Mr. Garcia teaches in a large urban high school. He is presently serving as Chair of the English Department that has a faculty of 31 teachers who hold appropriate certification to teach the full range of Language Arts courses. The instructional focus in the English department is literacy. The entire faculty is focused on developing students' skills in the areas of grammar, mechanics, usage, and writing due to the poor performance of a large percent of the students on the exit exam.

The school is located in an industrial area of the city-an area that has a high mobility rate. Therefore, a large number of students who enter the freshman class do not complete their education at this high school. Approximately 40% of the students who graduate do attend college. The district has a total school population of approximately 98,000 students of which approximately 18,000 have identified disabilities.