This month, we recognize Al Dorsch, newly-appointed Assistant Principal of Shenango High School. Al is known for creative and engaging projects for students in his science classroom, such as his five activities for differentiated classroom instruction on human-induced climate change. He published this innovative set of curricular materials in The Earth Scientist (2009) and was a lead author on a poster presentation at the Northeastern Section and Southeastern Section Joint Meeting of the Geological Society of America (Baltimore, 2010). In addition to teaching students in the classroom, Al has taken students on canoeing and ski trips, and he can be found in his school's courtyard with students planting the summer vegetable garden and making pizza in the outdoor earthen oven (where, one of Al's colleagues shares that Al tells the students, "everything in a pizza comes from the Earth!").

Congratulations, Al - for your consistent, innovative instruction and growing leadership in the profession, you are clearly a PAESTAR