WHY A HUMANITIES PROGRAM?

​ 
Combining Language Arts and Social Studies
 
The essential reason why I choose to teach a humanities program that combines language arts and social studies is because of the profound impact it has on student learning.  When these two disciplines are unified and work together as one to develop the core tools of learning, I believe students make greater progress and benefit significantly from continuing to a degree the elementary school generalist model of teaching.  It gives the students one less teacher and approach with which they to have to deal and unifies two key components of their educational program.  This doubles the amount of time I can dedicate to advancing the essential skills of reading, writing, thinking, and discussion, and allows me the opportunity to know your child better and mentor him or her in a more individualized way.  Teaching a unified humanities program helps me to cultivate the substantial growth I want for your child.
 
The Balance of Teaching Subject Matter and Learning Skills
 
As an educator I am deeply committed to teaching subject content as well as developing students’ core learning skills.  I want students to gain important knowledge in the language arts, to read inspiring novels and expand their vocabulary; in social studies, I want them to gain a detailed and deep understanding of the historical subjects and societies we study, as well as to extent their broad knowledge of world history and contemporary events.  However, on this website I will no doubt spend a considerably greater amount of space explaining my program’s teaching of the key learning skills.  This is because I give them such prominence in my academic program that this makes my approach different from many other educators and therefore makes it especially important for me to explain this aspect of my teaching clearly and completely for parents and students.  I want you to gain a full understanding of my teaching program and know why I do what I do.  Although skills are emphasized in this discussion, please know that I am also deeply committed to teaching subject content.
​