High School September E-Newsletter

Just a note to say…Thank you to all of our students, families and teachers! We appreciate all that you do and are very grateful for everyone’s active participation in returning to in-person classes after 18 months of distance learning. Congratulations on making it the distance and staying the course over the past month to successfully re-open the school and provide a safe learning environment for everyone.

We also would like to say a big thank you to Arena Elementary for donating a new kiln to the Pacific Community Charter High School! We look forward to collaborating on future ceramic projects.

Each month I will be doing a “Teacher Feature” in our school newsletter. This month I am excited to welcome Ms. Susan Bernardo as our new English teacher. She is settling in nicely with our team of teachers and student body and our students are off to a good start in her English classes. They are writing everyday in journals, and have been working on a unit in Celtic mythology learning about the role of the bard and storytelling. Next up they will be learning about illuminated manuscripts, and then they will move on to Beowulf. She’s gradually ramping up the level of difficulty in the AP class with more in-depth writing projects, and will be launching into the official AP curriculum this month. Small class sizes in creative writing class allow her to personalize the curriculum — they’re doing some group writing prompts and lessons on inspiration in general and working on individual creative writing projects of their own choosing with her guidance and feedback. Last week, Mark Gross, the facilitator for the KGUA Writers’ Group, came in and led a session on their community writing prompts project, and encouraged students to submit their work to the radio. Some of our students will be featured on the radio throughout the series!

Stay safe & stay tuned next month for more teacher features and classroom updates.

Thanks,
Michele Taylor-Jones, Director