1. Welcome to
In English class, we learn how to think in order to understand.

2. “I think therefore I am” Descartes
Thinking-it's the only school activity we are guaranteed to do for the rest of our lives. So why not learn how to do it well?
Our English classroom is designed just for that—thinking. In life, we spend our days remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating information in-order-to recall, create, infer, synthesize, and problem solve in our daily decision-making.
Learning how to think like this needs to be practiced just like when you’re learning how to play a sport or master a video game or learn an instrument or cook or bake or anything else. In learning a skill (and thinking is a skill!), a tool is used to help practice the skill and it is used over-and-over again, until the skill is mastered. In sports, the ball is the tool for instance, or in video games, it’s the controller, in music, it’s the instrument and in cooking, it’s the ingredients and oven/stove, etc. In our class, literature is the tool used to practice thinking.

3. Let me tell you a story about
PEOPLE WHO READ.

4. Two Facts and a Fib about Mrs. Trahey
I am one of seven children whose names begin with “D” or “K” and half of them are millionaires.
I have four children who are 13, 14, 15 and 16 years old. They all play soccer.
I have been teaching English for over 20 years but was a math major in college.

5. I promise to… As your teacher always give you time
always give you technique
always support you.
As the student
always try
always say “I can”
always avoid making excuses.
I’ve never run into a person who yearns for their middle school days.” Jeff Kinney author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series

6. to Mrs. Trahey’s web page

7. A woman without her man is nothing.
Grammar
“It's like learning a language; you can't speak a language fluently until you find out who you are in that language, and that has as much to do with your body as it does with vocabulary and grammar.” Fred Frith
A woman without her man is nothing.