News From The Abernethy Office

Good evening Abernethy Community,

I want to wish you all a very Happy New Year! I know that this comes a little late, but I do hope you all had a wonderful Winter Break with family and friends and are ready to jump into 2023 and all that it has to bring! For me the beginning of 2023 has brought on a long lingering virus that ultimately after an ER visit had been determined to have turned into pneumonia. Thus the reason for my extremely delayed "Welcome Back" newsletter.

Regardless of my rocky start to 2023, I was so excited to be back in the building today with all the students, staff and teachers! Their energy, voices, laughter and the general feeling around the building today was everything that I missed so much when I was out last week.

With the new year, we also have some much needed replenishment for some every day supplies. We are asking that each student bring in:

• 1 ream of white copy paper
• 1 box of tissues
• 1 package of Lysol cleaning wipes

You are of course absolutely welcome to bring in more than one of each item, however, we greatly appreciate your support in replenishing some of our much needed and used supplies!

With our new literacy curriculum, colds and viruses, we have found out that we are going through these supplies at a much faster rate that we had initially planned for. We do appreciate so much all support with these items.

The end of 2022 with our Abernethy students was full of fun! We had so much excitement around all the last week of activities. I wanted to share a few of our highlights!

As we begin 2023 we have our eyes set on a lot of big things for Abernethy! In the coming months you can expect to hear about a lot of new happenings, bringing back some old happenings and improving on some current happenings. All of our "happenings" are going to involve the feedback, collaboration and support of our Abernethy community!

As the staff continues with our work around centering Abernethy in what is best for our students, we noticed that our current Mission and Vision statement do not reflect the feelings, vision, belief and goals that we have and keep in the forefront of all our conversations regarding our students. Part of the work that we have begun is to rewrite our Mission/Vision statement. We feel that it is important that what we use to guide our work, reflects our students and more importantly that our students can see themselves in all that work that ask them to do. Our plan is to have a draft that is created by the staff and students to share with the community by the middle/end of February, in hopes to gain the feedback from the community before finalizing what we want to share as our Mission in Abernethy.

This month we are bringing back our Abernethy Character Traits and our monthly celebration assembly. This month we are focusing on the character trait of COOPERATION!

In order to demonstrate Cooperation, one demonstrates how to:

• work as a team

• listen to others without interrupting
• encourages others to join in
• be willing to hear and accept the ideas of others
• be willing to change roles in a group; may be a leader sometimes and a follower at other times
• recognizes the skills and strengths of others
• discusses problems calmly
• shows respect for others
• takes responsibility for their part of the task
• is willing to work towards the success of the group rather than their own individual success
• uses good communication skills

As we are trying to have the whole school participate in one assembly, we are going to be very short of space for families. However, we are exploring options to live stream the assembly or record it and send out the recording for the community to see.

We are also bringing back our Abernethy Stars! Students will be able to earn a star for their class when caught doing something that demonstrates a character trait. Each class will be collecting their stars and once the whole school reaches the goal of 500 stars we will have a whole school reward of a Cozy Day with Stuffed animals or blankets!

As classes move around the school, through their music, PE, Library, Counseling and lunch, the staff will be watching them looking for the class that is the best in modeling school wide expectations for all other classes. During our assembly we will award such classes a Golden Award for their outstanding behavior in such areas.

We are excited for all that 2023 has to bring!

It is with a heavy heart that I share some news that I am sure many of you have already heard. Tommy Habetz is a co-owner and chef of Portland restaurants Bunk Sandwiches and Pizza Jerk. He is also the father of one of our Abernethy students. On December 22, 2022, Tommy suffered a brain hemorrhage and was rushed to the hospital where he underwent emergency surgery. This was one day after after his kids’ mom underwent emergency knee surgery as well. Tommy's recovery is going to be a long one and any support that the Abernethy community can provide is greatly appreciated. The family has set up a Go Fund Me to help with the growing medical bills. The latest update on Tommy is that he has been moved out of the ICU. The tube have been removed and he’s headed to the Neurology Unit for the next 1-2 months for rehab. This is definitely going to be a long road to recovery. If you can, please consider any support that you feel comfortable with and know that Tommy and family are in our thoughts every day as they move through the recovery process.

As we close out 2022, we wanted to highlight a couple of very fun events that the our Abernethy PTA made possible!

Through the PTA Mini Grants, we were able to bring in Artists in a local clay artist, Michelle Smit, to help our kindergarteners create ceramic leaf bowls. Connecting recent science lessons with some newly learned art techniques, the kids were thrilled to create and take home a piece to give to their family. They were so proud of their final products.

We are very much looking forward to the new items that are on their way! Student Council wrote a mini grant for a portable GaGa Ball Pit and the PTA has funded that Mini Grant! Ms. Hartle has also written a Mini Grant for some gymnastics mats that she can incorporate into her curriculum and the PTA has funded that request as well! We also have our Mini Grant from our QSA for some Pride Flags that can be put up in classrooms and around the school! All these mini grant requests are ordered and on their way! We want to thank the PTA for all their support funding these projects!

This meeting will be in person in the Abernethy auditorium. The fun starts at 6:30 and ends at 8:30. Details will be posted on Konstella next week and will be included in next week's newsletter as well.