Greetings Families, I want to wish those who celebrate Christmas a Merry Christmas and people of other faiths and traditions a joyous holiday season. I hope that this winter break has provided your family with a little more time to enjoy one another and to reflect on the great blessings provided to us. Two thousand, eighteen was a great year, and I'm looking forward to what is to come in 2019. I also want to say thank you for the generous gifts extended to my family and me by so many of you. It is my great pleasure to serve your children as their teacher, and I am looking forward to starting the second semester with renewed vigor to help them move toward intellectual and moral virtue. I am so proud of the achievements so many of my students have made this year thus far. For example, the class average went up in every subject except math from the first to second quarter. And the small decline in math (less than to percentage points) is usual as the fractions unit is usually th...