Shaping Your Future – for the Near and Long Term

Congratulations for all of your hard work this week. A record number of students handed in a study guide and therefore were successful on the mid-term. Job well done!

We are at the half way point in the school year. This is a perfect time to pause and reflect on your track record and plan for the second half of the year. For those of you who are meeting standard — keep up the good work. For those of you who have been struggling, let’s put together a corrective action plan: a more serious approach to your studies, doing the homework, staying after for extra help, and making up missed work after being out. It is your choice!

State of the Union Address

While we were focused on mid term exams, President Obama delivered his first State of the Union Address on January 27. We had the opportunity to review some of the photos of the event and a short clip from the news. While many of the topics covered by the address seem very distant to you, keep in mind that the decisions made in Washington impact you and your families. If you need federal loans to attend college, if you want to borrow money to buy a car, if you are planning on joining the military in hopes of them helping you with college costs, then you should be interested in the decision making process in DC. In addition, if you have family members receiving Social Security or who are struggling with unemployment or a member who has retired from the military, all of these support programs are controlled by Congress. So keep an eye on the action in DC as these decisions impact your life.

Haiti Fund Raisers

Our GSA and Leo Clubs are continuing with their fund raising efforts for Haiti. Make sure to take the time to help out these organizations who are doing their part to help the people of Haiti. The Newport Daily News had a great front page article on Gaudet and their successful fund raiser that netted over $4,000!

CWI

This week we started a new unit on the Great Depression. Our focus second semester will emphasize Modern America in a Global World. We will be looking at the Depression of the 1930’s and comparing it to the worldwide recession of today. We started with an UpFront reading, focus questions and an effort to collect new vocabulary words. This unit gives us the opportunity to talk about money. You have to be smart about money and know how it can work for you or how it can lead to big problems. As young adults who will be out on your own in a few short years, learning the importance of budgeting, saving, investing, and credit is essential. You don’t want to be someone who starts off their adult life with all consuming debt.

In addition to the reading, you have your first current event due on February 3. The event must be about business or economics. It can be a national or international story. Keep in mind that most newspapers and web sites have a business section. In addition to the regular current event information, you should be looking for new vocabulary words.

Finally, take the time to speak with family members about their experiences with economic slow downs. You may have a family member who can tell you stories about the Great Depression or someone who lived through the economic slow downs of the early 1970’s. You can even talk about how your family may be coping with today’s recession. Have you reduced spending by cutting back on Friday pizza nights...maybe renting DVDs instead of going to the movies...carpooling instead of everyone driving in different directions...the list goes on and on.

World History

We are starting our second semester with the study of Imperialism. You have a worksheet with guided reading questions and we will be using that sheet to collect information from different sources to get a complete picture of why countries became imperialistic. What were the motives of the European countries as they moved into Africa and Asia?

We will also continue practicing reading primary source materials. We will look at those people who supported imperialism and those that opposed this move towards dominating other countries. This will prepare us for our second task which will be an on demand essay .