Upper School Grade Report

FALL MID-SEMESTER

OCTOBER 2013

Daniel Bashir

Advisor: Mr. Thommen

Grade level: Tenth Grade

Fall Mid-Semester

English II: The Other Side of the Story Ms. Andrea Decker A

Daniel, Congratulations on an excellent start to the year in English II. I always enjoy your thoughtful

contributions to class and I appreciate your willingness to pepper our conversations with the ambitious

reading you’re doing for pleasure and for other classes. You especially shined in the

prescriptivist/descriptivist debate (even though you also had to contend with being filmed!). In addition

to being a prolific contributor, you are the consummate gentleman, always gracious and kind to your

classmates. As we move forward, I'd like to see you keep doing all the things you're doing–your

performance on reading quizzes and writing assignments suggests that you are deeply curious about and

consistently engaged with the material. I think you will enjoy The Namesake, which we are reading

next. I look forward to continuing to get to know you this year!

Modern World History Mr. Judson S. Garrett A

Dear Daniel,

I was repeatedly impressed with your depth of understanding during our discussions this quarter. It was

clear that as your contributions to our discussions increased, the level of conversation correspondingly

improved. Your sense of wonder about ideas is evident and I encourage you to continue to bring your

well-informed insights to class. Your essay on The Prince demonstrated serious thought and used

substantial evidence from the text in support of your thesis. It is clear from your quiz and test scores

that you are accomplishing the assigned readings with care; I look forward to your continued

engagement in the second marking period.

Upper School Grade Report

FALL MID-SEMESTER

OCTOBER 2013

Daniel Bashir

Advisor: Mr. Thommen

Grade level: Tenth Grade

Fall Mid-Semester

Debate Mr. Guthrie A

Daniel,

This class has shown how incredibly committed to your intellectual development you are. There are

many, many twentieth-century thinkers out there who have interesting and important things to say about

the world (and whose thought has relevance to debate in general and to this topic in particular), but out

of all of them you have chosen to specialize in Deleuze and Guattari, possibly the most challenging

branch of post-structuralist thought, an episteme not renowned for simplicity and clarity in any of its

forms. It may be, though, that as Foucault wrote "this century shall become known as Deleuzian" (or

something like that), and so studying D and G will offer you profound insights. It will certainly make

any other theorists that you study (except maybe Lacan) appear almost pellucid by comparison.

You've done great work throughout the quarter; you're a key contributor to the frequently

unstructured (rhizomatic?) but nevertheless intellectually vibrant discussions that form much of the

class. I look forward to being a witness to your continued intellectual development throughout the rest

of the semester.

Precalculus AB/BC Mr. Skolfield A

Daniel,

Congratulations on your work so far through the first quarter. Although your second test was perhaps

not as strong as you would like (86%), your first test was a solid 91% and your chapter 3 twiz was an

impressive 98%. You are always more than willing to challenge yourself not only in the classroom but

also with extra challenges on the side. Your curiosity is always appreciated, as is your willingness to

present even the most challenging problems on the board. Keep up your hard work on the homework

and assessments as we go into more new and challenging material in the second quarter.

Advanced Chemistry Mr. Wilkins A-

Daniel,

You have impressed me in every aspect of your work. You arrive to class every day fully prepared and

ready to work hard. You have developed good knowledge and applied it extremely well. Your 90%

score on the first test was an impressive start to the series of tests you will complete this year. I hope

you are able to repeat the same scores or higher on all future tests. As the topics become more diverse

and perhaps more challenging, I hope you will ask me questions and take the time to build your

knowledge with confidence. I wish you well with the second grading period and look forward to your

continued success in the coming weeks.

Upper School Grade Report

FALL MID-SEMESTER

OCTOBER 2013

Daniel Bashir

Advisor: Mr. Thommen

Grade level: Tenth Grade

Fall Mid-Semester

Mandarin IV Mr. Corliss A

Daniel, Super start to the year. Your commitment to the study of the language continues to impress.

Points of emphasis in moving forward: work on the quality of your written characters, please — still a

bit spatially challenged; and anticipate and rehearse responses to prompts from each lesson's text — to

help lessen that slight hesitancy. Greater attention to detail and additional practice will alleviate the

former, and more time listening to all things Chinese will aid the latter. Please see me for some

additional resources to reinforce this. Keep up the great work, Daniel.

IS Strings Ms. Fleming A

Daniel, you have been very consistent in your practice and preparing for your competition. I know you

are to have performance times set up before your competition in January. Although you have focused

greatly in this area, I am hoping that your scales and arpeggios are also being focused on as your daily

warmup. You know this is vital to intonation as well as rhythmic steadiness. I feel confident that you

and Annalise will be a good musical match for the Bach double. Setting at least a thirty minutes block

of time when you are here is a good plan. I would like to have you perform that for next semester during

a school recital. The Arts walk is a great place to feature the strings ensemble and I would like to see

you be a group participant as well as solo.

I do miss seeing you and spending time collaborating and hope that the next semester you could join a

small ensemble of sorts so that we can all work together. Keep up your great work and studies. I enjoy

having you as a part of the strings program.