Home of the Dragons

Hello Dewey, so welcome all our new & returning students! A little about me. I spent the first portion of my life in the military - the United States Air Force, for many years in education in some crazy locations with combat troops in war/humanitarian locations. My first job was assembling & programming computers, then many administrative/finance positions and educational training positions while traveling the world. One of my favorite overseas assignments was in Stavanger, Norway, as part of NATO. In the picture above, we climbed Preikestolen mountain, a steep cliff that rises 604 meters above Lyse Fjord. Atop the cliff is a straight drop into the water. It took about 5 hours to climb. When I retired, I went back into public education as a special education teacher before becoming the Dean of Students. Now in my new position as the Assistant Principal, I look forward to collaborating with you in education and pushing our wonderful students & teachers to the next level. Remember to aim high and reach for the stars! 

Research Corner: Teaching Letter Names without Letter Sounds - Some people think that teaching letter names are essentially teaching their sounds, but unfortunately, that is not the case in English. Some letter names don't have a sound commonly associated with the letter at all. How do we fix this? By teaching primary vowels like short sounds first (e.g. a, e, i, o, u), as in "pat, pet, pit, pot, & putt." 

Reference:  Connor, Morrison, & Katch "Beyond the Reading Wars: Exploring the Effect of Child-Instructions on Growth in Early Reading," Scientific Studies of Reading 8, no. 4 (2004) 305-336. 

"Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that a peasant's daughter or son can become a doctor, a mine worker's child can become head of a mine, a farmer's child can become president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another."