About Us

Aurora Central High School is looking for people passionate about seeing all students achieve. Central is a unique school where challenges are met head on and opportunities are embraced everyday.

Aurora Central High School opened its doors in 1892, serving the community of Aurora and making it the first school in Aurora Public Schools. We serve 2200 students, from over 40 countries and speaking more than 50 languages. Our diverse student population makes us an interesting and exciting place to learn and work.

Our unique INNOVATION PLAN provides a great deal of autonomy and allows us to embrace all different learners. It is our goal through this plan to ensure that all student have equitable accesses to high level instruction that supports their educational needs.

ACHS Team members are:

  • Excited about seeing students succeed

  • Focused on student centered learning

  • Thrilled to meet the challenges of a diverse population

  • Reflective about their practice

  • Dedicated toward creating and implementing engaging and effective instruction

  • Committed to building relationships with students, families, staff and the community

Central is a place unlike any other. It takes special people to work here and with our students. Because of this, if you are interested in working here, we would love for you to visit to get a glimpse into our world.

Please contact Estefania Martinez at [email protected] to schedule a visit with us!

 

HOUSE MODEL

Knowing that strong relationships between students and teachers are critical to a student’s academic success, all 9th and 10th grade students at ACHS belong to a "House". This means that one set of 125-150 students are grouped together and share the same set of 4 core content teachers (Math, English, Science, & Social Studies). Each House has a name and a unique identity that ties them together. This ensures our students build a strong sense of community amongst each other and with teachers; it also allows teachers to work collaboratively to ensure the needs of all students are being met.

Our Master Schedule has been designed to allow all core content teachers meet weekly in their Houses to review attendance, behavior, and academic data as well as to align what is being taught in each of their classes. Alongside core content teachers are counselors, social workers, deans, the Attendance Liaison, MTSS coordinator, ESS staff, and grade level administrators all working together to provide wrap-around supports to each individual student and family as needed with the goal of all ACHS students graduating high school with the opportunity to pursue any post-secondary path they choose. This House Model allows all ACHS students to have an engaging, connected High School experience and results in outcomes like this exchange between teacher and parent in regard to a student who was previously failing multiple classes :

“Hello! I am Jalen’s* math teacher and I just wanted to let you know that Jalen has been doing great work this past week. I talked to all of his teachers and we are very impressed with his work ethic! We are proud of him and hope it continues!” - Ms. Guerra

“You just brought tears to my eyes. Thank you for noticing him trying. I definitely hope it continues. I love these kinds of messages.” - 9th grade ACHS parent

* student name has been changed for confidentiality purposes.

At 11th and 12th grade students are no longer grouped into specific Houses in order to allow broader access to AP courses as well as the opportunity for concurrent enrollment in College level courses; however you will see evidence of the sense of community previously established amongst students reflected in student leadership and overall participation in school activities. Teachers and support staff at 11th and 12th grade are still engaged in a similar collaborative “House Meeting” structure to ensure the needs of our upperclassmen are being met; this includes a targeted focus on graduation as well as post-secondary plans and opportunities. Teachers, counselors,deans, MTSS coordinator, Graduation Support Coordinator, College and Career Coordinator, and grade level administrators work together to provide our students with connections to internships, personalized data-digs and conversations to ensure students are on-track for graduation and multiple opportunities to set goals and get support pursuing post-secondary plans.

The ACHS House Model has been designed with the following beliefs in mind:

  • We are proactive, rather than reactive, with our students.

  • We must focus our conversations around the data points that we are seeing in our students.

  • We must focus on identifying supports for students early.

  • We must focus our conversations around our students, what areas of support they need, what interventions we need to put in place for them, and most importantly how we can change our support to meet their needs.

  • We must create action plans for our students and hold our team accountable to be consistent with those action plans in all classes.

  • We must ensure that we are having cross-curricular conversations to build the relevancy and content connections for our students in all of our classrooms.