Greetings GCMS Family!

Welcome to 2023!!! With the New Year comes new adventures at the middle school and I'm so pleased to be able to reach out to you as we head into the second half of our school year. Very often, we look at the new year as an opportunity to make improvements, to make resolutions for change, or to identify areas where we want to see growth. This year, though, I'm advocating for an exception to that routine; this year, the first year that feels back to "normal," let's focus on what's working and what we want to honor. In today's message, I'm going to look to highlight some wins.

During the first half of the school year, we saw iterative growth in two new programs at the middle school. First, we saw closure on our first Student Spaceflight Experiment Simulation Project (SSEP) voyage with the launch (and return) of our students' experiments from the International Space Station. In recent weeks, we also identified the winner of the 2022-23 contest and we're already deep in the process of preparing to launch GCMS SSEP 2.0! We learned a lot from our first trip around the solar system and we've made some thoughtful improvements to our practice. We are thrilled to leap ahead with the new team and investigate what exactly we learned from our interstellar travels. We've also seen that iterative design process work its wonders in our 6th grade Exploratory program, specifically in our Genius Hour. This work, aimed at fostering a love for independent inquiry and design philosophy, is a challenging one. It pushes our students to be extraordinarily creative and to think BIG while, at the same time, to consider parameters and guidelines. It's a balance for our teachers and our learners. We identified a few areas for growth after last year's rollout and we're so pleased with our improvements. Is this year's version the final iteration? No! We are always looking to reflect, to reconsider and to identify opportunities for improvement. That's the theme: Iterative reflection and revision towards our goals!

Yes, there was innovation in the first half of the school year, but there was also continued success in our tried-and-true areas of learning. Classrooms have maintained that same level of enthusiasm and energy, leveraging expert teachers and curious learners, as well as some fantastic new flexible furniture and technological resources. Our GCMS athletic program continues to sparkle and grows each and every day. We've offered new programs in our morning intramurals and we continued our history of success, athletic and otherwise, on each of our teams. Thank you to each of our coaches and to Mr. Tullo, our Middle School Athletic Director.

We continued to show that same drive to excel as performed on the stage, too, with fabulous winter concerts from our chorus, band, jazz ensemble and orchestra and we started our training for this year's Music Box Players musical, The Descendants (March 16-18). New displays of art sprouted all over the building as our young painters started their brush with success. We've also continued our tradition of community activism and our drive to create a safe and inclusive learning environment for everyone with amazing events like Unity Day and GC Cares-a-Thon, speakers like David Flood, and programs like Don't Press Send. Thank you to our incredible partners in the building and out, in particular our allies in the PTA and SEPTA!

There is a lot to be proud of during the first half of the year and a lot to be excited about in the second half! We have some big projects in the GCMS Library and Learning Commons wrapping up in the coming weeks and we're excited about all that these new spaces will bring to our family. I look forward to reaching out to you in February with updates and joy about the amazing things we're doing!

Warmly,

Matthew Samuelson

Students in grades 6,7,8 will be taking the Math NWEA on Monday and Tuesday, February 6-7, 2023.

It's never too early to order your copy of the 2022-2023 Garden City Middle School Yearbook, Spearhead!

Garden City Teachers' Association's (GCTA) 14th Annual “GC For A Cure”

Saturday, April 29, 2023 — Rain or Shine

5K (3.1 mile) Timed Run/Walk — 9:00 am

1 Mile Untimed Fun Run/Walk — 8:30 am

Start/Finish at Garden City High School

170 Rockaway Avenue, Garden City, N.Y.

Chinese New Year is the most important festival to Chinese people. Families gather to celebrate the festival, similar to how American families gather for Thanksgiving.

2023 is the year of the Rabbit. Chinese New Year begins on the evening of January 21, 2023 and lasts for fifteen days. On the first and last day of the festival, everybody is expected to wear red in order to avoid the Nian Monster, which symbolizes bad luck. During the festival, families gather for meals. Adults give both children and grandparents money in red envelopes.

Thank you for donating to the Miracle Club’s band aid collection! It was a great success! Our school collected a total of 343 boxes, which adds up to 12,415 band aids!

Ms. Drogin's homebase was awarded a Dunkin' party for collecting the most band-aids, 52 boxes or 3,358 band-aids!

The seventh grade English teachers, Ms. Aguilo, Ms. Cafaro, and Ms. Fasulo collaborated with Library Media Specialist Ms. Wenger to start a "First Chapter Friday" program in their classrooms. This month the teachers chose a book to highlight the science fiction genre. Ms. Wenger read the first chapter of the novel, Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix, to the students. Students recorded the title and author of the book introduced to them on "book spines" and wrote a short response rating the first chapter. Found is the first book in Margaret Peterson Haddix’s The Missing series. Students will be eager to read the sequel, Sent.

In Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Found, Jonah Skidmore feels like an ordinary thirteen-year-old boy. His family consists of a slightly annoying but smart younger sister named Katherine and a mom and dad who love him unconditionally. Jonah is adopted and has known this fact for a while but it’s never been a big deal for him because his parents have always been open about it with him. Life definitely feels normal for Jonah. That is, until the mysterious letter arrives--the letter that contains just six words: YOU ARE ONE OF THE MISSING. The letter does not contain a signature or a return address. Who sent it? Where did it come from? What does it mean?

Grade six ELA teacher, Ms. Tarazi, and Library Media Specialist, Ms. Wenger, collaborated to create a fun way for students to share their favorite independent reading books with their classmates. As part of Ms. Tarazi’s ELA Exploratory class, students took part in a multi-step process to create book reviews. The process began with the students writing book reviews, which were then converted into scripts. Finally, using Canva, the students created videos from the scripts. These videos will be embedded into QR codes which will be attached to the physical books. Now, when students are searching their classroom libraries for a new book to read, they can scan QR codes with their classroom iPad to watch and listen to reviews made by their classmates.

Ms. Novack, Speech Pathologist, and Ms. Tufano, Special Education Teacher, helped get their Best Buddies Club in the holiday spirit as they engaged in lots of friendship activities. The students engaged and interacted in several different activities including creating creative magic snowmen color-scratch ornaments, penguin door hangers, playing Christmas password, participating in Candy Cane Lane relay races, Christmas tree ring toss, and Name that Holiday Song from emojis.

On Friday, January 13, 2023, Mr. Ronald Carter, esteemed jazz saxophonist and jazz educator, led inspiring workshops with our middle school and high school jazz band students.

Jazz is an American art form that was developed from Afro-American cultural traditions. Professor Carter brings his unique cultural approach to teaching jazz with emphasis on the importance of using the human voice to learn style, phrasing, and interpretation. His dynamic personality draws students of all ages in! His technique gets them singing, dancing and “swinging” together better than almost anyone in the business. Great jazz musicians are not always the best teachers of jazz, but Professor Carter is one of the few who has developed a method that reaches all students of jazz.

Jazz is a “feel” best learned by listening to the masters and working to emulate their sound; it is not nearly as concrete as playing classical music. Like all languages, music is not void of dialects or accents. Developing the proper accent is the greatest challenge for all students of language. Jazz can be considered a dialect in the language of music and requires the proper accent and feel when being performed. What better way to learn than from one of the masters in person!

The students were captivated by his talent, humor, and unparalleled performance experience. Eighth grader Alex Kfuri described Carter as “enthusiastic and interactive” and eighth grader Evie Mohan said: “I loved his work and he really inspired me to keep pushing and doing my best! It was great to work with someone who is world renowned and has worked with and taught so many famous musicians.”

GCHS Senior Christopher Roukis said: "Professor Carter influenced us by showing his passion for jazz. His creative insight taught us how to stylistically play better as an ensemble, and be more open as musicians. He resembles what teaching from the heart looks like, by showing us as much as he could in our workshop through his singing, dancing, and talking about his past experiences with famous jazz musicians. It was a pleasure to work with him, as his influence should be passed on to all jazz musicians."

Professor Carter, retired as the director of the world-renowned Northern Illinois University (NIU) Jazz Ensemble and Director of Jazz Studies, a position he held from 1904-2014. He continues to educate students in jazz education and performance throughout the United States and around the world. During Carter's tenure at NIU, he also served for 23 years as the Lead Artist for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Band Director’s Academy, New York, NY, and as a Mentor, and Education Consultant for the Essentially Ellington Jazz Band Program. Middle School Band Director Ms. Iovino studied with Professor Carter for many years at Lincoln Center’s Band Director Academy.

Prior, Carter worked eighteen years in the East St. Louis School District as the former director of the Lincoln Senior High School Jazz Band. He performed professionally in the St. Louis metropolitan area as a freelance musician on saxophone, clarinet, flute and as a vocalist. Also, he has also performed professionally with Clark Terry, Jimmy Heath, Lena Horne, Lou Rawls, The Jimmy Dorsey Band, The Temptations, The Dells, and many others.

Carter’s accolades also include three books in the “Teaching Music Through Performance in Jazz” series.

Many thanks to the Garden City Friends of Music for supporting these exceptional clinics and partnership.

Our students are working hard in art class and showing their most creative selves! This semester the eighth grade students will be finishing their watercolor landscape paintings. Students in 6th grade are using colored pencil to create beautiful dragon drawings, and in seventh grade they are working on their Illuminated Initial Designs inspired by Art of the Middle Ages.

Garden City PTA will hold its Annual Fundraising Dinner on Wednesday, March 29, 2023, at the Garden City Hotel. This year’s dinner theme is “Making a Difference." Every educator, parent and member of our school community can truly make a difference for our students!

We are looking for donations of exciting raffle baskets ($250+ value) and enticing silent auction items ($500+ value) to help make the evening a success! If you would like to show your support of the PTA and this event, please consider joining together with your family, friends, neighbors or club and donate a raffle basket or silent auction item. If you have a connection to sports tickets, concert venues, vacation properties or experiences, please consider donating as these make very exciting prizes. Donated items will be on display at the dinner and listed in the evening's program. Email dinnerdonations@gardencitypta.org if you plan to donate or have any questions. Please help us make a difference!