News for the Week of September 9, 2019
Wow! What a fabulous start to another collaborative school year. Thank you for all that you did collectively to ensure a smooth transition for our students, their families, and each other. It is going to be a great year together!
This Week at Brown
Monday 9/9 E Day
NWEA begins!
Tuesday 9/10 F Day
Wednesday 9/11 A Day
Late Start - School Improvement Meeting in Media Center 8:15-9:15
Thursday 9/12 B Day
Friday 9/13 C Day
Varsity football team reading to classes 3:00 & 3:15Coming Up...
9/16 Elementary Back-to-School Night (see schedule and information below)
Board of Education Meeting 6pm @ Central
9/17 Cub Scouts visiting at lunchtime
PTO Meeting in the Media Center 7pm - McElroy
9/18 Late Start with your team
9/24 Staff Meeting 4pm - looking for hosts again this year! :)
9/25 School Pictures
Late Start Day!
9/26 Staff lunch provided by Grand Canyon University
10/10 &10/11 Half - Days - P/T conferences (a.m. schedules)
Walk-a-Thon Dates
9/30, 10/2, 10/4, 10/7, 10/8, 10/9, 10/14, 10/16, 10/18
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| Welcome to our newest little bear, Vincent Robert! Congratulations, Amber and Rob! |
Families v. Parents
You might notice that we are working hard to use the word "families" instead of "parents" as much as possible in our communication. This is intentional in that families is a more inclusive term and we want all parents, guardians, grandparents, etc. who are raising our students to know they are welcome and valued. Sometimes the smallest tweaks in our language make a huge impact.
Back to School Night
We are eager to greet our families this year to teach them all about our grade level expectations and routines. Keeping active engagement and the power of home-school partnerships in mind, you might try to teach families one of your most powerful math games that they can play with their children at home; or even have families participate in a Kagan structure to see how processing in a structure feels. Please share your great ideas with your colleagues!
Please collect a donation of $5 per student OR $10 per family at BTS Night. A message will be sent to families ahead of time, so many will bring their contribution. Checks can be made payable to SJPS. Sara will collect it from all of you and/or from families that stop in to the office.
Schedule
5:45 - 6:30 Session #1 1st, 4th & 5th Grade
6:45-7:30 Session #2 ECDD, 2nd & 3rd Grade
*Our Y5 and K classes held their Back-to-School Night session before the start of the school year began so that allows for fewer session this year. We also intentionally built in 15 minutes between sessions to help with the parking space shortage for the second session.
We 💜Guest Readers
We are delighted to welcome our varsity football players back to Brown School as guest readers! They will be visiting classes at 3:00 or 3:15 every home game Friday to read a short book of your choosing.
Here are the future dates:
9/20 B Day
9/27 A Day
10/11 E Day
In addition, our amazing Sue Punches would love to read to classes when she is finished serving lunch to all of us. If you would like to host her any day after 1:30, please touch base and coordinate with her. Such a celebration of literacy and community!
M-STEP Results
M-STEP results have been released! I am looking forward to exploring it collectively as a team on Wednesday morning at our school improvement meeting this coming late start (9/11). If you want to explore a bit before then, visit mischooldata.org.
NWEA Testing
We will begin NWEA testing on Monday (9/9). The window will be open through September 27th. 4th & 5th graders will test on their assigned Chromebooks, 3rd graders will test on the classroom and cart Chromebooks, and K-2 will use the lab. Please plan to use your lab times or open times per the schedule. Title staff will be able to assist Kindergarten classes as needed.
Social Committee
Let's commit to taking care of each other! Please sign up for a month to spoil our staff via the social committee. The sign-up sheet is linked here. This year, we thought we'd try something new. Your monthly team has a choice to either celebrate birthdays for the month with a staff luncheon or host an outside of school gathering that month for any staff members who can attend. Think TGIFs, bowling gathering, a painting party, etc. Sounds like fun!
Please give your social committee dues to Sara - $20 full time/$10 part time. Thank you!
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| What is your 1% intention? Share with your "swim buddy" today! No "swim buddy" - let Kristen know -we'll find you one! |
The POWER of Positive Messaging
Thank you for displaying all of the welcoming and supportive messages around our hallways. The culture of community and respect is evident to all that walk our halls. Here are a few examples from a recent visit around Brown School:
PTO Meetings
Please sign up to attend a PTO meeting this year! The document is linked here. Please note that our PTO is rotating between 8:30am, 12:00pm, and 7:00pm this year in an attempt to reach as many families as possible. The 8:30am option may be perfect for itinerants or support staff who do not have classes/students at that time.
Ball Cart
In order to ensure student safety with active supervision, we combined the ball cart to one outside of the first grade hallway. The supervisors at the first recess of the day (10:00 or 10:15) will roll it outside and leave it on the blacktop all day. Please remind students to pick up balls and put them in the cart when they line up. The supervisors at the last recess of the day (2:30) will roll the cart in by Ms. Wiley's door. Thank you for your help with this!
Notes from the Business Office
You will find the updated 2019-2020 Employee Handbook and Annual certification of the District’s Technology Acceptable Use Policy on Skyward Employee Access. Please log in and review each of the documents. You do not need to print the certifications or handbook signature page. The Appendix in the handbook has many informative and useful documents such as the Annual Notice for 403b/457 participation,
Please remember to complete your annual Safe Schools training before Sept. 30th. Here are the instructions for logging in:
Instructions for SafeSchools
Please log in to SafeSchools using the instructions below. Please do NOT print the certificates. We will run reports and keep on file.
SafeSchools website = http://stjoseph.mi.
Username = firstname.lastname
Password = not required
If you have any questions or problems, please contact the business office.
The supervision and protected block schedules will be published to you soon. Thank you, in advance, for understanding if one of your preferred times have to be reworked. In order to ensure students have supervised recess breaks, changes may have to be made. Thanks!
Kudos and Thank You to...
Sara for her heroic work to prepare materials, food, and everything else for our first PD day together. You are appreciated!
Our amazing itinerants, support staff, social worker, resource room teacher, and many classroom teachers who covered multiple recess duties this past week so that classroom teachers could catch their breath.
Kelly N. for her help with managing common area processes to ensure smooth sailing for our students.
Kevin and Sue for getting everything set up for our Ice Cream Social and Y5/K Orientation events.
Carol, Kristi and Megan for assisting with our youngest students throughout the week and beginning our screeners and benchmarking assessments.
Ashley, Amber, and Stephanie for your team preparation to ensure a smooth transition for your students.
Everyone for your work to prepare for the coming of the school year so that we could share an amazing first week together!
Do you share class content on a weekly blog? If so, please email me your link so that I can link it to our family blog every weekend! If not yet, do you want to learn? Andrew and Amy are happy to help - let us know! A simple link could be added to your itsLearning page and updates could all be made via Blogger.
