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Get Ready….Four Days Until Auction!

Greetings Parents and Community Members! As another week is upon us and we gear up for the final sprint (or marathon if you ask the teachers!), I’m reflective of the amount of work and energy that goes into not just running a school but running a classroom as well! Every day I come to school, I’m excited to see what the day will hold. Our teachers are eagerly preparing their classrooms, putting the final touch on lessons, or planning their next SEL activity. I see teachers making copies, meeting with parents, and even hosting before-school tutorial sessions. Our office clerks are answering phones, sorting mail, and managing attendance while our admins are making their way around the building, making sure everything is perfect come 7:30am when the doors will open. Our support staff, including custodians, cafeteria workers, site managers and bus drivers, are all busy doing their AM duties – cooking, cleaning, preparing and getting our kids to school safely and on time. Furthermore, our non-homeroom teachers jump right into morning duties, managing doors, opening car doors, handling bus duty and monitoring the halls. When I say “It takes a village,” it really does! Sometimes you have no idea the amount of work that goes into running our two-campus school and I want to recognize the hard work that EVERY employee puts in prior to 8am each and every day before school starts! We are always looking at ways to remove barriers and make our staff’s jobs EASIER. As we continue to learn and grow each and every day, know that we are always looking at the best and most efficient way to do this so our teachers can do what they do best – TEACH – and our students can do what they do best – LEARN! With that said, so many exciting things have taken place over the last week. To name a few:

  • In keeping with our multisensory theme of learning, Ms. Richards’s 5th grade class threw out the old-fashioned way of learning about vertebrates for a more hands-on approach. Using pasta and gummies for bones and cartilage, they discovered how a backbone works. So cool to see!
  • Our 5th grade continued with their rigorous instruction on Module 4 of Wit and Wisdom with the theme “How can sports influence individuals and society?” It’s very cool to see and I can’t wait to see our younger students grow up and tackle this important module in 5th grade!
  • Madame Dalbom’s 5th grade French class, incorporating comprehensible input strategies, shared some student-written skits with our World Languages Department. Even Patrick Wallace, the head of Word Languages for the Georgia Department of Education, was in attendance and, boy, was he impressed!
  • The 5th graders as a whole were able to attend a field trip to the Atlanta Community Food Bank as a service project. They learned about how food insecurity affects our city as they demonstrated the IB attributes of caring and being responsible and balanced citizens. This is our IB Exhibition in action!
  • I loved seeing Ms. McKinley’s 4th grade class learn about the water cycle. Not in a boring text book but by actually creating THE WATER CYCLE. Love the hands-on, project-based approach to learning I see in her class each and every day!
  • And I have to give a special shout-out to Ms. Haase’s 2nd grade class. When I entered her room on Tuesday morning, she had some young authors sharing caring stories they wrote about others in class. I was in tears with the kindness I was witnessing! P.S. The writing was fantastic too.

As we continue to roll in to May, my days are filled with Georgia Milestone preparation, organizing parent input forms, hiring the best new teachers around and building class lists for next year. I’m super excited about the Auction on Saturday and, of course, the first ever APS Rocks n’ Runs 5k taking place at Brown Middle School on May 4th. I hope you can come out and run with me and our amazing staff! Since the run is to help promote Teacher Appreciation Week, feel free to nominate your favorite teacher by posting on Twitter why this person lights up our school. Be sure to use the hashtag #GeorgiasOwnTeacher by 4/28. The top 5 teachers in the district can win up to $850 for their classroom!

Don’t forgot that I will be hosting my final Principal Coffee Talk of the year on 4/26, 10am in the MC Media Center. While my focus will be on the upcoming GA Milestones, don’t worry if your child is not in grades 3-5 – there will be something for everyone! I also look forward to seeing everyone Saturday or around the school. We love having parent volunteers, readers and lunch visits! As always, reach out to me or a member of my team with any questions or concerns you may have.

Until next week
j

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