As Christmas passes, followed by Hanukkah and New Years, you are left with the sad, harsh reality that you must return to school. However, students return with a new determination—a new year, new me mentality. But Wilson students are not the only members of the community that return different; our teachers also have goals that they are working towards in this new year. 

Jamaal Wise, resident “Big Man” and beloved algebra teacher, has decided to focus on helping the basketball team at Montgomery Community College win the Junior College National Championship. He feels there is lots of work that he can continue to do in order to help the players as they make a run at the championship, and his goal is to improve the program in the new year. 

Another treasured member of Wilson’s math department, Dale Glasspiegel, will continue his exploration of previous years’ experiments to make foods like yogurt, kombucha, and sauerkraut at home, this year baking sourdough bread. His process will start with making a basic yeast starter that he will feed every day, hopefully helping him prepare for being a father by the end of the year. “The starter relies on me the same way my child will. It needs to be fed and taken care of,” Glasspiegel said. He feels that resolutions are useless if people have no intention of following them. Glasspiegel is prepared to complete his resolution because he “watched endless videos on sourdough,” and knows that by February at least, he will have some tasty bread. 

Gym teacher Desmond Dunham is taking on the new year as a new possibility for improvement. He sees this as an opportunity to challenge himself and the people around him to be better people every day. His time on the track and as a coach has taught him that “we can only grow through challenges,” so he is making it his mission to push himself, his students, and his athletes to grow as people this year. 

Last but not least, 11th-grade assistant principal Julian Pineda is looking to travel to two countries. He says he wants to see Eastern Europe but “not until he masters Excel.”