This class is founded in Mr. Lang’s Rule #3, “Mistakes Are Mandatory”. We learn together, forget together, rise together, fall together, succeed together, and fail together. Our class is a team that develops a comfort level with each other, where we can share the best and worst of our lives with each other and feel comfortable not being perfect. REACH goals shape our classroom learning environment and we know we can excel when we work together.

We begin each day with our Morning Mindfulness and Movement, which allows students to begin their day with a no pressure activity of their choosing. We then spend some time working in our two main core subjects, Mathematics, ranging from Grade 7 Pre-Algebra to Grade 10 Geometry, and Humanities, usually working on a class novel, essay, or presentation. After our break, we have Life Skills, where we will learn skills to benefit us throughout our lives, including a Health and Wellness unit that will cover to full spectrum of mental, physical, and emotional health and reproduction, as well as healthy relationships. We follow this up with our second Humanities course, mostly consisting of work out of our History curriculum, and Electives, which is a chance for students to choose what they want to learn, such as Art and Culinary.

Both grade levels in our class learn together throughout most of the day. We alternate the two years of Junior High instruction in Science (Life and Physical) and History (US History and Ancient Civilizations), so every student receives both when they leave TRCS for high school. Our English and Mathematics courses are tiered to align to every student’s specific needs in that subject.

We utilize the Big Ideas Mathematics books to support each individual student with working on skills from prior and higher courses, as well as PeerTeach, which supports student collaboration and allows students to “gamify” their learning experience. We also utilize a compilation of worksheets, direct instruction, and additional texts. We use MyPerspectives to support our language curriculum, along with various novel studies, including the Seeds of America trilogy. During Science, we work out of the Dimensions textbooks, and we utilize our Holt textbooks for History. All of the curriculum is standards aligned and supports a project and activity based learning environment.

We have many projects throughout the school year. These projects include our investment projects, where students learn about investing in the stock market, our community projects, where we work to solve community problems and improve our community climate, and our career exploration project, which allows students to learn about their personalities and aspirations. In addition, we have projects in Mathematics and Science where we plan road trips, calculate human impact on Earth, and conduct a statistical analysis of survey responses.

Our class balances our use of technology with physical resources. We balance our writing between word processing and hand written pieces. We also utilize Google Classroom to connect assignments, communicate via our Daily Agenda, and connect when students cannot attend school in person. We integrate many technological skills into Mathematics, Electives, and Life Skills.

We like to have fun throughout the week and finish our week strong. Our class has two class pets, Teddy and Gracie, who join us each Friday. We utilize our short Fridays to wrap up and review our weekly curriculum, as well as spend time in our school-wide electives program, working with Grade 3-8 students on campus to teach them new skills and participate in fun activities, such as Student Council and Newspaper.