Dear Students and Parents,

I pray that your family and friends are safe and healthy at this time. I know we are all in a very scary and unprecedented time in our lives. We are going to find out what it means to be a community. I have felt a very strong connection this past week to our Purcell Marian community, and I hope you do too.

I am writing to pass along that sense of community to your family. I have told our students from day one that the math we are learning in class is not the most important concept that is being taught. Being good disciples of Christ is more important now than ever.

We must take care of ourselves and each other. Even though we are isolating ourselves, we really need each other more than ever. Please know that all of us at Purcell Marian are here for you.

With that in mind, we are to push ahead and try to make our scholastic lives as meaningful as possible. All of this craziness will be over soon and we want our students to have all of the tools to meet the needs of adulthood. All of your teachers have been working very hard to learn about all of the tools that are available to make distance-learning a successful transition. Even an “old guy” like me is embracing the technology due to the wealth of experts in our Purcell Marian community. Starting on Tuesday, I, along with your other teachers will embark on a journey we never thought possible. There will be a learning curve at first that will make it difficult for all of us. We will get through it together. Communication will be the key going forward. I will do everything in my power to communicate clearly what the expectations are, and you need to be fully engaged and clear about what needs to be done. Communication should be easy between us since I gave you my cell phone number. Many students call, text, or FaceTime on a regular basis already.

I will post all of the class information on your Google Classroom page. Much of the new information will be posted in a new topic for each week. We will start each class by logging into Hangouts for a video conference with the class. I will give more detailed directions from there. Again, there most likely will be some difficulties not planned for. Please communicate immediately so we can work it out together. The workload for you will not be crazy. If you do what you are supposed to do, all will be good.

Taking care of ourselves and others is more important than doing this math work. I get that, but I think we can do both. We at Purcell Marian will continue to do whatever we can to help you become the best version of yourselves.

Mr. Joe Muenchen

Math Department