WHMS Counselor Newsletter
October 2023
Welcome to this school year's first edition of the school counselors’ newsletter. Inside you will find News, Upcoming Events and Helpful Tips on topics related to the school counselors office. We will publish a few throughout the school year. Hopefully, you will find the information helpful and informative.
Upcoming Events
October 27th - Term 1 Ends
November 7th - PAYS Survey
November 8th - Grades posted on Family Access
November 10th - 2023 PSSA results mailed home
WHMS Kicks Off New Orientation and Transition Program
The first year of WEB was a success! Two orientation programs were offered to help transition our 6th graders to middle school, as well as the new students in 7th and 8th graders from Harrold or other out of district move in students.
The 8th grade WEB leaders participated in a spring “play day” to kick off the role of WEB leaders, then they attended 2 full training days before school started. These WEB leader days were filled with team building, leadership development, and exposure and learning of the orientation activities.
The orientations consisted of full group activities, small group activities, then WEB leaders took their groups to various classrooms to do some team building activities. All groups went on a tour of the building.
There will be more activities coming up with the WEB leaders and their groups. We will continue to build a sense of community and connectedness throughout the year. Students are looking forward to more fun with their WEB groups!
WHMS Student Assistance Program is organizing Red Ribbon Week October 24-28. The students will celebrate being drug free with contests, dress up days, activities and guest speakers. Dress up days for the week will be:
Monday, Oct. 23 - Be RED-y to be drug free- wear red to kick off Red Ribbon Week
Tuesday, Oct. 24 - Saying no to drugs is no sweat- athletic clothes/sweatshirt
Wednesday, Oct. 25 - Band against drugs- Band shirts or headbands
Thursday, Oct. 26 - Wear Black & Orange or Halloween shirts to say Boo to Drugs!!
Friday, Oct. 27 - Spartans Don't Do Drugs - Spartan Spirit wear or blue and gray.
On Wednesday October 25th all WHMS students will attend an assembly on the dangers of vaping. The presenter is Dr. Szwerc, a Cardiothoracic Surgeon from Excela Health.
Hempfield Area School District is participating in the 2023 Pennsylvania Youth Survey. Students at West Hempfield will take the survey on November 7th during activity period. Parents were sent a letter from the school about the survey through remind. In addition, 6th and 8th grade students were given a paper copy to bring home. For more information about the PAYS survey, here is a parent flyer and a link to the PA Dept. of Ed. website.
Helpful Tips
In this section of our newsletter we want to pass on to parents some helpful information. Here you may find helpful tips on how to navigate school applications like Skyward and Google Classroom. In addition, we will include information on apps your children may have on their devices and cyber safety alerts.
Here is an article from Cyberbulllying Research about a new and free service called "Take it Down" that helps to remove images from certain online environments.
From Shape the Sky. This blog post speaks to how parents can recognize and help their child with controlling or unhealthy behaviors in a relationship by providing some helpful resources.
Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of JUUL. This comes recommended by some of our parents. If you have a Netflix subscription, you might want to watch this movie about the vaping industry. If you are looking to have a discussion about vaping with your child, this may be a movie that you can watch together. I would recommend previewing it first. Here is a trailer for the movie.
Using Skyward to Find Missing Assignments:
Most of you have probably logged into skyward to look at grades, send in in absence excuse or update contact information. Skyward is also a great way to see if your child is missing assignments. This link will show you how to see if your child has any missing assignments. I will also show you for each of their classes, grades they have received for anything graded in each the courses.
YOUR WHMS SCHOOL COUNSELORS
Mr. Ray Killen killenr@hasdpa.net (724) 850-2147
Ms. Judy Varacalli varacallij@hasdpa.net (724) 850-2146
Please visit our WHMS School Counselor website
Please visit the WHMS School Calendar
Previous Newsletters:
May 2023 WHMS Counselor Newsletter
March 2023 WHMS Counselor Newsletter