Middle School adds new faculty, adds new courses

Meet Sixth Grade English Teacher Yue Yuan and Science Olympiad Coordinator Jennifer Castro and learn about new Middle School electives being taught by some familiar faces.
By Jeff Greenfield, Head of Middle School

Yue Yuan joins our Middle School faculty as a Sixth Grade English Teacher. She returns to Nashville after three years teaching middle and high school English in San Antonio, Texas, where she recently married. She earned her undergraduate degree from University of Illinois, and her M.Ed. from Vanderbilt University with a focus in English. Our students will benefit from her warmth, her creativity, and her commitment to inclusive and culturally responsive teaching.

Jennifer Castro joins our faculty as the Coordinator of our Science Olympiad team and teaching a seventh/eighth grade elective course to help students prepare for competition. Jennifer has a strong background in chemistry among other sciences, and years of experience teaching and leading high school and middle school Science Olympiad teams during the past decade. We are so fortunate to have found someone with Jennifer's versatility and knowledge of Science Olympiad. 

John Westberry, USN dad and former technology coordinator in our Middle School, returns to lead our Eighth Grade Digital Yearbook class. This popular elective takes students through all phases of video production and culminates in an original documentary of this year's eighth grade class.  

Joseph Love, aka doughjoe, is a muralist and a favorite among USN Middle Schoolers who have come to know him through his role as Middle School apprentice teacher last year and through his work with our fifth grade in spring 2018 designing and painting the mural in the 21st Avenue parking lot. Doughjoe will teach a new art elective entitled "Art with a Purpose," challenging students to connect their art to local causes.

Two others are familiar faces around USN but will be official Middle School faculty members for the first time this year as we move two popular club activities into our seventh/eighth grade electives block to allow for more access for students and more time on task. Todd Andrews, longtime Chess Coach at USN and Executive Director of the Nashville Chess Center since 2007, will teach this class and continue to lead USN chess teams into local and national competitions. Bill Wilson, USN's High School Debate Coach since 2012, will now have regular access to Middle Schoolers interested in debate when he teaches an elective of the same name during the spring semester. Library Assistant Catherine Lemaire Lozier is taking over as the seventh and eighth grade ceramics teacher.
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University School of Nashville models the best educational practices. In an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of Metropolitan Nashville, USN fosters each student’s intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential, valuing and inspiring integrity, creative expression, a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence.