Cypress Ridge High School

"I love CY RIDGE always have and always will, although I went through rough times as a teenager the teachers gave me the support my parents never did. I could not be more thankful to Mr. aikey, Mrs. Billet and Mr. Cantu. Cy ridge has some awesome teacher that genuinely care about their students, sadly as any other high school full of crazy teens there's always issues here and there. I wouldn't be the independent person I am now, putting myself through school to get my degree if it wasn't for all the support and encouragement words and actions of my teachers."

"Part two to Keleigh Cummings' post below. My Health teacher was the football/basketball coach and clearly didn't come to Cy Ridge to teach health. We would copy definitions every week from outdated health books that thought Zero Tolerance against drugs, alcohol, and sex. They thought us that marijuana was a gate way drug and led you to harder substances and that it physically hurt you when science has proven that it doesn't. We also watch outdated health movies in class that were from 10 years ago, possibly the 90's, that really didn't teach kids how to wean off of unhealthy eating habits. I even learned that you can snort computer cleaner and how to roll a joint! Things I didn't know before but being taught and being allowed which drugs were better or worse made it really easy for me to know how to use drugs correctly and my chances of overdose should I decide to use drugs as an outlet for my sorrows. My teacher also made us watch the Biggest Loser every Friday instead of using that time to prepare us for up coming tests. I didn't come to school to watch videos, and teachers shouldn't be paid if they hardly ever actually teach, but for most of my teachers except for my English and Am Sign language teacher, all of them purposefully acted like they were really teaching when an administrative person came by. We also never learned about sex properly, more teenage pregnancies! Yay! The other half of that semester was Pace (Pace/Health). My teacher Mrs. Fitzgerald was really good at explaining things, she kept everyone organized and was good at teaching us how to give/take interviews and write resumes. I only wish her class was taught closer to kids aged 16+ because if you were taught these things in freshman year, you might not remember them years later when you would actually need that job. I liked her a lot. My English teacher, Mrs. Solis, was very nice and was enthusiastic about teaching and learning herself, but she would admit from time to time that she was tired, which I appreciated her honesty for. She gave little notes and had lots of discussions over the books we read and I liked her, except me and several other students would remember the times that she had lost, or almost lost, our Midterm/final exam exemption cards. She was clearly over worked at times, but she always put in a lot of effort. She did have a group of rambunctious kids though and would sometimes give up on inforcing the no phone/talking when others are talking rule, which I was fine with because they were usually the ones that she let fail and she would really only help kids that were clearly trying. My World Geography teacher, Mrs. Maier, was great too. She repeatedly taught the material so we wouldn't forget it, I remember her class teachings the most. She had notes everyday that were simple and made class flow easily, and warm ups were always about what we'd previously learned. She had lots of helpful posters in her room and was always upbeat and smiling, she clearly always wanted to be a teacher growing up. She would also try and keep students occupied, and with troublesome kids she would always convince them to get to work. Part 3 coming next, almost out of characters."

"Part 3 Continued Keleigh Cummings Review. My Geometry teacher, Mr. Bell, he could relate well to students but was lazy as a teacher. He would make us do warm ups that were simple algebra problems, turn them in at the end of the week, but not return them or even go over them after he posted them on the board or even just tell us the right answer. He returned our paperwork only about 10% or less of the time. I only got my tests back 4 times. On the last test of the year, (Not the Final Exam) he paired us up with each other to learn from our mistakes, the problem was that he put all of the people that made 90's or more together and forced all the kids who failed to sit together, making the kids that failed never know what or how they got it wrong. He loved pairing us up together with our table partners, he almost never came around and asked if we needed help, we would have to go to him. He would pass out a work sheet in class and one five minutes to the end of class, both due the next day. He would only about 20% of the time explain it, otherwise he made us figure it out ourselves. My mother doesn't pay teachers to sit at their desk and grade papers all day. He would even say and I quote, " You better finish this homework today because otherwise you're gonna fail this class and come back to summer school doing this exact same paperwork listening to 97.1 and hear the same car commercial 30 times a day." Needless to day he also made it so that if you wanted real one on one time with him you HAD to come to tutoring and stay after school for almost an hour then wait for the late bus for an hour to get home. (At least it was for me because my zoning was almost 35 min-an hour bus ride depending on traffic.) My Theatre Arts teacher, Mrs. Laurie, was a nice lady and knew her stuff but was unable to put her foot down for one second and get control of her class. Half of the class was the misfits that got grouped together because of their outbursts in their other classes. They yelled, cursed constantly, moved their seats, sexually harassed my friend, had no sense of personal space, refused to participate, and would try and start fights in the middle of class right in front of the teacher. The same thing happens in prisons. You put a bunch of delinquents together and don't actually rehabilitate them and they all start to go at each other's throat. One girl tried to throw a chair at another girl. Don't even get me started on what happens when the teacher wasn't in the room or when a substitute was there. The teacher would tell us that she was going to go call an AP then they would all calm down but not 15 seconds later they would start again. I remember kids going to the AP's or an AP coming at least 10 times in that class. My teacher would also drag 5 minute lessons over 5 days creating an extremely boring class. She was not good at partnering up kids and put the smart kids together and the delinquents together so only half of the kids got the work done. On a seperate note, the school food about half the time made me want to puke. And a friend of mine had to try 10 different men's bathrooms before finding one that didn't have pee on the floor, poop on the toilet lids or a whole roll of toilet paper in the toilet. I was one of the few kids that tried to graduate early and my counselor actually discouraged me because she said, "It's very difficult." Even though it took me 10 minutes to write up a plan so I could get started. I'm not asking for sympathy or compensation, I just hope whoever reads this steps up and fixes this school because I'm glad I moved to a different one. And stop hiring teachers that don't care, set up a secrete camera in class rooms this year and watch the horror unfold."

"I loved that high school. My homie Russell Shepard now a NFL star and me in AFJROTC back in 06. Beautiful English teacher Ms. Williams lol. She was pretty light bright. Lunch was on point. Us beat boxing and rapping, break dancers. Lol missed that school."

"Horrible school two years ago my friend got stabbed during lunch. A lot of the teachers are horrible at teaching and are not good at explaining why they graded the answer wrong. Assistant principals have no control over the kids and there is a lot of drug dealing in school property."