Greetings, GreenMount Community,
Today,
we officially begin our first theme as all of the back-to-school business is
completed, and the students are looking forward to their first full week of
school. At today’s Morning Meeting we
talked about the first theme, “In a Country, On an Island”. We are all excited to learn what it is like
to live on a tropical island and how cultures develop there. Parents, please
let us know if you can contribute to our learning with this theme.
Today, we also
reviewed our Pillars and have begun with the Academic Pillar and the goal of
“putting forth our personal best.” We
hope that parents will reinforce this idea at home as we will be discussing
this with the students all week.
Attached
to this bulletin is the list of faculty members and their qualifications. We update this list each year, and if you are
keeping up with this you will see that our years of overall experience have
increased not simply because of the fact that a year has passed, but because we
have added staff with more years to our roster.
We welcome Luca Ippolito who will be teaching math primarily to students
in grades 5-8. He has extensive
experience teaching mathematics with young students and students at the college
level. It appears that his expectations
will be very high, and I expect that students will learn a lot of math in his
hands this year. He also was born and
raised in Rome, Italy, and speaks fluent Italian. If any of you want to practice your Italian,
make sure to set aside time to talk to Mr. Luca.
Another new
staff member that we are delighted to have here is Catherine Young. She will be teaching music to all of our
students and comes to us with over 30 years’ experience and glowing
recommendations from former Baltimore County principals, including yours
truly. I hired Catherine in 1991 and can
attest to her dedication and work ethic.
She is an accomplished pianist and is learning the ukulele along with
our students.
Finally, we
welcome John Monahan, a true scientist whose book, They Called Me Mad (not an autobiography), accompanies his other
writing for The Baltimore Sun and his
regular broadcasts on WYPR with Dan Rodricks when John is the guest on “Science
Friday”. The students have already
shared with me that science is going to be “fun!”. I’ll have to speak to John; we can’t have
students having fun with something as important as science!
Also
attached to this bulletin is the Vision Statement for 2013-14. As in past years, we conducted sessions with
parents, teachers and students to determine what they felt our school should
look like in five or 10 years. Each time
we conduct this exercise we come up with some truly visionary ideas. The students especially have some interesting
thoughts, like adding a swimming pool, a second story and a high school. The latter is a great idea and one that
expresses our students’ desire to remain here longer than eighth grade. Maybe if we added a second story….? Actually, that’s not going to happen.
We are also just
one or two students shy of our maximum enrollment, and plans to expand beyond
our new learning cottage are not being considered at this time. We are actually right up against our 240-foot
line of usage in the back of the property and in truth the only way to go would
be up.
But we are very
happy with the number of students and staff we currently have, and the addition
of our new families this year has only enhanced the talent and cooperative
nature that we always enjoy. Welcome to
all of those of you who are new to GreenMount.
Please know that we value your input and I hope that you will talk to us
often about your impressions. And if you have concerns, do not hesitate to
address them with us. My office door is
always open.
Cheers,
Steve
