Messages from the Secondary Principal and Director of Learning & Teaching

Friday, January 31st, 2025 Dear Secondary School Community ~ On Wednesday this week, our entire staff gathered in the auditorium to view a presentation by members of the Senior Leadership Team, along with Carolina Blanco and Elba Beyer. The purpose of this presentation, “That State of the School,” was to share the many achievements we have accomplished this year, as well as steps we have planned to continue in our journey of ongoing improvement. Please join us at the Secondary Parent Coffee in the Library at 8:15 to hear the highlights from this presentation that pertain to our Secondary School. We look forward to seeing you there! On Wednesday of this week, two groups of faculty from both divisions will begin working on developing ACS Approaches to Learning and ACS Approaches to Teaching. Our objectives are to identify the skills our students need to be successful learners, and the strategies we need to apply as teachers to be successful teachers. This work will guide our next steps o...

Friday, January 24th, 2025 I hope that everyone enjoyed the day off in the middle of the week. Despite it being only 4 days, plenty of learning took place on our campus. It was a delight to see digital photography portfolios produced by several students in Mr. Golom’s Tech Class - the thought and quality of the shots is impressive, as is the manner in which students have organized their sites. Congrats to our ACS photographers! I look forward to seeing future projects.  It was a pleasure celebrating students’ commitment to their learning during the Awards Assembly on Friday. In addition to acknowledging overall achievement, we also granted awards to the top three students who demonstrated the greatest improvement between quarters 1 and 2 this year. This recognition demonstrates that actively working to improve learning yields positive results. Congrats to our award winners! Please find several updates below: Mid-quarter Progress Reports will be sent via email on Wednesday. Februar...

Friday, January 17, 2025 Dear Secondary School Community, During this past week secondary students made an increased effort to ensure that the FLEX block in our schedule operates smoothly. When students ensure that they know where they are going during FLEX ahead of time and show up on time at the correct location, our FLEX block runs beautifully. When students choose to use their time in ways other than for what FLEX is intended or do not show up as expected, it causes challenges.  I encourage you to speak to your student(s) about how they are using their FLEX time. A student made a point of asking me to please keep FLEX going because he appreciates the opportunity to create art in the art studio so much. We most certainly value the choices and variety that FLEX provides and I’m confident that our students will continue to improve and make the most of these opportunities.  We had the joy of celebrating our hardworking facilities team this Wednesday at an event hosted by our F...

  Friday, January 10, 2025 Happy New Year and Welcome Back! Dear Secondary School Community, Happy New Year! I hope your holiday season was filled with joy, rest, and quality time with loved ones. As we begin 2025, it has been wonderful to see our students, teachers, and staff back on campus, ready to embark on another semester of growth and learning. On Monday, our faculty engaged in a highly impactful day of professional learning. We were fortunate to host sessions led by outside consultants who guided our teachers in critical areas, including: Supporting Multilingual Learners Universal Design for Learning (UDL) High-Quality Assessment Practices Data-Informed Instruction Diversity, Equity, and Belonging (DEB) Additionally, our faculty was introduced to the NEASC concept of a Shared Understanding of Learning , an important framework that will help us define and align our educational practices across divisions as we proceed in our quest for continuous improvement. As part of our sc...