Bobcat Bulletin
January 10, 2019
Problem Solvers
Happy New Year!
Be a Friend
Congratulations to our MLK Award Recipient
Magnet Nomination
Superintendent's Recommended Budget
The Superintendent’s Recommended Budget is available on video Monday, January 7th. The BOE has until February 15th to submit its requested budget to the County Executive. The Board’s public hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, February 6th in the Board Room at Central Office.
A calendar and budget materials are available at https://www.fcps.org/about/our-budget. The website will be updated as we progress through the budget season.
Out of District Students
Goal Setting Ideas from Mrs. O'Neill, School Support
Once again a new year has started full of new adventures and possibilities. Many of the events ahead will happen spontaneously and without much forethought on our part. However, just like the old saying goes ‘If you don’t know where you’re going- you’ll end up somewhere else.’ I’m sure we would agree that we don’t want the important things in our lives ending up ‘somewhere else.’
Teaching our children to establish and work towards goals has many benefits.
· Responsibility: Success or failure depends on what they put into it.
· Time Management: Children learn how to manage their time to meet their goals.
· Self Confidence: Nothing beats the feeling of meeting you own goal.
· Resilience: Children learn to cope with the small setbacks that might stand in their way.
· Perseverance- They learn to keep trying and rework their steps until they meet their goals.
Below is a six-step guide to helping your children set and reach their goals this year.
1. Confront unrealistic goals- Encourage your children to choose goals that are realistic. Whatever the goal your child sets, be sure that he/she came up with the goal. If you want your child to follow through, the goal has to have meaning to them.
2. Choose ‘just –out-of-reach goals.’ Everyone enjoys feeling successful after meeting a goal. That’s natural. However, sometimes children will stay well within their comfort zone in an effort to ensure success. The great thing about setting goals is that we learn to reach. We strive for something new. We might not meet a goal in the time allotted, but we might get very close. There’s value in trying.
3. Set Specific Goals- A good goal is a specific goal. They might say “I want to be the best basketball player on my team.” But what does that mean? How can that be measured?
4. Break it Down- One of the reasons that goals and resolutions can be so hard to keep is that often they feel huge and it’s hard to know where to begin. Teach your children to break their goals into smaller, manageable steps.
5. Set up checkpoints- I often encourage children to use a poster board to map out their goals. On the top of the poster, they write the main goal. Underneath, they
write the steps they can take along the way to reach the goal. By checking off the steps as they are accomplished, they can track their goal daily, weekly and monthly.
6. Make it a family plan- When families make goal setting a family effort, they learn to support each other. This fosters a family environment based on cooperation instead of one grounded in competition.
It also adds some family fun to the process of learning to set and meet goals.
Happy Goal Setting!!
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News from the PTA
Fundrive: We received $403 for the items donated! Thank you so much to all who participated, this is such an easy way for our PTA to earn money and for the community to clean out closets!
Laminator: At last night's PTA meeting, members voted unanimously to spend extra funds received this year through our fundraising efforts on a new laminator for the school! The school has been without a laminator for months and it has been a huge burden on the teachers and staff to travel to other schools to use theirs. A couple of the PTA fundraisers this year have earned more money than was expected so the PTA has the extra funds to purchase a new laminator. The board wants to send out a HUGE thank you to the whole BCES community for all your contributions during our fundraisers so the PTA has the extra money! This is a prime example of what the PTA is for; providing for our school!!!
Upcoming events: Be on the look out for more information for a restaurant night and another movie night at the end of January! The movie night will be on Jan. 25th and restaurant night on Jan. 31st. We hope to see you all there
PTA board 2019-2020: The PTA is looking for PTA members who are interested in being on the board next year. Our current board can only hold their positions for 2 years and this year is the second year. We are looking for a new president, secretary, and treasurer. If you are interested in learning what these positions are all about or would like to shadow the current board to get a feel of the job responsibilities please contact Laura Gaston atptabcespresident@gmail.com