Monday Memo
Week of June 1, 2020
It's June!
Hard to believe that June is now here. What a wild ride, and we still have four weeks to go. It’s hard to imagine we’ll get everything done in such a short amount of time, but we will! The list seems a little daunting....report cards, retrieval of student belongings, parades, leaving ceremonies, Kindergarten orientation, classroom clean ups...but BREATHE. We’ve made it this far, we can make it to the end.
But in order to do this, you need to take care of yourself, and each other. You need to be kind to yourself and each other. When you feel yourself being out of sorts, tired or at the end of your rope, take a break. A little extra dose of compassion and empathy for ourselves and each other will be the magic bullet that will make it all happen. We’ve got this!
Jenn
A few photo reminders of why we are doing what we're doing.....
Cheyenne's 13 inch pony tail donation!
The Tambre boys shaved their heads :)
Eloise and Evelyn were busy painting.
Sammy built a bridge for Mrs. Oddie
Rhea was telling time with a floor clock
Elijah did some research on sharks
A few other bits of information......
Best News Ever!!
I was able to share with our support staff team late this afternoon that our EA/CYW allocations are remaining the same for next year. YEAH! I’m very thankful and realize that we are very fortunate as I’m aware of several schools who saw a reduction in time. A big thank you to you and especially our support staff team who worked so hard to collect data on our students, implement interventions and always continued to search for the best next step. It’s because of this hard work and documentation that we were able to put forth such a strong case. Way to go team!
Class Placement Update
Thank you to everyone who supported with the class placement meetings. What an experience to do it online! We are continuing to make some final adjustments to ensure we don’t go overlap on class sizes. We also continue to get some new registrations coming in. I will be sure to pass along your draft class list in the next week or so, in order to share next year’s teacher with the report card.
End of Year Idea
Since a "drive by wave by" is not possible, and sharing individual class videos means permission from every parent involved....end of year celebrations for the whole school is more challenging! The support staff team were chatting this afternoon and wondered about doing one more staff video - similar to the one we did a few months ago. Each staff member would write a message to our students/school and have a picture taken with that message. Send me the picture and I'll create a video, put to music. What do you think? Please let me know!
Report Cards and IEPs
I know that there has been a lot of information sent your way the past few days about report cards. If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch with me. I’m sure if you have a question, a colleague does too. Feel free to pass along sample comments if that would support you in moving forward. I’d be happy to look them over for you and provide input. A reminder that as per the latest info, reports and IEPs are due to the office wherever possible on Friday, June 12th. If you think you’ll need until Monday, June 15th, please let me know so that I am aware for reading purposes. It is not yet clear how reports will be distributed to parents. As soon as I know I’ll pass the information along.
Staff Meeting
Given all going on next week, we won't be able to fit in a full staff meeting or division check-ins (I can hear the cheers from here!). In lieu, I'd like to offer a Report Card Cafe. On Monday, from 12pm - 1pm, please join me in MS Teams to chat about anything to do with Report Cards. I thought it was best to do it early in the week, so that you have everything you need to get going. Stop by - I'll be there!
Retrieving Student Personal Items
Thank you for all the work you’ve put in this week to pack up and prepare student belongings for retrieval. Tuesday and Wednesday will be crazy days as we try to move through the families of 250 students for pick up. The families of belongings not picked up on those days will be contacted for one more chance, by appointment, on Friday.
Calendar of Events
Just a reminder that everything happening for our school is now listed in the Staff Edsby calendar.
Story time with Mrs. Sampson
Due to the personal belongings pick up there will be no Story time this week. I'm hoping I might be able to get back to it next week.
Pride Month
Please see the attached memo from Superintendent Nigro, regarding Pride Month. I know it may be a little more challenging this year, not being able to have these conversations in person. Attached in the memo are also links to resources - please feel free to check them out to see how well they work with Distance Learning. I'm just waiting on the delivery of a new rainbox flag, which we'll fly starting Tuesday (I hope!) for the month of June.
Pedal for Hope
- There are 2 special things happening this week:
1. Our Top Fundraisers Parade! This will take place on Thursday, June 4th, leaving the school at noon. I will park my car on Applewood, as close to Kawartha Heights Blvd as possible. Please line up along Applewood behind me. The Pedal for Hope truck and trailer, as well as the OPP and possibly RCMP, will be bringing up the rear (so the families also know when the parade is over). We have to be careful not to advertise our route too heavily, as the police are concerned of groups of 5 or more gathering. At this point I expect the route will take us 20 - 30 minutes, ending back at the school. I will provide the final details and a map by Tuesday at the latest. Please be prepared that if we have a large number of staff, we might end up getting split into 2 or 3 smaller groups (stop lights, etc). That’s okay - keep going! And feel free to decorate your car or do anything else to show our great school spirit.
2. If we make our fundraising goal, I will be wearing all my clothes backwards on Friday - and of course this is one of the days that families can come for final pick ups of personal belongings. Oh well - I’ll have lots of explaining to do!
A HUGE thank you to the amazing Pedal for Hope Committee who worked tirelessly over the past 5 weeks on this great campaign!
Just one more thing....
I couldn’t resist.....tell me you haven’t already thought of this!
Jennifer Sampson
Email: Jennifer_sampson@kprdsb.ca
Website: KawarthaHeights.kprdsb.ca
Location: 11 Kawartha Heights Blvd, Peterborough, ON, Canada
Phone: (705)742-7521
Twitter: @KawarthaHPS