Ezekiel Ford is serving his country and students at Sand Creek High School. As a 2020 graduate of Creek Nation, Ford completed his educational journey with plans for a military career. It didn’t take long for life to take him full-circle and back to the school he loves. This time Ford would fill a role on the school’s staff as a paraeducator.

Read full story: https://bit.ly/3I0sSm9

The Pillar Award is awarded to staff, students and community members that have made an impact in one of the four pillars of our zone plan: Student Success, Service, People and Innovation & Growth. Our most recent award winners were:

• Gina Sheets (RES): for being instrumental in training student teachers with high expectations in teaching, practice, planning, preparation and professionalism and for the time and care put into our newly hired staff, through her ongoing support, and maximizing retention at Remington Elementary | PEOPLE
• Teri Armes (SRES): for her commitment to moving learning beyond the classroom, for engaging parents in their child's education and giving them the tools to do so | STUDENT SUCCESS

Each pillar winner is presented with a certificate and Dinner for 2 from Texas Roadhouse.

The kindergarten team at Evans has done a phenomenal job this year pushing their kindergarteners to amazing growth during first semester.

• At Beginning of Year Benchmark in August, 41% of their kindergarteners were well below grade level with their literacy skills.
• By Middle of Year Benchmark in December, 66% of their kindergarteners were WELL ABOVE grade level!

Through purposeful and explicit instruction, maximizing every instructional moment, and engaging families for extra support and reinforcement, Evans kindergarten teachers have achieved fantastic results and have set our kindergarteners on the path to academic success.

At the beginning of December, Remington Elementary hosted an Inclusive School Week to celebrate the progress that schools have made in providing a supportive and quality education to an increasingly diverse student population, including students who are marginalized due to disability, gender, socio-economic status, cultural heritage, language preference, and other factors. The Week also provides an important opportunity for educators, students and parents to discuss what else needs to be done in order to ensure that their schools continue to improve their ability to successfully educate all children. Thank you to Sadie Russell, RES' Title 1 Family Engagement Liaison, for putting this experience together!

Day 1: Learning Differences. They took a look into the minds of children with ADHD and Autism.

Day 2: Food Allergies. They looked into the lives of those with Peanut Allergies and Celiac Disease. Students thought about their family and friends that might have allergies.

Day 3: Bullying. They watched a couple of videos about bullying, what it could look like and how we could try to prevent it. They also spent a little time on role playing different scenarios and looked at it from both sides.

Day 4: Cultural Differences. Students were able to experience the culture and food from Cuba, Germany, Serbia, Egypt, Italy, Turkey, France, Zanzibar, Portugal and Iraq without leaving Remington.

About 15 EES third-graders followed Music Teacher Joshua Winans as he led his class down the halls and into classrooms, where the group performed classic winter carols and holiday tunes. The day of caroling gave the students a chance to share their musical gifts as an alternative to a traditional end-of-semester performance in front of a large audience. "We’re having to be creative with coming up with ideas on how to get these kids singing,” Mr. Winans said. "This was a wonderful time. They sang really well.”

"It fills my heart with joy,” said Belinda Reid, EES administrative assistant. "Just to see the smiles on their faces and everything gives me great joy.” Each stop included a single song and a short break from the daily routine. "I think it’s a good morale booster and something they can benefit from... And it’s just fun,” said Jennifer Kayim, EES fifth-grade teacher. “I love how the whole school loved it,” Mr. Winans said. "I think it’s going to have to become a yearly thing now."

The Sand Creek High School CyberPatriot Teams competed in the Colorado State Gold Tier round last month! They battled for five solid hours and the team of Jayson Clark, Jeffrey Nerwinski, Aiden Heckard, and Brandon Yasav-Roberts finished with 169 points on the board. Enough to finish 11th in the country and 1st in the State in our tier!

Also competing was the team of Kemper Daron, Katrina Hoffman, and Naima Phillips. They also did well, scoring 150 points in the Gold Tier. Putting them at 65th in the country and 3rd in the state! Extra notable because it's the first year competing for Katrina and Naima.

They will compete in the Semi-Finals this month! Congratulations and good luck!

We have partnered with EVERFI to bring families some online courses to do with your child! Courses include (with appropriate grade levels):

• Pathways: How to finance higher education (9-12)
• Vaping: The dangers around e-cigarettes and how to quit (6-12)
• Money Moves: Financial education to promote financial well-being (9-12)
• K12 Prescription Drug Safety: Make safe and healthy decisions about opioids (8-12)
• Healthy Relationships: Learn more about character education and social and emotional learning (7-9)

To register for these courses, go to everfy.com/create. Choose "student" and use the class code: a02cbe8a These courses will be available from now through the end of the school year. We wanted to incorporate some virtual options for Family Education that are available when you are!

Brett Coddington has been working for the past few years on creating a creative place to support his larger than life Project Lead the Way course for all Remington Elementary students. This past summer, Mr. Coddington was able to secure funds to transform the library into a fully equipped STEM lab. During PLTW, students cover topics like the engineering design process, computer programming, simple and compound machines, and robotics. In addition to the PLTW curriculum, Brett has added access to zSpace laptops, GarageBand, and exclusive access to a full sized planetarium. Thank you to Mr. Coddington and those that supported and executed this project!

We would like to invite all families to give feedback to your principal and zone leader on our survey results! We are looking for how to maintain our high scores and how to improve our low scores. We will host this meeting on Monday, January 31st at 5:30pm at Remington Elementary. Dinner will be provided. We hope you will join us to help us on our journey of continuous improvement in the Sand Creek Zone!.

The National Honors Society hosted classroom competitions in order to raise money and collect food donations for the Harvest of Love food drive. SCHS was able to raise over $2000 through their efforts to support Care and Share.

Congratulations NHS and thank you to our community for the support!

HMS students and staff held a food drive for the Harvest of Love campaign in conjunction with Care & Share. The school donated 845 lbs of food and over $800 in cash for the Harvest of Love food drive for Care & Share. Horizon had one of the biggest cash donations from any middle school in the area!

Way to go, Panthers!

Last week, Care & Share updated Remington Elementary with their new totals for their total pounds of food collected. Their totals were:

• Pounds: 1,269
• Total Meals: 1,058

Together, they collected 66,278 pounds and $133,502.79, resulting in a converted total of 1,136,300 pounds – the equivalent of 946,917 meals – to support our neighbors in need! What a phenomenal effort from staff, students and our local community!