I'm excited to be starting my tenth year at Ridgeview Middle School.  This will be my 19th year in the classroom.  In the past I've taught everything from high school social studies to eighth grade U.S. History.  It is my goal for this year to for each of my students to feel valued, to leave my class as more knowledgeable and engaged citizens, and to just be better humans.

This year we will be looking at history through an inquiry-based model. This will ask more from students as far as reading, writing, and participating in activities and discussion. It will also allow for more student autonomy and student voice. Rather than simply focusing on rote memorization of facts the inquiry-based model asks students to actively engage with the material and helps develop critical thinking and writing skills that will benefit them both in and outside of the social studies classroom. I'm super excited for what this will bring to class this year.

Schoology will be the main learning platform that we will be using in class this year. All notes and documents for class will be available on our class Schoology page organized by unit and lesson. This is where you will also find our class Daily Agenda with what we are doing each day, as well as due dates for assignments, quizzes and tests.

Students will be keeping their work and notes in a three ring binder. A one inch three ring binder with a set of plastic dividers with tabs (ten ideally) is what we'll be working with. There will be room to store their binders in class. This year we will be going back to a lot more paper and pencil work. Having something to write with each day is a must.

If a student missing class for whatever reason there will be paper copies of work and materials that they missed available in the classroom. I will also work to make materials available in Schoology. 

Students can expect a mix of quizzes, tests, and projects this year combined with daily class activities. I understand that there are many different demands on a student's time outside of school and I will attempt to keep homework to a minimum. However, there will be times that a student will need to working on a project or studying for an upcoming assessment outside of normal class time. This also means that students will need to be present and engaged in class so we can get the most out of our time in the classroom. 

We will be following the RMS grading policy.