Dear Parents of History Students:

Greetings!  I’ll be your student’s history teacher this year at East Middle School.  I’m incredibly excited to be here and to have the chance to work with your student.  I hope that becomes evident in our every dealing together.

I wanted to take the opportunity at the beginning of the year to cover all the bases with you about the classroom expectations before the year becomes too involved.  If you want detailed policies, all students have a copy of a classroom syllabus that explains things in a bit more detail.  Our class website also provides a great deal of information about our class.  As always, you’re welcome to visit with me personally if I can further clarify for you.

Campus Portal
(Check your student's Grades)
Student User Agreement*
School Calendars
Lunch Menu

Some policies are just different enough that I wanted to inform you before the year began so you’d know exactly what to expect.

• eMINTS: The eMINTS program is designed to provide students with a great deal of technology designed to improve learning.  It’s not all about the technology, though.  The biggest difference in an eMINTS classroom is that students work cooperatively to bring together individual understandings.  The class is taught based on the principles of inquiry and constructivism. Check out the eMINTS page for more details.
• TEXTBOOKS: I have a class set but I don’t usually check out textbooks (unless specifically requested to do so).  The reason being that I use the textbook as a supplement but few if any assignments come from the book. You might want to read more behind my reasons for this in Mr. Weaver's Educational Philosophy.
• HOMEWORK:  Homework is equally rare.  I assign most projects and assignments to be completed in class.  I always provide ample time.  Homework then is assigned if students don’t finish their work or use their in-class time appropriately.  So it’s okay to believe your student who tells you “I don’t have any homework in social studies.”
• PROJECTS: Don’t think anyone is getting off easy without homework.  Instead of daily written and book work assignments, our class centers around moderate to long-term projects that require students to build upon what they learn in the development of a product.  To this end, most work is done in class so I can monitor student progress and field questions. You can keep up on class work on the Assignments page.
• CLASS NOTEBOOK: So how do you find out what’s going on in class?  All students are required to have a class notebook that serves as a place to store notes, projects, assignments, and tests.  This notebook MUST come to every class and can go home any night.  Just look inside to see what we’ve been doing.
• GRADES: Students will monitor their own grades on a regular basis using Infinite Campus, just like you can. Contact the school office to set up your free account if you haven't already.

Thanks for your time.  I’m looking forward to working with you and your student this year.  We’re going to have a great year!