OUR GRAY HAWK FAMILY works together to help students feel safe, loved, and inspired so they can be empowered learners and engaged citizens.

All participants MUST attend the rehearsal at 6:00 pm on Wednesday at BLHS.

We CANNOT wait to see you all there!

All community members are welcome! Dr. Springer is very interested in signing up some male mentors that are willing to give up to 60 minutes a week working with individual students. If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact Dr. Springer directly for more information. Thank you!

This week as we prepare to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday we’ll be taking a look at some stories that let children know that being different is worth celebrating! We may not think of Dr. Seuss as a diversity author, but he definitely wrote stories that the theme focuses on how being different is OK.

Our featured story this week is Horton Hears a Who. This book showcases Dr. Seuss’ ability to create a heartwarming story, along with an enjoyable story that all can enjoy! When Horton discovers a clover that actually contains a village of people he decides he needs to help them. Through a lengthy list of hardships, teasing, and being made fun of, Horton sticks by his friends. After all, “a person’s a person no matter how small”.

As a part of our commitment to ensuring that our students are exposed to the contributions of people of color and from different backgrounds, we kicked off this past week by giving daily clues to a famous person from history that has made our world a better place. This past week, the students heard the following clues:

• I was born on March 14, 1997 in Columbus, Ohio. I was one of four children in my family. My mom and dad were not able to take care of us, so our grandparents adopted us and provided us with a very good life. When I was six years old, I tried gymnastics for the first time and fell in love with it.

• When I was 15 years old, I left public school so that I could be homeschooled. This gave me the opportunity to train 32 hours a week to attain my dream of being an Olympic athlete. I would go on to become the world’s greatest female gymnasts.

• I am the most decorated female gymnast with 30 World and Olympic medals. When I was 16, I became the first African American all around world champion. In 2016, I became the first female gymnast to win four gold medals at a single Olympic games in Rio in 2016. Out of the 555 US Olympic athletes at the games that year, I was the shortest American athlete at the Olympic games at 4’6”

• She began suffering from the Twisties at the Olympics in Japan in 2020. The twisties are a condition that makes it very difficult for gymnasts to track where they are in the air. It can be very hard for gymnasts to do well if they are suffering from the twisties.

I was incredibly fortunate to be invited to speak about the Applied Educational Neuroscience framework at the AEN Symposium last Saturday before flying down and to share at the Attachment & Trauma Network's Creating Trauma Sensitive School's Conference in Houston. It was a whirlwind weekend full of networking, learning, and connection. While I was enthralled to be there I was certainly ready to get back to OUR Gray Hawks. I wanted to share some photos from this conference. Some of these ideas and topics will be revisited with OUR community as we continue to build OUR Gray Hawk culture.