Dear Parents,
Welcome to a new year at Sacred Heart Academy! My name is Ms. Kozack and I will be teaching your child Biology this year. This year will be exciting not only because it is your child’s first year of high school, but also because our faculty members have planned an engaging, exciting, and challenging curriculum for our ninth grade students.
This will be my first year at Sacred Heart Academy. I feel very blessed to be working with you to educate your child. I graduated from Hope College in 2013 with a B.S. in Biology and minors in Religion and Biochemistry. Earlier this month, I graduated from the University of
Dayton with a M.A. in Theological Studies. In my studies, I have seen the beautiful coherence of faith and reason. I am looking forward to sharing this understanding of faith and reason with your children as we study biology this year.
The ninth grade curriculum at Sacred Heart seeks to challenge students and provide them with an academically rigorous education grounded in our Catholic and classical vision. The biology curriculum at Sacred Heart is unique in that it takes as its starting point the idea that all things were created by God and are ordered for His glory. As we study biology with eyes of faith, we see that there is no conflict between faith and reason or between Catholic doctrine and biology. As we study ecosystems and the environment, cells and organelles, we will consider not only their physical and material aspects, as highlighted in
Barron’s E-Z Biology
, but also investigate their place in God’s creation. To accomplish this, we will read excerpts from
Aristotle and Aquinas, various addresses from Pope Benedict XVI, and Wendell Berry’s Life is a
Miracle .
An important aspect of our course is the Wednesday laboratory meeting. This component allows your child to gain an experiential understanding of the various aspects of biology that he or she will be studying. Throughout the course, your child will be keeping a nature observation notebook and will conduct several exciting experiments. We will be reading
King Solomon’s
Ring both to provide the students with a model for observing nature and to learn about the complex behaviors of animals. Not only will these activities teach your child the investigative skills used by biologists, but they will also help him or her deepen his or her understanding of the beautiful world in which we live.
In this course, you can expect your child to have 15-30 minutes of homework assigned each class period. If you have concerns about the time your child spends doing homework, I would be happy to meet with you and your child to discuss strategies for managing the time that he or she spends doing homework. To monitor your child’s progress in the course, you will have access to their grades in Infinite Campus. In addition, your child will be keeping an organized binder dedicated to Biology in which you will be able to find their homework, classwork, notes, quizzes, and tests. These binders are an excellent way to stay updated on your child’s progress and to help him or her study for exams.
Finally, I want to let you know that my goal is to do all that I can to help your child succeed in this course. If there is anything I can do to help, please call or email me or, if it is more convenient for you, stop by my room to set up a conference time.
Sincerely,
Ms. Jessica Kozack