Dear Parents,
I hope that you had a wonderful, warm holiday season. I am certain that you are looking forward to 2021 as much as I am. Hope is on the horizon, yes? I enjoyed some family time with my husband, two of our three daughters, and their children. It was so wonderful to be together again. Happily, my husband and I have secured housing for the rest of the school year. I will be glad to have him here with me. After nine months in isolation with me, I felt a bit lost without him at my side during my first weeks here.
I hope that you and your children are finding remote learning to be do-able. I know it is hard, very hard! But in order for us to hit the ground running in mid-January, we need everyone to be healthy, and we need our faculty refreshed. I am so proud of everyone’s efforts. Thank you for yours.
I had the pleasure of participating in a Middle School meeting just before we went on holiday. During that meeting, I learned from Dr. Freeberg that our Middle School students took the top of the Northern New England regional competition for the “National History Bee” this year. Forty-six of the forty-eight students who qualified for the regional competition were Crossroads students!
I attribute this success to our commitment to the teaching of history. Ancient, world, and American history are woven into the daily program in all grades, K-8. A solid, sequenced, and specific course of study lays the foundation for not only a strong understanding of history, but it also helps to prepare students for the challenges of living in a democratic society. This sequence, researched and built through consensus by thousands of educators, creates a foundation on which all subsequent knowledge connects. World Religions, civil rights, early and Medieval African Kingdoms, the Civil War, and the French Revolution are just a few of the topics of study your children will learn about over the years. Such knowledge helps students to experience higher order thinking over time. They begin to see connections between the past and present, and to make connections to the high quality literature they experience in class through both the Core Knowledge and Core Virtues programs. The history strand of Core Knowledge is just one example of the Crossroads difference.
I look forward to seeing you all very soon. Hopefully we will be together again in less “remote” ways.
My best,
Jean
