Young Oak Kim Academy (YOKA) is a middle school within the

Los Angeles Unified School District Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is a public school district in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is the largest public school system in California in terms of number of students and the 2nd largest public school district in ...

(LAUSD), Local District 4. It was established in 2009 as the only middle school in the LAUSD to practice

single-sex education Single-sex education, also known as single-gender education and gender-isolated education, is the practice of conducting education with male and female students attending separate classes, perhaps in separate buildings or schools. The practice of ...

.Connie Llanos
"LAUSD school relies on treating boys and girls differently"
''

Los Angeles Daily News The ''Los Angeles Daily News'' is the second-largest-circulating paid daily newspaper of Los Angeles, California. It is the flagship of the Southern California News Group, a branch of Colorado-based Digital First Media. The offices of the ''Dai ...

'', October 5, 2009.Amina Khan
"Single-sex middle school aims to divide and conquer"
''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'', November 29, 2009. The school is named in honor of Colonel

Young-Oak Kim Young-Oak Kim (, 1919 – December 29, 2005) was a United States Army officer during World War II and the Korean War and a civic leader and humanitarian. He was a member of the U.S. 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and a ...

, the first Asian-American colonel to lead a U.S. battalion in war. It is L.A.'s first middle school, and the third school overall, named for a

Korean American Korean Americans are Americans of Korean ancestry (mostly from South Korea). In 2015, the Korean-American community constituted about 0.56% of the United States population, or about 1.82 million people, and was the fifth-largest Asian Americans ...

. The building was designed by the architectural firm

Arquitectonica Arquitectonica is an international architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, and urban planning design firm headquartered in Miami, Florida’s Coconut Grove neighborhood. The firm also has offices in ten other cities throughout ...

adjacent to its Wilshire Vermont Station mixed use

transit village A transit village is a pedestrian-friendly mixed-use district or neighborhood oriented around the station of a high-quality transit system, such as rail or B.R.T. Often a civic square of public space abuts the train station, functioning as the hu ...

development.Christopher Hawthorne
" Just keep your distance: The Wilshire Vermont Station is dramatic from far away. A walk in its courtyard exposes its flaws."
''

'', October 3, 2007.

Overview

YOKA is a public middle school serving the communities of

Pico Union Pico-Union is a neighborhood in Central Los Angeles, California. The name "Pico-Union" refers to the neighborhood that surrounds the intersection of Pico Boulevard and Union Avenue. Located immediately west of Downtown Los Angeles, it is home to ...

and

Koreatown A Koreatown (Korean: 코리아타운), also known as a Little Korea or Little Seoul, is a Korean-dominated ethnic enclave within a city or metropolitan area outside the Korean Peninsula. History Koreatowns as an East Asian ethnic enclave have ...

, at 615 S. Shatto Place near the corner of

Wilshire Boulevard Wilshire Boulevard is a prominent boulevard in the Los Angeles area of Southern California, extending from Ocean Avenue in the city of Santa Monica east to Grand Avenue in the Financial District of downtown Los Angeles. One of the principal ...

and

Vermont Avenue Vermont Avenue is one of the longest running north–south streets in City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, California. With a length of , is the third longest of the north–south thoroughfares in the region. For most of its length betwe ...

. It is part of a multi-use site that includes an apartment building, retail space, and eating establishments. The school was designed to alleviate overcrowding at Berendo and Virgil middle schools. It opened on September 9, 2009 with an enrollment capacity of 810 students in grades 6 through 8. YOKA's principal is Edward Colacion. The school's mascot is the dragon. The school is devoted to instructing boys and girls in a single-gender environment for core subjects. YOKA also focuses on

STEM fields Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is an umbrella term used to group together the distinct but related technical disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The term is typically used in the context of ...

(science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education as a core component of their curriculum in all content. Accordingly, the school has a STEM Lab and a STEM Library on campus. Students enhance their skills and knowledge in these areas, leading to greater college and career opportunities. Teachers incorporate

interdisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

units and

project-based learning Project-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy that involves a dynamic classroom approach in which it is believed that students acquire a deeper knowledge through active exploration of real-world challenges and problems. Students le ...

(PBL) into their instruction to support STEM single-gender education.

References

External links

* * http://rokdrop.com/2009/07/22/l-a-middle-school-named-after-korean-war-hero-young-oak-kim/ * http://www.pacificcitizen.org/site/details/tabid/55/selectmoduleid/373/ArticleID/451/reftab/0/title/Los_Angeles_Middle_School_Named_After_Young_Oak_Kim/Default.aspx {{DEFAULTSORT:Kim, Young Oak Academy Schools in Los Angeles Public middle schools in California Educational institutions established in 2009 2009 establishments in California