When  teaching, ask yourself the following questions:

• 1.  Am I flexible if my original plan is not successful and find another way to teach the material?
• 2.  Am I trying to get my students to understand the material and employing various teaching methods to ensure mastery?
• 3.  Do I try to help them find life application to their learning?
• 4.  Do I ask questions that make the students think?
• 5.  Do I listen and try to understand my students answers and reply with a meaningful response?
• 6.  Can I perceive deeper messages in the students questions and get to the root of the questions they are really asking?

If our Founding Fathers were with us today,  I believe they would tell us three things:

1. To have Faith in God
2. Preserve and protect our God-given freedoms
3. Understand the principles of our Constitution

But above all else, our Founders would want to give us hope that our nation will endure; and to remember, God provided miracles at critical times in their history and there are miracles yet to come.

Our debt today is to pay back to our Founders the price they paid with their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.  We repay this debt by preserving the Constitution for our posterity. We must maintain their same character of integrity, courage, and faith.

The simple faith that wrought miracles. Live by the principles you know to be true, make the …Continue Reading

Report ranks Clark County among last in high school graduation rates

By Dave Berns (contact)

A detailed analysis in a story in Education Week, raises further questions about the accuracy of previously reported high school graduation rates for the Clark County and Washoe County school districts, which are responsible for educating 85 percent of the state’s public school students.

The Education Week numbers produced with theEditorial Projects in Education Research Center show that Nevada’s high school graduation rate was 44.3 percent for the academic year ending in 2008. That placed it 50th in the country, just behind of the District of Columbia, which recorded a 43 percent graduation rate.

New Jersey led the nation with an 86.9 percent graduation rate, followed by Vermont at 82.7 percent and Wisconsin with a rate of 81.3. The national average was 71.7 percent.

The Clark County School District lists its 2008 high school graduation rate at 65 percent, according to data found on its website. The Washoe County School District places its 2008 high school graduation rate at 56 percent, according to a report on its website.

The Education Week article notes that the 71.7 percent national average in 2008 was the highest figure since the mid-1980s and followed two consecutive years of decline and stagnation, and it offered a troublesome note for Nevadans.

“The 44-percentage-point chasm separating the highest- and lowest-performing states remains alarming,” the story says. “The national leaders — New Jersey, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin — each graduate more than 80 percent of their high school students. At the other extreme of the rankings, fewer than six in 10 students finish high school in the District of Columbia, Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, and South Carolina. Overall, graduation rates in about half the states fall within 5 points of the national average of 72 percent.”

Long-stated doubts about the accuracy of the Clark County figures have been a point of public frustration for the district’s new superintendent, Dwight Jones, who assumed the job in November and is in the process of adopting a revised methodology that would have placed the school district’s previously reported June 2009 high school graduation rate at 51 percent rather than the previously reported 68 percent.

Jones has publicly expressed his frustrations with the reported numbers, saying that district officials must be open and transparent about the numbers before taxpayers, business and political leaders will support the district’s needs.

Clark County public school administrators have previously discounted from the graduation figures tens of thousands of students who disappeared from the region’s high schools between the 9th and 12th grades. Top officials routinely argued that an unknown, untraceable number of students were lost to transient families that moved in and out of the region and argued that the district had no way of determining what percentage of those students dropped out of school rather than transferring to schools elsewhere in the country.

The new graduation rate is designed to account for the number of students who start the 9th grade with the Clark County School District and finish within four years with a high school diploma rather than a less stringent certificate of attendance. The formula is intended to accurately account for students who transfer in and out of the school system during that period. The Education Week analysis employs a similar formula.

Pedro Martinez, the Clark County School District’s newly hired deputy superintendent of instruction, says just 10 of every 100 students who start the 9th grade within the school district will receive a college bachelor’s degree. That is about half of the national average, and the Southern Nevada figure is lower for ethnic minority students.

Our scholars at American Heritage Academy study history as a core subject. They learn about the lives of the many men and women in history who helped lay a foundation of freedom for our country. With our scholars’ passion for emulating the best traits of these individuals, they have written, directed and performed this transformational play.

A part from the play:

“These are the times that try men’s souls” wrote Thomas Paine in “The American Crisis”. “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service and his country; but he that stands here now deserves the thanks of man and woman. Tyranny like Hell is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” We too live in times that try men’s souls. Like the Founding Fathers, we find our liberty threatened in our country. We too have our own “sunshine patriots” who shrink from the service of our country, but we still have those who will not submit to any form of tyranny. Now is the time for patriots! It is a time to remember, “the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

At American Heritage Academy, we teach our scholars how to think by using the process of 4R’ing. This learning method is found in the educational background of the greatest thinkers and leaders in history.

The four R’s represent: Research, Reason, Relate, and Record.

When our scholars are learning, the first step they take is to Research. Scholars seek for facts and examine principles until they get to the core truths of what they are learning. They continue this research until they are enlightened with new understanding. Scholars then Reason by critically thinking and building upon what they are learning until they are inspired with new or original ideas. Our scholars know they can Relate what they learn to benefit their lives and address their challenges. The important final step of Record allows what our scholars’ studied to be preserved for future reflection and for others to learn from. The scholar’s record will tell how their understanding has deepened, new insights gained, and what new principles they have learned and are going to apply in their life.

Please join us as the scholars of American Heritage Academy portray America’s First Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 17th from 7 to 8 p.m. Friends and family are welcome.

Our Legacy is One of Faith

Faith in God; Faith in Family; Faith in Country

My road before, has been trod.
My road ahead, clearly marked.

Our faith in God is our legacy.
Desiring to know God’s words, our ancestor reformer mothers sewed into the folds of their skirts, scripture. Punishable by death: by candlelight they secretly read verse to their children. As the pitch and tone of His perfect words were heard in their children’s ears, His truths were planted deeply within their hearts.
God’s laws and principles are unchanging; His truths, eternaI: constant, sure and powerful. These principles clarify and simplify our thinking. They are the basis of our decisions and actions. God talks to us through scripture. We talk to him through prayer.

Our faith in family is our legacy.
Clinging to priceless principles, our ancestor pilgrim mothers, amid the storm tossed seas, prayed often, thankful as their families stepped on new found land. The path continued as our ancestor pioneer mothers crossed the plains and rugged mountain ranges with their many children to maintain religious freedom.
There is an awesome duty to continue this great legacy of faith in our families. No nation rises above its homes. Righteous families are the rock foundation of our society and exhalt our nation.
Tossed by the pounding waves that threaten family values, our homes built on a foundation of faith anchor us. God’s greatest work is always done within the home. Inside these walls, He calms life’s violent storms, subdues raging winds, whispering to our minds, “Be still and know that I am.”

Our faith in country is our legacy.
With grim determination, our ancestor patriot mothers fought with unwavering faith all attempts to rob them of the liberty they had gained in this choice land. Not with sword but with the tongue, they taught their children about their precious God given liberties and with their whole hearts to prefer liberty above all else.
The greatest gift we can give our country is to not only educate our children with a foundation of correct principles but to teach all within our influence to faithfully serve God, cherish a faithful family, and to preserve our country’s faith.

There has never been a more important time to have faith in God, family, and country. We have been born at this time to continue our legacy to live by faith and perpetuate God’s unchanging principles preparing those who will trod on the most treacherous road ahead. May we, with God, have the faith to mark well our path, fulfill our sacred mission, and in so doing leave a legacy honoring God, family and country.

American Heritage Academy strives to develop both the mind and heart of our students by giving them a classical liberal arts education built upon a foundation of religious principles. This classical education includes the core subjects of history, literature, grammar, composition, math, geography, science, Latin and the fine arts. Our teachers use the principle approach to education where these subjects are researched, reasoned, related and recorded by the students. Our students at American Heritage Academy learn HOW to think and not WHAT to think. This approach enables our students to reason and think critically about every subject which will enable them to act and act rightly. They will become leaders of the highest caliber.
Our administration, teachers, and staff are role models of Christian character who are inspiring and live principled lives. They bring the Spirit into their classroom which provides an elevated learning environment where students are capable of achieving their highest potential. Our students are instructed keeping their individuality and learning style in mind. Our teachers do not pour in knowledge but rather ignite fires within each student.

We often think about those traits that make one a good teacher – an intelligent mind, strong will, and unquenchable drive. While these are traits with which a teacher may be born, there is one much deeper condition that makes one a true master teacher.  A teacher must not rely on their own natural abilities but rather focus on inspiring their students.

To better understand what it means to inspire, Noah Webster’s 1828 American English Dictionary says that inspire means to communicate divine instruction to the mind, to infuse into the mind new meaning. In the definition of inspire take note that it means to communicate divine instruction.  Instruction comes through the Holy Ghost. In 2 Peter of the Holy Bible it says, holy men of God spake when they were moved by the Holy Ghost and they only spoke when the had this Spirit with them. The most important quality of being able to inspire others requires that a person rely on powers greater and more powerful than …Continue Reading