This is my 31st year teaching in Dublin City Schools! It's home. The families and students are so supportive and appreciative of our school community and I am so grateful to be a part of it.

Besides teaching, I value the amazing experiences with extracurriculars. At the top of the list was 13 years of coaching golf, 9 of which ended in state championships. I coached Grizzell's first golf team in 1996 through to Jerome's opening year when I moved up with my team in 2004. I support clubs here at Grizzell by adivsing Student Council and the Investment Club. In 2014 we launched our first Greece and Italy "field trip," then added Turkey in 2015, to follow the 7th grade world history by visiting where it all happened. I want Grizzell to be full of rich opportunities for all students to experience more than just a classroom lesson. It's a very special place on all levels.

I am also a lover of history! I get very excited with so many connections between past civilizations to today's world.

WHY ARE YOU HERE?

The opening day question was for students to find out why their ancestors chose to come here, to the United States, instead of other places around the world. As we study this year, we will continually connect the developments of the past to why we are here today. For example, the Greeks invented democracy. The Romans developed power to the people in the form of a Republic. Our founding fathers studied the past to realize "in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." (from the Declaration of Indepencence, right?) "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That is just one example. We have an entire school year to look at civilizations from the ancient Sumerians all the way to Renaissance discoveries. 7th grade World History will "tee it up" for the 8th grade study of American History.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD the official PDF of the curriculum

CLICK HERE for the recently updated vision statement in Dublin

CLICK HERE for Dublin's Graded Course of Study