Twenty percent of your grade is not about talent. It's about whether you'd be hirable. Whether you show up, communicate, meet deadlines, and are someone other people want on their team.
An apronym is an acronym picked so the resulting word means something on its own. BASIC stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, and it also happens to be basic. CRED stands for Career Readiness, Engagement, and (self) Discipline. It also happens to be the thing you either have or don't have at a job.
Graphic Design, Game Dev 1 & 2, and Yearbook Design are Career Technical Education pathways. The point is to get you ready to work after high school or college, and to build a portfolio and a set of habits that make you competitive when you apply somewhere. Gaming, film, VFX, design, journalism, or any job where people have to work together.
These courses follow CTE standards for career readiness. Professional standards, meeting deadlines, communicating well, participating for real, submitting work correctly, taking feedback without falling apart, collaborating, and keeping your head when it gets stressful. That IS the coursework. It isn't separate from the design work. It's the job.
You will not receive a CRED grade without the acknowledgment form completed by both you and a parent or guardian. The link is also at the bottom of this page.
Same weight in every CTE course I teach. One standard across all of them.
You start each month at 40 by earning the six lines below. Infractions subtract.
A brief self-assessment on Canvas, due a few days after each month ends.
The monthly self-assessment is where you advocate for yourself. Tell me about a win I missed, a roadblock I didn't know about, or a month that fell apart for reasons nobody could see from the front of the room. I read every one. It's the easiest way to move this grade in your favor, and skipping it is the fastest way to wreck it. Free points. Take them.
Before any CRED points post to your grade, you have to pass SYLLABUSCEPTION, the course quiz, at 100%. Unlimited retakes, no time limit, open book. Everything on it is answered somewhere on this site or the syllabus.
Every deduction on this page is avoidable if you know the rule exists. Most people who lose CRED points are not being defiant, they just never read the thing. The quiz makes sure that excuse is gone before the points start counting, which protects you more than it protects me.
Retakes are unlimited and there is no penalty for taking it five times. Getting a question wrong tells you which page to go read, then you take it again. Memorizing the answers is not cheating here. If you memorized "two revision rounds," you learned two revision rounds, and that was the entire goal.
Once Discord opens and the roster locks, you have two weeks. CRED points are held until you pass, then they post retroactively for everything you already earned. Nothing is lost by passing it in week three, but nothing accrues until you do.
Ask me something that was on the quiz and I will point at the quiz. That is not me being difficult, it is the deal: you proved you knew it, so the information is already yours. Ask me something that was not on the quiz and I will answer it properly, every time.
Productive, authentic participation. Observing lessons and actually engaging with them.
Respectful communication with your teacher and peers, in class and out. Checking in with me after absences, tardies, and roadblocks. Before they become a problem, not after.
Cleanliness of your desk. Respect for the room and the equipment in it.
Staying current with announcements, class events, projects, and assignments.
Being on time and using time wisely. Posting a daily update with visual proof of progress in your course's channel. Following directions on projects, following school rules, and remembering the passwords to your own accounts.
Positive, pro-active, problem-solving, collaborative. The person others are glad to be assigned to.
Unexcused tardiness. Food or drink at your desk. Not pushing your chair in or logging out. Leaving trash behind. Leaving class without a pass or leaving early. Downloading anything without permission.
Negatively disrupting the class. Accidental damage to equipment.
Being unreliable with your responsibilities or flaking on teammates. Not paying attention to a lesson, doing or watching other coursework, or otherwise being off-task.
Phone, smartwatch, earbuds, or headphones out during the school day without teacher direction. Or a Chromebook used off-task. This includes Nutrition and Lunch.
Disrespectful, cruel, inappropriate, hateful, or troll speech, actions, or "jokes." Harassment. Reckless or intentional damage to equipment. Cheating, talking during tests, plagiarism, or passing off disguised AI content as your own.
Submitted after the deadline a few days past month's end.
Not submitting it at all. Half the month's points, gone, for a form that takes five minutes.
Default: no. Generative AI does not make your deliverable. Generated images, layouts, logos, models, textures, code, or writing submitted as your own work is plagiarism and is scored under the −2 to −40 line above. Every one of these courses exists to build a skill. Outsourcing the skill defeats the entire point of being here.
Always fine. AI as a technical assistant. Explaining an error message. Proofing code you wrote. Understanding scaffolding, structure, or syntax you haven't seen before. Asking why something breaks. This is how the industry actually uses these tools day to day, and using them this way is encouraged. It teaches you faster than waiting for me to get to your desk.
Sometimes fine, but ask first. There are projects where a generated element belongs inside an otherwise handmade piece. A plate in a composite, a texture, a placeholder that gets replaced. That requires my permission before you make it, not after, and it gets documented in your process. Some briefs will forbid it outright and will say so.
Disclose either way. What tool, what you asked it, what you did with the output. Undisclosed use is the offense. If you're unsure whether something crosses the line, that uncertainty is your answer. Come ask me.
Every working day you post an update in your course channel. Not "worked on my project." Every post includes a picture. A screenshot, a photo of your screen, a phone shot of a sketch. Text by itself doesn't count. A real post has four parts:
A screenshot or photo of the work as it stands right now. Ugly is fine. Half finished is fine. A blank canvas with three shapes on it is fine on day one. A post with no image is not fine, and it scores as missing.
What actually got done since the last post. Specific. "Three logo directions roughed out" beats "did some sketching."
Name the blocker out loud. Half the time you solve it while typing it. The other half, someone answers you.
From me, from a teammate, from a client. Asking early is a professional skill. Asking the day it's due is not.
Anybody can type "made progress." A screenshot can't lie about whether the file was open. It also builds something useful for free: by June you'll have a day by day visual record of every project, which is exactly the process documentation your portfolio needs and almost nobody has.
No image. The same screenshot as yesterday. A photo of a screen you clearly aren't working on. "Same as yesterday." A post at 11:58pm covering a day you weren't in class. Post it in the room, during the room.
Dojo-kun is homemade. My own code, running for this class and my other classes. He is not a Discord app you can add to your own server and he is not off-the-shelf software. I built him because nothing else did this job the way I wanted it done, and I keep changing him all year.
Scoring logic, what counts as a real update, how he talks: all of it gets tuned across the year based on what's actually showing up in the channel. If the class collectively figures out a loophole, expect the loophole to close within a week. He is software, not a law of physics.
Dojo-kun does not send your posts, screenshots, or account information to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or anything like them. He runs on plain code I wrote: pattern checks, image presence, timestamps, structure. Nobody's daily update becomes training data or gets read by an AI model anywhere. What you post stays inside our Discord.
The point was never "make a bot." The point was that ungraded standups get skipped, and graded-but-vague standups turn into "worked on my project" forever. A consistent daily check, applied the same way to everyone, is what gets people to post something another human can actually look at. That is the whole point: an update somebody else in the room can see.
Dojo-kun (dōjō-kun: the recited rules of a dojo, personified, and yes he does karate) scores every post, daily, out of 4. A 5 exists. It is extra credit, and you earn it, you don't ask him for it. He cannot be bribed. Many have tried. That daily score is not a side stat: it rolls directly into your CRED grade, the same 20% that covers punctuality, conduct, and professionalism. A month of solid fours is most of that line taken care of on its own.
No post, no image, a recycled screenshot, or a photo of work you clearly aren't doing. All the same score.
An image with nothing said, or "worked on my project" with a screenshot attached. Proof you were present, not proof you were thinking.
Screenshot plus what you shipped, but vague, and nothing about where you're stuck or what you need.
Screenshot, specific shipped, and a real blocker or a real ask. A normal good day looks like this.
All four parts, specific. "Three logo directions roughed, the emblem one is fighting me at small sizes, need five minutes with the printer settings." That's a 4.
A full post that also helps somebody else: you answered a classmate's blocker, shared a technique with enough detail to follow, or documented a failure the room can learn from. The 5 is for making the channel better, not for writing more.
This changed for 2026–27 and it's bigger than last year. CCUSD Board Policy 5131.8 was approved on June 9, 2026, under California's Phone-Free School Act. Here is the whole thing in four lines:
From the bell that starts your day until the bell that ends it, phones, smartwatches, earbuds, and headphones are powered off and stored in a backpack, purse, or bag. Not in a pocket, hoodie, waistband, or anywhere else on you.
The past two years covered instruction and passing periods. This year it's the entire day, including Nutrition and Lunch. That's the real change, and it's the one that will take getting used to.
School-issued Chromebooks are unaffected and remain available for instructional use as directed. Nothing about this policy limits the actual work.
If your IEP or Section 504 plan specifically provides for access to a phone, headset, earbuds, or noise-canceling device, that plan is honored exactly as written. See me privately and it's handled.
Real work sometimes needs a phone. Two-factor codes to get into your own accounts. Photographing physical work to upload it. Shooting reference or documenting a build. When a class task actually requires your phone, ask me, take it out, do the task, and put it back. That's teacher-directed instructional use and it's the only reason a phone comes out during class.
Beyond that, I will extend a courtesy in the last five minutes of class. after your daily update is posted and after your desk area and station are cleaned up, in that order. This is a privilege I'm choosing to extend, not time you're owed. If I see doom scrolling, it's gone, and it's gone for everybody. Don't be the reason.
None of this is personal and none of it is a trust exercise. It's the same reason phones stay away in most places where something is being built. Being the person who can put the thing down for an hour turns out to be a career skill, which is unglamorous but true.
Families: you won't be able to reach your student directly during the day. The front office phone still works and the school's established procedures remain available. If you need to drop something off, Nutrition or Lunch is best. Staff will not interrupt instruction to send a student down for it.
I, the parent or guardian of the student named below, representing any and all other legal guardians, and the student enrolled in this CTE course at Culver City High School, hereby acknowledge that we have read this rubric agreement on Career Readiness, Engagement, and Discipline standards for this Career Technical Education course, and that we will abide by its rules.
We agree that, at the instructor's and CCHS's discretion, access to equipment, community platforms, field trips, and any and all other privileges offered in connection to this course may be restricted should the student repeatedly violate its rules.
We agree to communicate first with the instructor, kiandarien@ccusd.org, regarding any inquiries, misunderstandings, concerns, or miscommunications, and to hold grades received and disciplinary actions arising from the enforcement of these rules in good faith on the authority of the instructor and CCHS.
Both the student and a parent or guardian complete this together. You'll confirm you've read the syllabus and this rubric, select your course, and sign by typing your full legal name. A copy is emailed to you.