We are from the southwest part of California in the United States. Anaheim is a city in Orange County. It is a part of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. A metropolitan area is a series of towns or cities, which through expansion, have emerged to form one continuous built up area. As of a 2000 Census, Anaheim has an approximate total population of 330,000 people, 97,000 households, and 74,000 families residing in the city. However, it seems much bigger than that because of all the cities that are so close.

Anaheim Hills is an expansion of the city of Anaheim. Located in rolling hills just outside the city limits. In just one day you can walk a desert, climb a mountain, stroll down world-class shopping boulevards, go snow skiing, meet Mickey Mouse and learn to surf!
Anaheim is the home of Disneyland, the Angels Baseball team (they won the World Series in 2002), The Mighty Ducks (Hockey team), Knott’s Berry Farm (amusement park), lots of colleges and universities, the John Wayne Airport, and many large shopping malls.
Favorite past times here are surfing, skateboarding, shopping, beaches, Disneyland, etc. We are also very close to Hollywood and many movies are made in Orange County.
Transportation: The primary means of transportation is the automobile. Our state is connected with a very intricate interstate freeway system. Traffic is a big problem! With so many cars and trucks on the road, “Rush Hour” is now from 7 AM -9 AM, 12 noon -1 PM, and 4 PM - 7PM. Don’t ask me why they call it “Rush Hour”, because NO ONE is rushing anywhere!

We are located on a hill overlooking the cities of Yorba-Linda and Placentia. Across from us are beautiful mountains. Our school is next door to a beautiful neighborhood park on a hill. So, it is a cozy campus with a great view of the city.
Orange County has approximately 3 million people. We are bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the north by Los Angeles County, on the south by San Diego County, and on the east by Riverside County. Orange County was named because it used to be the region where oranges were grown…although that’s not the case anymore. We do have the Sunkist Orange factory here, but very few orange groves exist here anymore.

Right now we are in summer. The weather here is usually very nice. The climate is generally sunny and dry. It is a Mediterranean climate: warm sunshine, dry heat, gentle ocean breezes and mile temperatures year round. Our temperature in the summer rarely goes over 95F. Most of the time we average between 75F-85F. Wintertime, the weather rarely goes below 55F (10C). We get about 5-8 inches of rain a year—almost all of it in mid-winter. Southern California is naturally a desert.
California’s natural disaster is Earthquakes and fire. Because it is so dry here, fires can be pretty devastating.

Participating Students & School Demographics

Imperial is one of thirty elementary schools in our district. The school was built in 1976 in a time when education had “open room concept” classrooms. That means there are no doors between the rooms. Some rooms only have short walls that separate them from the next room. So the teachers have become very creative in making their rooms private! When my class came to the school, they built a floor to ceiling wall to keep the sound of the Braille writers from disturbing other classrooms. But we still do not have doors between our two neighbors! It took a little getting used to when I first came!
The racial/ethnic composition of the students is as follows: approximately 70% White, 15% Asian, 10% Hispanic or Latino, 5% African American, Filipino and other students.
10% of our students are supported with special education services, such as learning challenges and visual impairments.

The students and their families at Imperial speak over 20 known languages. These include: Spanish, Vietnamese, Farsi, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Armenian, Indonesian, Russian, and many others.