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Articles written by Cathy Laplace


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  • Elephant in the room should consider a miracle in our midst

    Cathy LaPlace|Sep 22, 2021

    As I’m writing this letter, 15 of our students or staff in our school district are positive with COVID-19 and 70 students (10% of our student body) are in quarantine because they have been exposed. At the same time, a large portion of the school staff remains unvaccinated: that’s the elephant in the room I would like to address. On October 18th, by state mandate, all school staff and volunteers working in contact with children must be fully vaccinated. That is, unless they have a medical or religious exemption. In our school, we likely hav...

  • Shorter teaching time for students makes a mockery education goals

    Cathy LaPlace|Mar 31, 2021
    1

    The school board approved a new schedule for students in high school (March 22). With this schedule, students who choose to be in school in person will now be able to be in school four days a week instead of two days. The administration is hoping that by doing so, these students will become more engaged with their work and will find a renewed motivation. Unfortunately, this decision comes at a cost: the cost of quality education. You see, because of bus constraints in this time of COVID-19, to accommodate this schedule, the administration has...

  • The opportunity to do what is right

    Cathy LaPlace|Nov 25, 2020

    Like every person who attended high school in France, I studied philosophy in my senior year. I learned about Spinoza, Rousseau, Descartes, Voltaire, and many others. One quote from Voltaire has always impressed me, especially considering the context of his time where freedom of expression was not the norm: “I may not agree with your opinion, but I will fight to my death so you have the right to express it.” Learning about the principles of freedom and testing them in my own life, I naturally concluded that France had to be the country tha...

  • Being neutral is not an option

    Cathy LaPlace|Jun 3, 2020

    For a few years I’ve been leading a group of youth for my church and this year our theme is: “I will go, I will do!” This is inspiring me to share a story that I heard this week on the radio. This particular story takes place during the time when Berlin was separated into West Berlin and East Berlin by the wall. On the eastern side, a police force now famously known as “the Stasi” was oppressing, surveilling and detaining people, often with cruelty and abuse. This story is about a woman who was a member of a group that promoted freedom a...