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

The mulch sale was extended until Monday, April 4. Please get in your orders for mulch ASAP! Our PTO has a convenient way to order online at: https://grayhawkpto458.square.site

Remember all proceeds are put back into our school and used for OUR GRAY HAWKS Thank you for your continued support!

It is very important that your child is at school on time and that you try to avoid appointments during this time as it takes a lot of additional coordination to schedule make up tests. Thank you for your consideration!

Thank you to those of you that were able to donate snacks to OUR students testing over the next couple of weeks. Your generosity is very appreciated.

We were fortunate enough to be awarded a Basehor Linwood Education Foundation Grant this year in order to continue to build our collection of books about celebrating differences. For the next few weeks we will be sharing some of the titles that we were able to purchase with the grant money. We’re so thankful to the foundation for helping us build our collection.

This week we’ll look at our books about physical disabilities and differences.

Our featured story is A Friend For Henry by Jenn Bailey and Mika Song.

In Classroom Six, second left down the hall, Henry has been on the lookout for a friend. A friend who shares. A friend who listens. Maybe even a friend who likes things to stay the same and all in order, as Henry does. But on a day full of too close and too loud, when nothing seems to go right, will Henry ever find a friend—or will a friend find him? With insight and warmth, this heartfelt story from the perspective of a boy on the autism spectrum celebrates the everyday magic of friendship.

Each week we will provide clues to the identity of someone from throughout history that has made an important impact on our world. We provide these clues each morning and then reveal the person to OUR GRAY HAWKS on Friday morning with a brief video. Here are the clues from this past week.

I was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. When I was a little girl, my mom’s boyfriend hurt me very badly and I became mute for almost five years. That means that I did not talk at all.

During World War II, I was the first black female street car conductor in San Francisco but that is not what I am famous for. During the 1960s, I worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a civil rights activist working to gain equal rights for African Americans. As a matter of fact, Dr. King was killed on my 40th birthday and for many, many years I refused to celebrate my birthday. I was devastated.

I had a lot of interests and careers, but I truly loved to write. At first, I considered myself a playwright and a poet but that changed when I went to a party and began telling people stories about my early life. I published my autobiography (remember an autobiography is a book written about a person by that same person) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1969. This book became the first non-fiction best selling book by an African American woman.

I accomplished many things during my lifetime including being a professor at Wake Forest University and I recited my poem On the Pulse of Morning at the 1993 inauguration of President Bill Clinton.

I died on May 28, 2014 at the age of 86.