Dear Students,

Welcome back to school,

I saw a quote today that reminded me of how fortunate we are to live in this country with so many opportunities. Consider what life would be like for you if you were born, like Malala Yousafzai, a girl in the Swat District of northwestern Pakistan under Taliban rule. Malala decided, "They cannot stop me. I will get my education, if it is in the home, school, or anyplace." You know the story, the answer to her wanting an education was instead a bullet. "...on my way home from school, a masked gunman boarded my school bus and asked, 'Who is Malala?' He shot me on the left side of my head." Malala did wake up, 10 days later. Eventually, she would be able to finish her education, telling her story to the world and advocating for more education for her people. Most remarkably Malala had no hate for her would-be murderers, “I don’t want revenge on the Taliban, I want education for sons and daughters of the Taliban.”

We don't face the kind of battle Malala faced, but we have our own challenges this year. Yet, I think our biggest challenge is that we can so easily take our opportunity to learn for granted. George Weah observed, “Education is a continual process, it’s like a bicycle… If you don’t pedal you don’t go forward.”

Dear Parents and Students,

The goal of this website is to put all my class information, resources, digital tools, curriculum, and communication in one place as we prepare for a highly flexible school year. We want to be more nimble this year because we know we face many possible combinations of remote, in person, and hybrid instruction. Part of being more nimble is having the kind of resources that will allow us to be in the classroom one day and at home the next. On Friday the school approved the purchase of McGraw Hill’s suite of digital tools allowing students to take assessments, do homework, and find reference materials online. These tools also include an app! A one year subscription was purchased for US History and Geography, World History and Geography, US Government, and Understanding Economics. At the end of last year we started using the digital tools for our Realidades Spanish curricula and we offer these tools again this year. Keep in mind that these tools, both social studies and Spanish, include an etext. In an ideal world, my students would all have a physical textbook for their classes. When doing classroom instruction, the etext simply does not work well. When doing remote instruction, nothing beats having the physical reference materials on hand. That said, my goal is that when I teach, students are able to interact with the textbook when needed - as long as they are able to have the etext available on demand, perhaps on an ipad, I will be happy. The school’s investment perhaps could save you a bit of money this year if you procrastinated on McGraw Hill textbooks or if you wanted to return textbooks. The McGraw Hill app allows students to save the entire etext to an iPad or save one chapter at a time when using a phone. I still highly recommend you have a real textbook but it's not a deal breaker if you want to go digital (for free).