Dissecting frogs in Mr. Preston's class was a very interesting experience for me. We dissected the frogs and identified their organs and learned how their bodies were specially adapted for amphibian environment. This highlighted the JAGS pillar of investigating the world as we learned allot about the environment around us, and life on planet earth in Mr. Preston's Biology class, and it is a experience that will live with me forever. In his class I not only learned a lot about biology, but I also made some of my closest friends, many of which i still have today. The frog dissection marked the very end of my time in Mr. Preston's class, and set the positive tone which I continued to enjoy all throughout my JAGS experience.

Studying homers oddyssey in JAGS English 9 class with Mr. Depreist was a great experiecne during my first year at JAGS. through the whole second semeste rof my freshman year, my first period of the day was studying Homers Odyssey with Mrs. Depreist. I rememebr at the end of the year, we finsihed up all our studies with creatign a map of all of odysseuses travels. This helped me investigate the world more, especially as a JAGS student, as i had never seriously encountered Greek mythology before taking her class.

Mr. Marlatt's engaging history based challenges throughout the year will forever remain one of my best Highschool memories. Mr. Marlett pledged to go without the text book when teaching freshman JAGS history, and this approach to teaching and learning made every day in class a engaging experience for all who took his class. In class, students competed in fun, points based challenges regarding the various topics we had learned in class. Before JAGS, I had never heard of or learned about the League of nations and their actions in-between the first and second world wars. competing and winning this history based challenge in Mr. Marlett's class inspired me to learn more and more about the world around me, both past and present, and helped build me into a JAGS student who had a passion for Investigating The World around them. 

My first year taking the National Spanish Exam was a interesting experience from my freshman year. In my first year of taking Spanish at the middle school, I never took the National Spanish Exam (NSE), however at the highschool I was able to participate along with 80,000 other students nationwide. The test has a total of 66 questions focusing of proficiency in the Spanish Language. 

This helped me improve my confidence in my Spanish skills, as I originally was not expecting to do well on the exam, I actually achieved a honorable mention from the Exam, and got a much higher score than anticipated.  This exam helped me grow personally and greatly improved my confidence in speaking Spanish. Thus, I was able to grow substantially in my Spanish skills, and I learned to communicate my ideas, even in foreign languages, with confidence. 

My visit to the Heifer Global Village in Maryland  helped me understand how other people live in the world. For the first night of the Heifer experience we lived in cabins on the camp, but the second night at camp, we went to simulated houses from developing countries, for example I was assigned to a traditional Mozambican mud hut. we had to cook our own traditional meals, interact with others, and sleep on the gravel floor of our hut. This helped shape my perspective overall, especially in only my first year of JAGS. This experience also coincides with the JAGS pillar of recognizing perspectives. 

This experience helped shape me significantly, as I felt connected to the culture I was assigned to live in, and I learned to understand their way of life, culture, and perspective. this helped shape me significantly as a JAGS student, as I was introduced to this defining principle of JAGS so early on in my highschool experience.