Welcome to Mr. Bertrand's Classroom Website

I want to welcome each and every one of my students and their parents to my helpful little website for class this semester and I also want to express my hopes that everyone in the DHS family has a wonderful and fruitful Semester.

This website will be an excellent resource for students and parents who want to keep an eye on activities in class and keep your finger on the pulse of weekly lessons. On this website you can find details about what events are going on in class during the current week and what homework has been assigned, along with test dates, vacation dates, report card dates and pretty much anything to do with my class.

Due dates for tasks are also included here, as well as dates for upcoming assessments. You can also find links to important resources for class such as websites with our reading assignments and documents of significance, such as our class syllabus, parent letters and test study guides.

This information and even more specific classroom activity information is available on the student's Google Classroom Account, so if you are a parent that wants a direct view into your student's work, please check out their Google Classroom accounts.

Please make sure you have access to your grades through PowerSchools parent and student portals. If you do not have your password and id, please check with the front office for the proper forms. Students may access their grades on PowerSchools by checking with the counseling department for their password.

For those that are curious about your teacher's background, here is a little bio on my professional career. I attended the University of Southwestern Louisiana, currently the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and was awarded my Bachelor of Arts degree in social studies education. This is my 27th year of teaching and I have been a teacher at Destrehan High School for 26 of those 27 years.

In my professional years, I have taught every subject in high school social studies, ranging from American History, World History, A.P. European History, Civics and Free Enterprise, Sociology, Psychology, Law Studies and Geography.

Outside of class, I have also been a trainer for the Louisiana Practitioner Teacher Program, currently known as the The New Teacher Project Academy and was responsible for the training and preparation of Teach for America and Teach NOLA first year teachers in the metro New Orleans area.

For 4 years, from 1999-2003, I served as Department Chairperson for social studies here at DHS and I have also been a supervising teacher of student teachers since 2004 and have trained student teachers from Nicholls, UNO and Southeastern throughout my career. I am very proud to say that several of my former students and student teachers currently teach here at Destrehan High, have achieved higher degrees of education through their ongoing studies, have become leaders among the DHS faculty and have trained student teachers of their own. I am also very proud of several of my former student teachers for becoming Teacher's of the year here at DHS and within other school systems, and have even moved on to earn their Ph.D degrees and attain leadership positions within school board offices around the state.

Under the previous state teacher certification system, known as LATAAP, I was a certified supervisor, mentor and portfolio assessor for the mentoring and training of many current and former DHS teachers toward their teaching certification.

I served on the St. Charles Parish new school design committee when the district was researching different avenues for the construction of our 3rd high school and traveled to the School for the Environmental Sciences in Minneapolis, Minnesota, University High in Baton Rouge, Adelei Stevenson High School in Chicago and the Vancouver school district of Washington in order to gather cutting edge educational ideas and provide the best possible recommendations to our school board for the construction and design of our very successful Satellite Center.

I was selected by DHS to speak at the Southern Regional Education Board: High Schools that Work Conference in Nashville, Tennessee on the topic of high school redesign and school governance programs. After my presentation, I was published in their publication titled, “High School Reform Works-When Implemented: A Comparative Study of Hi and Low Implementation Schools.” This publication was used by the Louisiana High School Redesign Commission in their ongoing work to improve Louisiana schools.

In 2000 and 2002 I was listed on the Who's Who Among America's Teachers, and I was nominated for teacher of the year at Destrehan High in 2010, 2012, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. I also had the opportunity to be selected by Destrehan High School and St. Charles Parish Schools to present and train teachers at the 2003 NSDC Conference in New Orleans on the topics of Standards implementation and Curriculum Mapping and was especially proud to see the distinguished educator, Harry Wong in attendance at my presentation.