Highlights from the 2025-2026 School Year

I just finalized grades and I’m sitting here looking through photos in awe of all that we accomplished this year. Often I get bogged down in the day-to-day details (like making sure I take attendance) so it’s truly a gift to reflect and review all the good times. Below are some of the highlights from this year.

AAPPL Score Growth

This is the first full year that we at Obama used the nationally recognized AAPPL assessment to measure learning from beginning to end of year for six and seventh grade. The results were impressive! Almost half of students who took the tests grew two levels, (for example, from N2 to N4), and over a third of students grew at least one level. To me this demonstrates the consistent effort and focus students put into this class.

This chart shows the levels of proficiency and scores.

This image explains what each level means.

Expanding our Liberty Reading Day

This year seventh and eighth grade students created storybooks to read to students at Liberty. To level up the challenge for eighth graders, they created an original story! Their creativity and artistic talent was apparent in their books and it was a beautiful trip!

Obama students at Liberty

Hispanic Heritage Spirit Week

This year Obama hosted our first ever Hispanic Heritage Month Spirit Week. Our Latinos Unidos club organized the days and even offered lunch of traditional food! 

Latinos Unidos club painted the spirit rock

Obama Spanish Teachers

7th Grade Conquered Pista Picante

Pista Picante is an epic scavenger hunt within the www.senorwooly.com website. To complete the scavenger hunt students must work together and problem solve. Winning earns you major bragging rights and a super secret song and video (that was PERFECT for our 7th grade class!). 

Community Building

There were so many fun opportunities this year to relax and connect with each other. Here are a few!

House systems!

Obama rolled out houses (similar to Hogwarts and based off of Ron Clark Academy https://rcahousesystem.com/ ).

House Oredna! (My hoodie was made by a 6th grader in STEAM class!)

House Orenda made ornaments for our holiday decorations!

Games!

7th and 8th graders read Llama en Lima https://www.waysidepublishing.com/languages/spanish/llama-en-lima and then we played Don’t Step In It!

Michael and Jacob playing Don't Step In It!

We made slime, played BINGO, and colored to relax from standardized tests.

My period 3 6th grade class had a communal love of pickles. In 20 years of teaching I’ve never seen so much love for pickles. 

The play Rotten Apples. This was my first time viewing the student lead play and it was amazing! The cast, the set design and the directing were phenomenal! 

Looking back on the 2025-2026 school year I’m so proud of the community we built and the learning we accomplished. Enjoy your summer and see you in the fall!

Highlights From the 2024-2025 School Year

 At the end of each school year, before summer, I like to look back and highlight special moments throughout the year. This year there were many! What I find so amazing as I continue this practice is that many things that I've highlighted in previous years continue to be wonderful memories, and we're able to build on them and add more!  Our classes were able to accomplish a lot! We worked very hard and had fun doing it. Here are some highlights from this school year in no particular order.

Kiva Investments

This year for our final project in 7th grade Social Studies students learned about micro-loans as a way to support communities in developing countries, to decrease global poverty. Students selected businesses to invest in then made posters with information about why we should invest in the business and information about the country. Each class voted for one business to invest $100 in. The best thing about this is that the investment is a loan and next year my new 7th grade classes will be able to continue supporting future businesses!

Obama Victor

Few people are more loved than Mr. Dumbroski.. Few people are more hated in 6th grade Spanish than Victor, the egotistical bully from Senor Wooly. But what if I told you... they were the same person? Here I present the video evidence that transcends the space-time-Spanish-English continuum for you to decide yourself. 

Black History Month Performance

This year's middle school Black History Month performance was one of the best I've seen in my decades of teaching. The re-enactments and dances were of the highest quality and the audience really enjoyed the show. It is amazing to see our students come together and shine.  Definitely a highlight of the year!

Dress Up Days

We had a blast this year dressing up. The Spanish department likes to represent during Hispanic Heritage month, the everyone got a kick out of the teachers dressing like students, and a few of us were able to sport the Duolingo cruise outfits from our previous trip. 

Community Tour

As part of our partnership in 2024 with Community Day School, 7th grade students were able to take a walking tour of the Jewish synagogues around East Liberty. The tour guide and Mr. Steinberg pointed out Hebrew on a building. In 7th grade English and Language Arts classes students had read that week “The Case of the Disappearing Words” by Alice Andre-Clark. This article was about languages that had “died” or “disappeared,” meaning that very few people spoke the language. 

The article mentioned Hebrew, and told the story of how Ben-Yehuda had devised a plan to revive Hebrew. Mr. Steinberg was able to retell the story to all the students and we could see an example of how languages are able to stay alive through being taught to others.

This was a powerful, naturally occurring example of how this partnership brings together academics and real life, neighborhood knowledge and diversity awareness.

Food

This year we tried new food like Tajin-covered gummy fruit snacks and Jamaican hot chocolate! I'm very appreciative of community members who provided these snacks for our students!

Lego World

We continued the collaboration with Mrs. Festa and STEAM classes to create a map of the world using Legos! The students worked together in creative ways to make elevate this project!

Downtime fun

We are a work-hard play-hard class! Besides the fun games utilizing our learning we had a great time this year drawing and crafting during celebrations and down time. I also started attending knitting and crochet club. 

I'm so grateful for another year of laughing and learning in Obama's middle school. I hope everyone has a great summer and we continue to grow next year!

Highlights from the 23-24 school year

Every June I love to reflect on the past school year and I'm always blown away by everything we did! This year was my 5th year at Obama, and while I have a lot of things that have become tradition (like the games and music competition), this year brought exciting new experiences to enrich learning! Here are some of the activities that stand out from the 23-24 school year, in chronological order going from most recent to oldest. 

Obama and CDS students outside the African American History Museum in Washington DC.

7th graders to go Washington DC

The last full week of school we had 12 7th graders from Obama go on a 4 day trip to Washington DC. This trip was the culminating activity of a year-long partnership with Community Day School. This group of Obama 7th graders have been participating in events with CDS 7th graders throughout the year focusing on cultural traditions of the diverse groups of students we have in Pittsburgh. We've watched documentaries, visited museum exhibits and shared meals with traditional food from different cultures. During the trip we went to the Holocaust Museum, the African American History Museum, the American History Museum, the Whitehouse, many memorials, the capitol and even met Senator Bob Casey. We hope this partnership continues and becomes part of the 7th grade experience at Obama!

Obama 7th graders reading their stories to Liberty elementary students.

The collection of storybooks made by 7th grade Obama students

Making & reading storybooks 

During quarter 4 the 7th grade Spanish students created storybooks based on stories we had read during our 6th and 7th grade Spanish classes. Students illustrated the stories and rehearsed reading them. Then we went to Liberty Elementary and read the stories to students in the Spanish magnet elementary school! Many Obama 7th graders loved getting to visit their old teachers and the elementary students loved seeing big middle school students share what they do in middle school! We celebrated with a lunch at La Feria, a Peruvian restaurant near Liberty. Students tried traditional Peruvian cuisine! The books that were made will also be kept for our class library in the future. 

Obama's first Kids of Steel Run Club racers on race day!

Kids of Steel Run Club

This was the first year I lead an after school organization. I have a passion for running and wanted to share that with our middle school students. We had our first Kids of Steel Run Club. We practiced weekly in March and April and the first weekend of May we ran the Kids of Steel one mile race as part of the Pittsburgh Marathon weekend! We had an 8th grader finish top female in the entire race of thousands of runners! I'm looking forward to building the program next year!

6th graders playing the Royal Game of Ur

6th graders playing Tower of Knowledge

Games

I always love game days because the fun and competitiveness really come out! This year the two big hits were Tower of Knowledge (a Spanish writing and building game) as well as the Royal Game of Ur (a game invented in one of the first civilizations in Mesopotamia).

Many of the 7th graders in Spanish class wanted to try the crickets (chapulines)!

Food

This year the "Qué Asco" (disgusting) food combo day took a fun turn when students recorded themselves trying the food. It's always fun to see the different reactions to new food. Some students have strong negative reactions and some are surprised when they realize it's tasty!

Lego representation of Africa

Lego Continents

In the fall my 6th grade Geography class partnered with the STEAM class to re-create continents out of Legos. The challenge to make a map of a continent using different Lego shapes on a Lego board was a fun way to learn about geography in a unique way. 

Obama's Dia de los Muertos Ofrenda

Our School Day of the Dead Altar

For the first time this year our school community came together to create a Day of the Dead altar. Art classes created decorations specific to Day of the Dead celebrations. Students could bring in photos of friends and family that have passed to be showcased in our ofrenda. Spanish classes from all grades came down to the ofrenda and were invited to add post-it notes to honor anyone they wanted. 

What's amazing to me as I wrap this year up is how each year we are able to do new, fun, exciting things! I'm looking forward to the new things we did this year becoming traditions. I can't wait to see what we can add for the 24-25 school year!

Highlights from the 2022-2023 School Year

Here we are again at the end of another school year! I'm feeling lots of mixed emotions. Obviously I'm excited for summer and very proud of everything that my students accomplished this school year. However I'm also pretty sad that we have to end the year remotely. I have been so impressed that students continue to show up and engage in lessons online. It really speaks to their focus on learning and character!

This year I have LOTS of highlights, because we had LOTS of good times in our classes! Presented in chronological order (starting from the beginning of the year), here are some highlights from the 22-23 school year!

Calendar Talk

I loved getting to know students by talking about how they felt and what they were doing in Spanish and putting it on our calendars. Every week there was something going on, from birthdays to games to weekend trips, and getting to hear about my students' lives and talking about it in Spanish personalized the class as well as help us get to know each other.

Simulations

For most units in World History class we had a simulation. Could you survive in prehistoric times? Would you be a successful merchant along the Silk Road? Who would win the Panhellenic Games, the original Olympics? It was great to see students engaged and competitive to learn about how life was like in various ancient civilizations.

Towers of Knowledge

One of my favorite games we played this year was the Tower of Knowledge, where groups of students wrote unique sentences on notecards and then used them to build the tallest tower! One of the best things that happened in all my classes this year was the level of positive collaboration, and this game was one of the activities where I saw it the most! The skills used in this activity also helped increase student's growth in our monthly timed writing checks.

Free Choice Leer

At the start of the second semester, 8th and 9th graders started each class by picking out something to read in Spanish. Renowned language acquisition researcher Stephen Krashen says "People acquiring a second language have the best chance for success through reading" and "Picking up word meaning by reading is 10 times faster than intensive vocabulary instruction." Students were able to engage in Spanish text that were of interest and at the appropriate level for them, and they were able to use what they read to improve their writing!

Qué Asco Food Day

I'm just not one of those "food day" teachers like Mr. Bynum and his German waffles 😝, so having anything other than fruit snacks in my SOAR store or candy for game winners is a big stretch for me. So when students pressured me to do a food day, I compromised and connected it with Señor Wooly's song "Qué Asco". Apples with soy sauce? Qué rico! Takis in milk? Delicioso! Oreos in A1 sauce? Mi favorito! It was really funny to see which kids would try the different combinations and record their reactions. 

Class Stories

In 6th and 7th grade Spanish classes a few students worked with our classroom helper Valentino to create a story that was told to the class. These stories were based on the ideas of students and it was great to see how their interests came through in the unique stories. The classes enjoyed getting to illustrate the different stories and come up with their own alternate endings!

Holi Celebration

7th graders were learning about Ancient India in February and March, just in time to celebrate the annual holiday of Holi! All 7th graders got to participate in various activities from coloring mandalas, playing games that were invented in Ancient India like chess or chutes and ladders, and watching videos related to the holiday. The feedback from students was overwhelmingly positive so I think this may become a tradition!

Cinco de mayo Grudgeball

Continuing with holiday celebrations, the loudest fun we had all year in Spanish class was definitely the Cinco de Mayo Grudgeball games. After reading a short text in Spanish about the holiday, students got in groups and played an intense game of Grudgeball. There were tears, there were shouts of joy, and there were a lot of fun.

El Antídoto del Dragón

When you read "14 minute long animated rock opera in Spanish about a princess and a dragon" you might not think epic bop, but if you talk to most of my 6th and 9th graders, they'd tell you the truth - that the princess is one major hero. Seriously, the classes CLAPPED at the end of watching the video. "No temas a las mariposas" (IYKYK). 

Elimination Game

What better way to practice telling a story in Spanish and play a game in Spanish than a murder mystery Who Dun It? The 7th graders loved this game so much they were begging to play it everyday. Similar to the game of Mafia (but without all the negative associations to organized crime and violence) we would get in a circle and I would select who would be the eliminators. Once they were selected, in secret, they would choose who to eliminate. I would tell a story in Spanish about how this person got eliminated (one student drank water and got sick, another one fell off a tube in the Sandcastle lazy river, you get the idea), and then we would vote on who we think eliminated them! After we played the game I would type up the story and we would review/illustrate the different scenes. 

All in all we achieved a lot in Spanish and World History classes this year and we had lots of fun too! I hope everyone has a great summer and I look forward to teaching my rising 7th and 8th grade Spanish students next year!

Highlights of the 2021 - 2022 School Year

 This academic year had it's ups and downs, and we made it to the end! Time to celebrate all that we've worked hard to accomplish! The highlights are in chronological order (from September until the end of the year. 

1. Student Interviews

At the start of the school year I was so excited to be back in the building with students! Even though teaching 9 months pregnant was hard, I loved getting to know students as we conducted "student interviews". It was fun to talk about families, pets, places to travel, and fears in Spanish. 

2. Locura de marzo

I was excited to return knowing that we would be completing Locura de marzo together! This is always one of my favorite units, and I felt the same this year even though no me gusto the winning song. It was so close on some of the votes! 

3. Class Characters & Individual Characters

This year we had the opportunity to create class characters and have student artists draw them as we were creating them! Each class had a unique and special character that had quite the interesting story. Then we leveled up and had students create their own characters. Each class voted for the best character created by a student (pictured below)!

4. Special Events in World History Class

In World History we had a fun finish as we had a Mr. Patrick Campbell from GASP-PGH come speak to the class about Pittsburgh Air Quality (this tied into our China Unit as we compared the causes and effects of pollution in China to our lives in Pittsburgh). 

First period also had a special "chopstick competitions" where JC, using unconventional (but effective) methods, was able to win the race!

5. Growth in Speaking Skills

The final (and greatest) highlight of this year is how many Spanish students improved their speaking skills! We played the Question & Answer game a few times to practice answering questions in Spanish about our class stories and the Locura de marzo, and it was great to hear students say complex sentences from their head! (Using notes was OK too!) For 7th and 8th graders I checked their speaking individually with volleyball translations of our class story and so many students had strong pronunciation and understanding of the story! It was so nice to hear students speak after a year online and being out on leave. 

I'm so excited to build on the growth we accomplished this year! Have a great summer!