GSD E-Blast
October 2022
Dear Parents and Guardians,
We have had a successful first month of school. It has been fun, collaborative, exciting, and engaging.
Homecoming week is the week of October 3-8 this year. This week is always fun with many events and activities for students of all ages to take part in. The many fun-filled events include spirit days, Powder Puff football, and pep assemblies, just to name a few. We hope you join us for one of our community favorites, the Homecoming Parade, on Friday, October 7th through the streets of Gibraltar. The parade starts at 5 pm at the Community Center and ends at Carlson High School.
We are enjoying an exciting and successful football season! We want to remind everyone that we rely on our community to model positive support and school spirit to our students and student-athletes while supporting our teams and activities. We want our school spirit and athletic support to be second-to-none, demonstrating to the rest of the Downriver area just how special GSD schools are. Please model for our students through your words and actions that respectful behavior and good sportsmanship are not only appreciated, but expected.
If our younger Marauders (elementary and middle school) are attending the game, they must be accompanied by an adult at all times. We encourage our families to be a part of showing our Marauder Pride which includes embracing the excitement and being safe, responsible and respectful! Go Blue!
Your partner in education,
Amy Conway
Superintendent
Sparks Corner
Research shows that being happy and positive primes the brain to be more successful and productive. Promoting positivity will enhance our student’s academic ability and develop them into happy and positive thinkers and leaders. Each month we will highlight a building or staff member that is spreading “The Orange” (Happiness) through Gibraltar!
Good Apples in the Hunter Cafeteria
The Food Service Employees at Hunter Elementary are using lunchtime to spread happiness and reinforce positive behavior. The staff is always looking to praise students for making good choices to help lunchtime run smoothly. If they notice students going out of their way to be kind or helpful, they give the student a "Good Apple," to put up on the wall of lunchroom fame.
Rotary Action Day!
Thank you to the Gibraltar/Rockwood Rotary for sponsoring Rotary Action Day, by cleaning up Mercure Park in Rockwood. All of our CHS and SMS student volunteers earned 3 hours of community service time for volunteering to clean up this beloved park. Hats off to our parents, Rotary, and student volunteers for giving back and showing a strong and positive sense of community.
Sunseekers Support GSD Students
Thank you to Sunseekers Boat Club (SSBC) from Gibraltar for donating backpacks filled with school supplies to support our students in need! We are so appreciative of the continued support by SSBC!
Carlson High School
Academics in Action
At Carlson, our students have been learning at high levels. Each week we spotlight some of the strong instructional strategies that our teachers are using. This week we wanted to highlight Mrs. Fowler, Mrs. Torres, Mr. Jablonski, Mr. Gervasi and Mr. Patterson.
An example of a positive instructional strategy that Mr. Gervasi uses in class.
Example of a positive instructional strategy that Mrs. Fowler and Mrs. Torres use.
Example of a positive instructional strategy that Mr. Jablonski uses.
Chapman Elementary School
Morning Meetings Focused on Classroom Building Community
Morning meetings are a positive, engaging, and meaningful way to start the day with students. It’s a time to build community by greeting each other, talking about important topics, and making a positive intention for the day. Even more, though, at Chapman Elementary, morning meetings also serve as an ideal time to work on practicing empathy, decision-making, responsibility, and more. Providing this foundation and fitting it into each school day can help students succeed in the classroom and beyond. In morning meetings, students discuss questions and/or scenarios together and share problem-solving techniques.
Hunter Elementary School
Girl Scouts: Bottle Caps to Benches
Former Hunter student and current Shumate student, Sophia Lenard, made a generous donation of two 6-foot benches to Hunter Elementary School. Sophia, with the help of her mom, has always been an active Girl Scout and her most recent service project was to collect 400 pounds of bottle caps to turn in for the benches. This soon became a family affair, when her dad drove out of state to pick the benches up. The benches are currently placed on the Hunter playground with future plans to move them to the front entrance landscaping. A huge thank-you goes out to Sophia and her entire family for their hard work, generosity, and commitment to both the Girl Scouts and Boy Scout troops their family helps lead.
Parsons Elementary School
Getting Science Done at Parsons
Pirate students have been engaged in some really great learning the first month of school. Fourth grade scientists in particular have been learning about electrical systems, designing functioning circuits with solar panels, and testing their ideas. They were challenged to figure out how to make a fan spin on the circuit, how to speed up and slow down the fan, and how to get it to spin in an opposite direction. The excitement on their faces when they successfully planned and built their circuits was a great thing to witness! Great job scientists!!
Downriver STEM at Weiss
Weiss Kick-starts our WatchDOG Program
WATCH D.O.G.S. is an innovative program being used by schools across America which helps them to be positively impacted by the committed involvement of fathers and father-figures in their student’s life. WATCH D.O.G.S. is a family and community engagement educational initiative designed and developed by educators, experts and parent volunteers over more than two decades.
This is a program that our students and father-figures love having at Weiss! During our kickoff meeting, our kids and their father-figures had an opportunity to spend some quality time together while enjoying pizza, drinks, and good company. Then our kids got to spend time with each other while our father-figures learned how they can volunteer and help within our school. This is the highest attended night we have ever had for this event! We thank all the "dads" that attended this event, and all the other father-figures that will be active in helping at Weiss throughout this year! It truly means so much for our kids! A big shout out goes to Mrs. Moreno for planning this event and getting this program back up and running. We can't wait to see it in action soon!
Lakeshore Virtual School
Open House Success
Shumate Middle School
Shumate Squawk
Our SMS reporters are beginning the process of interviewing, researching and drafting as they prepare the first 2022-2023 edition of The Shumate Squawk within our Journalism elective class. This class presents an overview of the field of journalism and mass communication. Students will learn to be consumers of media and to understand news-gathering and production. The course includes basic news writing, reporting, editing. This is a course in which 8th grade students will write, edit, and design the layout of the school newspaper, The Seahawk Squawk. This year the newspaper is available online and we are returning a print copy version of the 'highlights' of the paper to be passed out during lunch. Think ‘Squawk Lite’. Follow us on Twitter @ShumateSquawk for the latest news at Shumate Middle School.
Transportation Department
We are extremely proud of our students and appreciate all the support from our GSD staff and families
for following the rules while riding their bus.
Our second bid day is Tuesday, October 4, 2022 and there might be some changes with different drivers on the routes. If there are any changes with times, we will advise you at that time. Also, School Bus Safety Week is October 17-21, 2022.
We are hiring bus drivers and bus aides. If you are interested, please come in and fill out an application.
We are located at 28291 Fort Street, in Trenton or contact us at (734) 379-6370.
Food Service Department
The Gibraltar Food Service offers Breakfast at every school every day.
Carlson starting at 7:15, Shumate starting at 7:50
Chapman starting at 8:33, Hunter starting at 8:43
Parsons starting at 8:33, Weiss starting at 8:43
We offer several choices every day and all meals are served with fresh fruit and milk to give you the necessary fuel your body needs to perform. Food is FUEL! You can check out our menu at gibdist.net
Watch for the National School Lunch Week October 10-14