Welcome to First Hexter, CHS Dragons!  

This school year came around in a hurry...I feel like I had just started summer break two weeks ago...so things seem to be moving at breakneck speed.  I hope that your summer went well...one of the few things that my wife and I did was to take a vacation to Mexico...it was a blast!   We are getting this learning page adjusted BEFORE the official start of the 2025-26 school year...  "So yeah..." (to take a two-word phrase from my step-daughter, McKenzie, who just graduated from cosmetology school last year).

For those of you that don't know me or have not had me in class, I was born in Arlington Heights, Illinois the same year the Beatles came to America, quickly established my allegiance to the Chicago White Sox (ugh...one of the WORST teams in all of Major League Baseball), "da Bears,"  and the Land of Lincoln, in general.  In 1974 (FIFTY-ONE years ago...yikes!), my family moved to the great state of Colorado, where my dad and uncle purchased a candy store in Loveland that we owned and operated for most of the next fifteen years.  So yes, I am probably the ONLY history teacher in the state of Colorado who actually MADE candy for a living during my teens and early twenties.  I loved that job, and my favorite candy, by the way, was something called "Heavenly Hash," made with chocolate, homemade marshmallow, and pecans....DEE-LICIOUS!!!!!  Hey, I have a proposition for you:  if you read this, come into my classroom and tell me what I wrote here and what my favorite candy was, I will buy you something from Cassidy's Snack Shack...just once per student this hexter.  After my parents sold the candy shop, I sold real estate for a year before going to Aims Community College and the University of Northern Colorado, graduating in 1996.  I started my teaching career at a small K-12 school in southeastern Colorado in 1997, teaching all social studies classes, including reading, speech, and yearbook.  I left there to get married in 2015, and began teaching at Centennial, literally TWO DAYS later (my wife was really thrilled about that).  I'm a big sports fan...LOVE the Nuggets (and am excited for the upcoming season), am a BIG FAN of the Denver Broncos (with big expectations for this season), and I just don't talk about my White Sox at this point...but am hopeful that they are heading in the right direction!  So, I am ready to start my eleventh year at Centennial and my twenty-ninth year of teaching overall, and really love what I do and being here at this wonderful place.

I hope you all are excited and ready to start the 2025-26 school year.  We all hope that this year goes a lot better than last year, and the early returns say it will.  So I am stoked about the upcoming hexter and, as always, I believe it's important that you show up, keep your eyes on the prize and move towards your ultimate goal of graduation.  I hope all is well within your family...that everyone in your sphere is healthy and that you are ready begin the first hexter of this educational journey!  I just want you all to know that I am here to help you through the academics of American history and humanities, and that if you need someone to talk to, that I am here for you in that role as well.  This learning page is kind of the "home-base" for our class. I always remember that, as a kid, if I got lost, I would always remember where home was and find my way there...and believe me, even as an adult, I GET LOST...A LOT!!!  Just ask my wife, Megan, or any number of people that I work with.  If anyone needs a home base, it's me!  With that in mind, I hope that you find this "learning page" a helpful tool to reference if you get lost and need to find that base to start from again.  With that in mind, let's have a great hexter and a great New School Year ahead.  I look forward to seeing you all in class!