Dear Families,
Wow, what a weekend for football! I've never seen so many games with such fantastic finishes! How about Kansas City? Thirteen seconds and they move the ball into field goal range! Well, I felt bad for the Bills, but they will be back. I hope this coming weekend will be as entertaining! By the way, keep an eye out for the potential snow storm. As I write this newsletter, we are looking at a possible 6-8 inches Friday into Saturday!
It was a great week at the Home of the Raiders! Our school committees met and are moving forward with growth-oriented ideas. In support of our Equity initiative, our students are beginning our school's first Black Culture Club. We recognized our girl's volleyball team at the Board Meeting this week for their incredible run in the State Tournament. We also held a staff Professional Development Workshop to assess how our school culture is reflected in our physical environment. I love working in a place where our students and staff feel the need to forge ahead in light of the many obstacles in our covid educational world.
Parent Workshop - Virtual
We are going to hold a virtual parent workshop tonight, Tuesday, January 25, 2022 at 6 pm for parents interested in adding their value to our school mission, vision, and values. We believe in partnering with school stakeholders to ensure we are doing our very best to prepare our children for their future college and career endeavors.
Click on the link below to learn more about the workshop. I anticipate the workshop to last approximately 30-45 minutes.
I look forward to seeing you there!
Virtual Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nv5P5trI4g2Eb2ZDqYbWM7acO1zcm_tZZZe6AezD5rA/edit?usp=sharing
Masks
MASK COMPLIANCE
Parents, please help us to reinforce this expectation with our children. Please remind your child to always wear your mask, even if no one is looking. The burden it places on our staff to remind our children to wear their mask creates an uncomfortable situation and a risk of confrontation. If you are asked to put your mask on, please do so without protest or argument. We are all in this together.
HSE Military Club
Our Military Support Club will be conducting our annual "Support Our Troops" event by collecting toiletries, stationary items and snacks to make care packages for our troops. We will start this collection on Monday, January 31, 2022 and finish collecting on Monday, February 14, 2022. Our English Department will ask our students to write letters to our troops. Attached is our "Fundraiser Notification" as well as a "Donations & Supplies List" describing what is needed.
Students and staff can drop off donations at our collection bin, in the Main Office. Items that are DESPERATELY NEEDED are:
- Body wash for men & women
- Snack packets of nuts
- Hair supplies for women (NO AEROSOLS)
- Pens
- Toothbrushes
- Disposable razors for men and women
- Deodorant for men and woman
If you are interested in donating supplies, please contact Mr. Scott Kenny at skenny@trschools.com
Student Spotlight
Thank you to our Board of Education for the opportunity to recognize the efforts and success of our girls volleyball team. The girls earned the title of South Jersey Group III State Sectional Champions - the first within the storied history of the program. Congratulations to Coach Maskale for his vision for success and our girls for their commitment to Excellence. The acknowledgement was well deserved and I could not have been more proud of the team!
School Culture
Our staff met on Friday in our Professional Development Room and discussed HSE school culture. Our culture is a product of what can be seen, what is heard, and what is felt. We addressed - What is Seen (Physical Environment) on Friday. I spoke to our groups on our purpose - to prepare our students socially and academically for their future college and career endeavors by providing them with the confidence, knowledge and skills to meet their future demands. We discussed the role of culture as the engine to fuel our mission, vision, and values.
We reflected how our expectations are reflected in the physical environment at East, essentially, what does our building say about us? Staff identified a safe school environment, family mindset, high expectations, inclusivity, and pride as our expectations. Staff were asked to walk the school and to come back and share out whether our 'walls' reflect our expectations. We generally felt we cover the expectations, but could do a better job with several hallways and our Door #4 Main Lobby. We discussed how our Student Culture Committee will be following a similar exercise to brainstorm how we will ultimately create the environment we feel best represents what we stand for as a school community - Excellence!
I will share out with you on our next meeting and what we will specifically do to improve our school setting.
Toms River High School East
