Mr. Moriarty's class
I’m excited to get to know everyone this year. I believe in making class enjoyable and engaging for all learners. While we may do things a bit differently in Room 102, expectations remain quite high. If you have any questions, please always feel free to email me at smoriarty@oxps.org.
Purpose-Driven Learning
Enthusiasm
Effort
Confidence
Focus
Resilience
Dependability
Initiative
Creativity
Curiosity
Empathy
Built on the principles thoughtfully put forth by educator Adam Moreno, our classroom is built on Purpose-Driven Learning (PDL). There are 10 words that serve as pillars of a PDL classroom, each of which would serve any individual at any stage of life infinitely well. These 10 words — enthusiasm, effort, confidence, focus, resilience, dependability, initiative, creativity, curiosity, and empathy — are posted at the front of our classroom and we strive to live each of these words daily. In discussions, progress reports, report cards, and various other forms of communications, these PDL terms serve as the spine of what we're doing, what we're building, what we're talking about, and what we're working on. These are not explicitly part of the Commonwealth's Social Studies frameworks, or an official component of the OXPS curriculum, and as such students are not graded on how often or how intensely they embody these terms; though one would surely be an extraordinarily high achiever — in school and out of it — if they were routinely and emphatically embodied enthusiasm, effort, confidence, focus, resilience, dependability, initiative, creativity, curiosity, and empathy.
Shaun Moriarty
In an effort to make information even more available, Mr. Moriarty leverages the interactive and digital world in which we live. He will regularly (at least once a month) produce a video newsletter that will be shared with parents/guardians via YouTube in order to keep everyone in the loop on what we're doing in class. Over the last few years, Mr. Moriarty has integrated his classroom into the social media world in an effort to reach both students and families more informally, in a space they're comfortable, and to help communicate what we're doing in the classroom. As such, there is a social media presence on Instagram, TikTok, and, starting in school year 2022-23, Facebook.
Any and all social media usage is done in a school appropriate manner with the intent of meeting students where they're at, promoting student engagement, and ensuring they have numerous avenues to follow up or get reminders on what we're doing in class. Furthermore, Mr. Moriarty will not “follow” any student/guardian in return, nor respond to any private messages in any of the apps.
Students also have an opportunity to show off their work through email and/or the classroom social media platforms, depending on their requests and parental permissions. For any given assignment, students who are proud of their work may request Mr. Moriarty take a picture of the work (with or without the student themselves) and request it be sent home to the parent/guardian email provided in the school's directory and/or on the classroom media forms. Parental permission is required for any identifiable student work to be posted on any publicly accessible medium, including this class website, class social media, and/or video newsletter updates.