letters to my class

Dear Fans,

I love baseball. I think it’s one of the best things in the world. I don’t just like the game itself, I also like all the things baseball can teach us about statistics, culture, and history. Today we’ll read a story about baseball to help us learn about an important and controversial time in American history.

During World War II, the United States was fighting Japan. There were many Japanese-Americans living in the United States. Because of  fears that these Japanese  Americans would support the enemy, the United States government rounded up over 100,000 Japanese Americans, took them away from their homes, and put them in interment camps.

Stories allow us to see the world from other perspectives. Stories give us the chance to ask questions that we may have never thought about before.

Let’s have a great day,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Geometers,

I am excited to be back and ready to get to some serious learning. This week, we’ll review concepts of area and begin to think about volume. Volume is one of the most important concepts you will learn in fifth grade, so it is important that you are focused and taking responsibility for your learning. We will also begin talking about energy resources this week. How we get energy, how we use it, and how we will use it in the future are some of the most important problems humans can solve.

Please, take out a read to self book and read until you are called to the floor for morning meeting.

Thanks,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Performers,

It’s been a lot of fun to watch you rehearse for our dramatic reenactment of the Boston Massacre. I can’t wait until the big performance on Thursday. I know you’ll put on a good show.

Think about the things you have to do to be successful as a performer: you have to practice your lines, by yourself, over and over; you have to take the risk of not caring what other people think about you and care only about putting on a good show; you have to collaborate with other thespians and help them to put on a show that you can all be proud.

These skills transfer to every other aspect of our lives. If we want to be successful in school or sports or life, we need to do those three things: put in the hard work, risk being great, and work well with others.

Good luck,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Thinkers,

Sometimes I think the entire history of human knowledge is nothing more than breaking things down into their pieces. When you learn to read and write, you start out with letters and sounds. Then you go on to words. Eventually, you’re filling notebooks with pages and pages of stories and poems. For a long time, scientists weren’t exactly sure what was in the human body. They had an idea that everything was made up of tiny pieces called atoms, but they couldn’t really prove it. Now we not only know that atoms exist, but we can break living things down even farther into strands of DNA that hold all of the information about that living thing. Computers exist because humans figured out how to break information down into pieces so simple that they can be moved at a lightning speed with electricity.

Today, we’ll talk about one way that mathematicians break information into pieces so it can be easily shared and manipulated, and we’ll see all the possibilities that offers us.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Truth Seekers,

I am so happy it’s Pi day. I am irrationally happy. I am so happy, I could just go on and on about it. Today is the day we celebrate Pi and allother irrational and strange numbers that reveal something mystical about mathematics. When we think about Pi, we can’t help but think that math has something interesting and true to say about the natural world. These aren’t just numbers for the sake of numbers. They can represent the real world.

Let’s have a great day,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Dreamers of Dreams,

My favorite movie of all-time is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I think I like it so much because Willy Wonka was a creative genius. He didn’t really care what people thought was possible; he had a dream and he put in the hardwork to make it happen.

Today you’ll have a similar opportunity. With your team, you’ll create a candy store. You’ll have to decide what items you’ll sell, what you’ll call them, and how you’ll persuade people to buy them (Maybe you’ll hide Golden Tickets in your candy bars?). Remember the traits of a good teammate and remember the conflict resolution strategies we talked about yesterday.

Let’s have a great day,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Students,

Going to school is your job. Colorado taxpayers spend hard-earned money to send you here. We do it because we know you need skills and knowledge to be successful. We also hope that you’ll add something of value to the world–maybe solve some of the complex problems we’ve created or at least show us how to think about them in different ways.

But what are your responsibilities as a student? We’re going to spend a fair amount of time this week (and the rest of the year) talking about things that good students do and ways that you can return the favor to all of us Colorado taxpayers who are sending you here each day with such high hopes for your future (and our own).

Let’s have a great day,

Mr. Heimbuck

Dear Questioners,

“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions.” –Claude Levi-Strauss

What we know in science is only useful in what it helps us discover. Facts, formulas, equations–those things are all useful and helpful, but the essence of science is in the questions that help us discover new things about the how the world works. Developing new ideas about the universe is the purpose of education, learning, and culture. When we come up with these ideas or the questions that lead to them, the whole world of human thought changes.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck