Thursday, January 8, 2009

Back in the Desert!

Hey everyone, John here, writing from the moderately warm state of Nevada once more. As most of you know, Amy is still in South Dakota looking to advance herself professionally. This blog will be short, as I have only a few items to share.

First of all, teaching and coaching is going great. Once again I am happy to be in West Wendover for my first year of teaching. I am learning a lot, and apparently so are my students. Check this out. Out of the 56 Juniors who took the writing proficiency in November, 39 passed. That is 70%! Now remember that I did not teach all of these Juniors, only 37 of them. You do the math. This is excellent for WWHS students and especially for these students who could not write complete sentences when I arrived in August. This gave me a warm feeling inside. It is really nice to know that I am making a difference. Along with this, one of my fellow teachers told me I am the best English teacher to come to West Wendover in a long time. Of course this comment was not told to me by the other English teacher here ;).

Among these Juniors is a young man named Tyler. I would like to share a letter he has written to Barack Obama. It cracked me up.

"Dear Mr President,
Congratulations on becoming the first African American president in the United States. I believe that this country would be a lot more peaceful and nice if we were to legalize marijuana. We should also raise speed limits. I think we should take over Amsterdam and blow up Great Britain.
Tyler"

You may make whatever assumptions you wish to, just know that he is only one of the many characters I teach here at WWHS. Have a great January!

Love, John

1 comment:

The Eldridge's said...

Oh Tyler! That makes me smile.