CSD Fremont, High School Department

September 2024

(Front row; left to right) Sinju Engineer, James O'Brien, Lorraine Flores, Jessica Olsen, Heather Ainsley, Samantha Braidi, Molly Christensen, Anna Woodbury, Stacy Eilbert, Sutha Ramanathan, Nicolas Conway, Susana Acosta, Jeana Williams, Jian Huang, Vanessa Cristobal, Rosalyn Ramos-Barry, and Lacey Kotake. (Middle row; left to right) Kevin Bella, Ann Lynn Parker, Darah Odelson, Malik Amann, Emily Sidansky, Mat Domenichini, Ty Kovacs, Jair Portillo, Scott Swanson, Krisopher Hatch, Jeff Mosher, Michelle Aguilar, Rona Lev, and Amy Eshelman. (Last row; left to right) Jay Conley, Michael Sidansky, Andrew Phillips, Gabe Leung, Mark Carney, Jimel Brightly-Wright, Stuart Ikeda, Jason Kulchinsky, Frank Germinario, Clark Brooke, Alan Davary, Billy Raby-Brown, and JR Goff

Our Eagle Walk of the 2024-2025 Academic Year

by Clark Brooke

Administrative Principal

We hosted a week-long Eagle Walk orientation for our students on various topics relevant to their learning experience at CSD. On Monday, upon our students’ arrival, they attended a Welcome Back assembly hosted by our Student Body Government leaders. The following information was shared and conducted with our students throughout the day:

Individual School Picture: every student had the chance to have their school photo taken for the 2024-2025 school yearbook.
Icebreaker Activity: coordinated by the Physical Education department to connect students with one another.
Freshman and Sophomore Student Support Liaison (SSL) Workshop: explained the services available by our wonderful SSLs.
Soar Sign-up Training: covered topics on how students could sign up for enrichment experiences, Unity of Diversity Clubs, and Academic Support time.
Class Meetings: conducted by the Junior and Senior student representatives to get started on the school year.
Technology Workshop: acquainted our students with how to get connected with their own accounts that are used for instructional purposes.
HS Culture Workshop: discussed student accountability and expectations with all students.
Schedule Scavenger Hunt: an activity that allowed our students to meet all of their teachers according to their class schedule.
Organization and Clubs Workshop: presented to all of our students to familiarize them with club and leadership opportunities that they can participate in.
Career Center Workshop: shared important information on how students can utilize the career center services for the purpose of planning their transition to post-high school educational and/or work opportunities.
Counseling Department Workshop: discussed ways that our students can receive mental-health support/services.

With all of the activities listed above, we could see our students started off their first week with a sense of positivity. All students had the opportunity to make changes to their class schedules and communicate any specific needs with our team.

Meet the High School Department

From left to right: Jair Portillo, Emily Sidansky, Samantha Braidi, Anna Woodbury, Sutha Ramanathan, Scott Swanson, Andrew Phillips

It's Hip to be Squared!

by Samantha Braidi

Math Department Lead Teacher

If we had to choose a quote that describes our view of mathematics, it would be, “Mathematics is not about numbers, equations, computations, or algorithms; it is about understanding.”

Our Math Department works together to promote our students’ critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills they will need to be successful!

CSD High School Mathematics Department offers courses that are aligned with the Common Core Standards & newly updated framework: Math, General Math, Beginning Algebra 1A & 1B, Algebra 1A & 1B, Algebra 1, Conceptual Geometry, Geometry, Algebra 2, PreCalculus, Calculus, and Personal Finance. Our teachers in the department this year are Samantha Braidi, Algebra 1B & PreCalculus; Andrew Phillips, Beginning Algebra 1A & 1B and Algebra 2; Jair Portillo, Beginning Algebra 1B, Algebra 1A, and Geometry; Suthaharan Ramanathan, Beginning Algebra 1A & 1B, Conceptual Geometry, and Personal Finance; Emily Sidansky, Geometry; Scott Swanson, Math; and Anna Woodbury, Algebra 1A, Calculus, and Personal Finance. We look forward to working with the students this year!

We are excited to share that one of our teachers, Samantha Braidi, will be attending the 2024 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) conference with a few other CSD Elementary and Middle School Math teachers in Chicago, IL, from September 25th to September 28th! We look forward to seeing what Samantha has to bring from the conference!

From left to right: Malik Amann, Lorraine Flores, AnnLynn Parker, Stacy Eilbert, Molly Christensen, Susana Acosta

Social Studies Rocks!

By Stacy Eilbert

Social Studies Department Lead Teacher

“Learn from the past, live in the present, plan for the future” is what Social Studies is all about!

CSD Social Studies Department offers courses that are aligned with the California standards & framework as well as some elective courses: Ethnic Studies, World History, US History, Government & Economics, Social Studies 1 & 2 as well as International Studies. Our teachers in the department this year are as follows: Susana Acosta, World History & International Studies; Malik Amann, a bit of all subjects; Molly Christensen, Government and Economics; Stacy Eilbert, US History; Lorraine Flores and Ann Lynn Parker both teaching Ethnic Studies.

It’s already an exciting year kicking off with some big headlines! We started this school year with the news that the Class of 2024’s proposal for highway signs to signal which exit California School for the Deaf was passed through the Assembly and is awaiting the governor’s signature! This year’s International Studies group will be visiting Amsterdam and Belgium in April of 2025! And last but not least, it's an election year! We’ve partnered with Gallaudet’s Center for a Democratic Deaf America (CDDA) and SignVote, in which voters’ education through ASL will be developed. Our students will learn about various issues regarding this year’s elections and hold a mock debate and election. Here’s to a wonderful school year in which our students shall learn, experience, and thrive!

From left to right: Mark Carney, Emily Sidansky, Kristopher Hatch, Anna Woodbury, and Jair Portillo

Science/Health Education:

Ready to Explore!

By Anna Woodbury

Science Department Lead Teacher

The Science and Health Education teachers are excited for another great year of investigation and exploration. A huge welcome from our department teachers:

Mark Carney: The Living Earth (Biology) and Chemistry

Kristopher Hatch: Health Education

Jair Portillo: General Science

Emily Sidansky: Integrated Science and Chemistry

Anna Woodbury: Physics

We look forward to a year of growth with many opportunities for hands-on learning both on and off campus. Our freshmen high school students will explore through Health Education and Integrated Science classes. Health Education students will have fun learning about healthy living. They will become more aware of personal responsibility, behavior effects, growth, development, and critical thinking about health-related matters. We will promote physical safety, mental health, emotional well-being, and healthy relationships through different hands-on activities, field trips, and projects. Integrated Science also has an exciting year ahead. Students will learn about different fields of science - life, physical, space, and earth science. Students will have the opportunity to apply their knowledge and creativity through hands-on experiments and several exciting science projects planned throughout the year. Visits to the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose and the Tri-City Health Center are some of our planned excursions this year.

Our returning students (10th through 12th grade) will explore in a variety of ways through their physical science(Chemistry and Physics) and life science (The Living Earth) classes. Life science students will continue an ongoing project to develop a Human Anatomy e-book, which includes the different human systems. Students research the different systems and compile information to include a caption-embedded ASL video. This infographic-rich e-book builds up our ASL corpus for science and will benefit our future students as well. Students in physical science classes will participate in engaging labs, hands-on explorations, self-designed investigations, and simulations to better understand the world around them. Field trips to the Oakland Museum of California and Stanford University are some of the off-campus activities planned for this year.

(Left to right) AnnLynn Parker, Darah Odelson, Frank Germinario, Ty Kovacs, Michael Sidansky, Mat Dominchini, and Lorraine Flores

Bilingual Language Arts:

Discovering the Extraordinary in the Mundane.

by Michael Sidansky

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

-Boris Pasternak

Bilingual Language Arts teachers continue to drum up fantastic literary materials to engage with and inspire students to embrace the act of reading, writing, and public speaking as an essential component of their daily lives. We are thrilled to kick off the new academic year with two incredible veteran teachers joining the team: AnnLynn Parker and Mat Domenchini.

In grappling with the everyday world, our teachers are eager to help students understand their relationship with language and the world around them. The fresh-faced freshmen will receive a taster platter tour of literature with Ann Lynn and Darah Odelson, covering a wide variety of mediums within English Literature, such as short stories, novels, plays, and poetry. The sophisticated sophomores will explore creative works from around the world alongside Michael Sidansky, and they will encounter diverse cultures in places such as South Eastern Asia, Africa, and Latin America while grappling with the history of colonialism in those spaces. Juniors in their junior year will be page-turning through the great American stories, flipping through the nation’s brightest chapters and darkest footnotes with Mat Domenchini. Seniors, armed with their seniority, will dive into dystopian literature with Frank Germinario to explore the lurking dangers when social contracts are not honored. Ty Kovacs’ ASL class will teach students self-advocacy while bridging the gap between themselves and the Deaf Culture as they explore their place in Deaf History. Lorraine Flores’s ASL class will be on a search for the meaning of Deafhood means and explore the lives of the individual Deaf and Hard of Hearing and how we can navigate the system where there are countless barriers. In addition to those themes, we endeavor to develop students’ critical thinking skills, bolster their public speaking abilities, foster their essay writing capabilities, hone their grammar fundamentals, and create opportunities for their vocabulary acquisition.

The BLA teachers here are thrilled to meet the students who will be working with them during the 2024-2025 academic year. Together, we cannot wait to foster students’ connections with their language and all the worlds they inhabit!

Career Technical and Education Department

by Jason Kulchinsky

CTE Department Lead Teacher

The Career Technical and Education department is proud to share the diverse experiences of our talented teachers. Our instructors are credentialed professionals with extensive backgrounds in their fields, bringing real-world knowledge to our students.

- Mimi Aguilar worked in a Deaf service agency for over 15 years and is now sharing her experiences in the Consumer Services courses.

- Kevin Bella, a former video store owner from the pre-online streaming era, teaches students about job applications, job searching, and interview skills in the Career Awareness program. Leah Bornstein also teaches in this area.

- Jay Conley, who owned a construction business for over ten years, shares his in-depth knowledge in the Wood Technology courses.

- Sinju Engineer, with ten years of experience in biotechnology, teaches Biotech courses, some of which offer college dual credit.

- Maureen Klusza is well-known in the Deaf community for her artistic abilities, which she brings to her Digital Media courses.

- Jason Kulchinsky, who has over ten years of experience in the Information Technology and Manufacturing industries, is teaching a new course on Robotics this year.

- Gabe Leung, who previously designed and developed collectible figurines, now teaches Yearbook and college dual-credit courses.

- Jeff Mosher, who has worked in the tool-making industry for over 15 years, shares his extensive experience in construction technology courses.

Together, we endeavor to prepare the students for the careers of tomorrow!

Robotic V5

by Jason Kulchinsky

The High School Career Technical and Education department is excited to introduce a new course this year, Robotics V5. In this course, students will learn how to assemble robotic parts and operate machines. This skill will help students develop critical thinking abilities and problem-solving skills. We hope to compete with other schools this year and make significant progress. Stay tuned for updates on the course's development.

Make A Positive Conservation Impact

by Nicolas Conway and Jimel Brightly-Wright

Welcome to Student Support Liaison’s Corner with your favorite SSLs, Jimel Brightly-Wright and Nicolas Conway. To our students and their families, welcome back to CSD for the 2024-2025 academic year! To our new students and families, a hearty welcome to CSD, Fremont! We have some exciting news to share with you on how we plan to support our youth leaders of the future.

We (Nick and Jimel) are thrilled to be able to support students for our second year! This year we hope to make it even better than the last! We have a lot of ideas to support our students so that they can succeed this year in academics and, furthermore, in life beyond high school. This year, Jimel, along with school counselors Valerie Farr and Jayne Spaeth, brought back an important program called Peer Advocates (previously known as Peer Advisors). We brought it back because we saw an important need for student growth, supporting new students, and awareness of important topics that students may not be exposed to in their everyday lives but impart valuable knowledge. There was a Peer Advocate program at Gallaudet University, and it had a huge impact on people. It gave all participants many valuable skills and experiences, and we look forward to seeing how it impacts our CSD Eagles community!

There will be a few changes this year for the better because we have felt this is the best suit for our students to thrive, along with the support of high school administrators. This year, freshmen and sophomores are expected to participate in SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) during SOAR block time, which the SSLs will run. In the meanwhile, the juniors and seniors will be engaged in their class meetings to plan and execute their events to fundraise their big senior trip at the end of the school year. Through our lens, all those grades receive SEL learning moments because they are invested in interacting, building rapport through teamwork, and communicating to fit various students.

Keep an eye out for the SSL Corner in the future editions of the High School Department Newsletter!

Counseling Connections

by Nancy Mosher

During the first week of school, our School Counselors met with students during SOAR to introduce the Counseling Department and play a game of Family Feud with fun questions. School counselors explained our counseling services, which include IEP counseling and Personal Growth (non-IEP) counseling services for up to 5 sessions by student request. Our counseling services are a safe and confidential place for students to share their feelings and learn different types of skills to help them with self-regulation, conflict management, stress management, and coping skills. We also reminded students that the back of their School Picture ID has crisis information they can use during non-school hours. Our school social worker explained her role and emphasized the importance of personal safety skills and the support available.

During the school year, we will continue to provide social-emotional learning workshops in collaboration with High School staff.

We look forward to a year of building and maintaining connections with our students, our CSD families, and the staff. If you have any questions or concerns about your child, please reach out to Nancy Moser, Supervisor for Counseling Services at nmoser@csdf-cde.ca.gov or by phone at 510-344 6054.

Girls Volleyball team at Quarry Lane in Dublin

Boys Football team at Fresno Christian

EAGLE Nation!

by Jeff Bibb

Our student-athletes have begun their fall season in Volleyball, Cross-Country, and Football. I am proud to see them put their hard work into action. The final roster will be released by the end of the week as some teams are at the end of the tryout period.

Volleyball squad participated in the Varsity Stockton Classic tournament. Their first match was at 9 am and played the final match at 3 pm. The girls gained valuable experience in competitive play and maintaining their focus for the entire day. They played against Kimball, Waterford, Franklin, and Stagg High School, winning one match and finishing 8th out of 12 teams.

Cross-Country competed in Lodi at the Flame Invitational 5K run. Out of 119 runners, Sevan Ikeda finished 4th with a time of 15:56.36, while Leonardo Hatch completed the race with a time of 22:15.34.

Football traveled north to Santa Rosa for the Football Jamboree, hosted by Roseland University Preparatory School. CSD played against Elsie Allen, Stuart Hall, and Roseland. Our boys battled hard and identified areas they need to work on to prepare for their first game.

Sevan Ikeda's 4th-place win at Lodi!

Leonardo Hatch crosses the finish line at 22:15.34 at Lodi