Welcome New Teachers

We are pleased to announce two new teachers will be joining our HGCS community. Both teachers have experience in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe as well as time in Catholic schools in other states, giving us new perspectives and ideas to add to our faculty.

New Music Teacher
Mr. Benjamin Maes will be our new music teacher coming to us with fourteen years experience from St. Anne’s parish and Washington state. He brought his guitar to the interview to share with us the many types of music that will become part of our students’ learning and worship. His references “sang his praise” as he brings excitement to music and liturgies and inspires students to love music. We will continue to provide strings and guitar classes after school and will add some vocal classes for students as well.

New Reading and 1st Grade Co-Teacher
Ms. Jennifer Woodall began her career at Queen of Heaven and taught in a Catholic school in Florida for the previous twenty years. Her expertise as a reading specialist will support our 3rd - 8th grade students. She will be co-teaching with Ms. Sims during 1st grade reading and mathematics lessons. A team of our teachers had the pleasure of interviewing her and noted her willingness to collaborate across all grade levels and domains. We see this as an opportunity to improve our reading instruction, and it is “as if she has been working with us for years.” We are excited to plan both in class and out of class intentional reading support and learn some of her new strategies to supplement our own.