year contract during the 2013-14 school year, Perpich was granted official conveyance during the 2014 state legislative session.

The new building received the international annual design award of the Council of Educational Facilities Planners International for 2002, the James D. MacConnell Award for outstanding new educational facilities, as well as awards from other organizations such as the American Institute of Architects ^[1]

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image. The AIA also works with other members of the design and construction team to help coordinate the building industry.

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References

↑ Project info and awards Archived 2011-07-08 at the Wayback Machine .

Coordinates: 44°56′16.5″N92°58′18″W / 44.937917°N 92.97167°W / 44.937917; -92.97167

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[1] Project info and awards Archived 2011-07-08 at the Wayback Machine .