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When most people think of things the Northern Virginia community can improve, our commitment to stopping human sex trafficking generally is not at the top of the list. For those who don’t know what human trafficking is, it is the illegal movement of people for commercial sexual exploitation. Teenage sexContinue Reading

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A few weeks ago some students were with me after school completing an essay. When finished, one student expressed dismay at how far Marshall High School has dropped in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. In 2012 Marshall was ranked #3 in Virginia and #55 nationally, Gold Medal status.Continue Reading

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In light of the recent efforts by a local high school mother to ban Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved from Fairfax County Schools after her son experienced nightmares while studying the novel, a discussion here at Marshall began because the IB English HL 2 classes recently read the novel. Beloved depicts events containing a slew of sensitive and offensive topics such as infanticide, bestiality, and rape; it’s understandable why some people object to the text being taught.
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Over the past few months, like you, I’ve witnessed careful construction: a foundation poured, leveled, smoothed; supports set, checked, reset; and new wires stretched, tested, aligned. Though I could be describing the new science wing, I’m thinking about all of the developments I’ve seen from the AVID students, along with Taryn Barber, the AVID coordinator, and the rest of the AVID team.

In August, I participated in the AVID orientation, helping push a few kids out of summer stupor while also being surprised at how quickly most were adopting a new view of themselves as scholars.
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I started painting graffiti when I was a little kid mostly because it was a bit of fun and involved a lot of running and hiding like any other children’s game. It sort of started out as just painting quotes or offensive phrases and then as I got older I got a lot more creative and sort of branched out my painting spots.

For awhile I liked to find places where no one went because it gave me more time to paint and look over my stuff. Now I think I spend about 90% of my time thinking up ideas or matching colors – though I usually only get to paint about 2% of what I want to.

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This year’s freshman class is the first class required to meet the new Economics course requirement in order to graduate. Many people believe that if people learned more about economics and personal finance in high school, they would not have made some of the bad decisions that led to theContinue Reading

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Teaching dating safety at an early age can provide young people the information and tools they need to build a healthy relationship. After all, early relationships play a pivotal role in teens’ lives and are important to developing the capacity for long-term, committed relationships in adulthood. The quality of adolescent romantic relationships can have long-lasting effects on self-esteem and shape personal values regarding romance, intimate relationships and sexuality.

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