El Camino Real High School
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| School name | El Camino Real Senior High |
| School Type | Public |
| Website | [1] |
| Principal | Dave Fehte |
| School District | Los Angeles Unified |
| Enrollment | 4,000 |
| Location | Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California |
| Mascot | Conquistadores |
| Colors | Royal blue and powder blue |
- For the continuation high school in Placentia, California, see El Camino Real Continuation High School
El Camino Real Senior High School(also known locally as "El Co" or "ECR") is a public secondary school located in Woodland Hills in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California, United States within the Los Angeles Unified School District.
The school, founded in 1969, was designed to emulate a small college campus, with a large central "quad" and an open campus policy. Feeder schools include George Ellery Hale Middle School (just a mile down Platt Avenue), which is also known for academic excellence.
El Camino Real High School is known for its Academic Decathlon team. The team first established itself as a decathlon power under then coach Mark Johnson when it won the Los Angeles City title in 1989-1990, the school's first ever win, going on to finish 2nd that year at the State Competition. The team remained dominant at the City and State levels from that point, and went on to win National titles in 1998, 2001, 2004, and 2005. Of note regarding the 2001 and 2004 wins were team members Alan Wittenberg and Adrian Wittenberg (2001 and 2004 respectively) as they are the only siblings to both hold national championships with the same school, both contributing as Varsity members. They also had strong hopes in 1999 winning the city competition and obtaining the 2nd highest national score at state but did not move on as the wildcard rule had not yet been instated. This one of the reasons for the creation of the wildcard rule. With their fourth national title in 2005, the school had back-to-back national victory, the first for any school in 20 years. This was the first team in Academic Decathlon history to win state and national competitions as a wild card team, as they lost the city competition but were allowed to continue as a wild card.
Former San Francisco 49ers player Allan Kennedy graduated from El Camino Real.
Lead singer and punk rock icon, Greg Graffin, and possibly other members of Bad Religion, the San Fernando Valley based group, attended and graduated from El Camino Real.
Christopher Knight of The Brady Bunch also attended (and perhaps graduated from) ECR as well.
In the late 1970s, El Camino Real was noted for its marching band, which won four of the first six Los Angeles City Marching Band championships (1976, 1977, 1979, 1980). The school's academic excellence began to be displayed by its Model United Nations Team, which in 1976 and 1977 earned awards at the Model UN competitions at the University of California-Riverside and the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). The teams were headed by Social Studies Department teachers Kenneth Craft and Murray Shapiro. Participants in the program during this time period included noted Bay Area attorney Michael A. Futterman and Austin, Texas semiconductor and software executive Alan R. Weiss. The English and Science Departments were renowned for turning out decent writers and scientists, respectively. Athletic accomplishments focused on Track and Field, where long-distance runner Ira Feinman shined. The school competed most heavily against neighboring Taft, Chatsworth, and Canoga Park High Schools. In the 70's, the girl-group proto-punk heavy-metal rock band The_Runaways included ECR student Jackie Fox. That band also produced Joan Jett and Lita Ford.
The school also has a Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps unit that has been honored with distinguished unit (top 20% in the nation) three times in a row, including this year. They have qualified for the state-wide competition in 2006 at which they placed 4th overall and aspire to go to nationals in 2007.
El Camino Real's boys tennis team gained notoriety by winning five consecutive city championships from 2000-2004.
El Camino also has a notable Science Bowl team. They compete in one of the toughest Science Bowl regions in the United States, at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. In 2001 the team placed 4th in the Los Angeles region, and in 2006 the team placed 2nd. El Camino has also won the Envirothon regional competition 6 consecutive years in a row placing 2 teams last year at the State division at 2nd place and 5th place. El Camino's 2006 Envirothon team placed first in the entire state, and went on to place fourth in the nationals competion in Canada. Another recently started competitive team is JETS: Junior Engineering Technical Society. This El Camino team placed 2nd in regionals in 2006.
Andrew Robinson Period 4 11-19-06
Defying the Laws of Physics The children today and of years of past were introduced to physics in a subtle way. It was through the use of cartoons, but the question is whether this was a good idea to introduce them to these concepts this way and at this time. I feel that this was the wrong way as wells as the wrong time for this complex introduction to such a broad concept. The reason this is the fact that children are very gullible to any concepts because they are young and do not know the ideas yet, so they believe that these cartoons are displaying real life situations. Such as a famous cartoon road runner and the Wiley coyote displays unrealistic physics. This example is when Wiley coyote is chasing the road runner up a mountain until it comes to a cliff where the road runner stops at the edge and the Wiley coyote runs off the edge. The misnomer of physics that the cartoon displays is the way that the coyote is off the cliff yet waits for a few seconds in one place in the air. He appears weigh-less until he realizes that he is not supported by a floor, he would fall. What he is supposed to do is fall at a constant parabolic trajectory till he hit the floor. Little children would think that they could do that as well, the jumping off things and not falling. The second example of physics in cartoons is in the same cartoon when Wiley coyote is pushing largest crates around the ground. What the coyote experiences is that the crate starts off easy to push and then slowly gets harder. This goes against the idea of static friction being greater than kinetic friction which is the opposite of the cartoon example. The third example is using the same cartoon. The Wiley coyote chases the road runner again. When he runs off the cliff and starts to fall. The thing that is against laws of physics is that the object will accelerate uniformly. In the cartoon, the cartoon differs because the cartoon never free-falls at a uniform acceleration as well as the same acceleration between objects. Such as the coyote passes a boulder in mid fall, which then would fall on the coyote. These cartoons express a false physics to children. I believe that the cartoonist should attempt to make it as though it was real-life. The big reason is so that kids don’t hurt them selves trying things that they saw on the television. Otherwise the cartoons do a good job of introducing some of the ideas for the children of our day and age.
