Hampton Bays Middle School
Parent Express Bulletin #7
#Being13
I hope this week's PEX Bulletin finds your family enjoying this beautiful Columbus Day weekend.
As we continue to build on our efforts during this National Bullying Prevention Month, it's easy to see, this is a shared priority, wherever we look. Our teachers are working together to develop ongoing classroom-based and and grade-level based activities to make bullying prevention a regular everyday topic with our students. In the coming days and weeks, keep an eye out for photos and blurbs that will share this story. It's important to us in school to make sure that bullying prevention is not a passing theme, but an ongoing conversation. The best way for us to do this? Work together as a team - of students, parents, teachers, administration, and community, to help our students focus on reaching for their personal best.
Last week, I watched CNN's #Being13: Inside the Secret World of Teens. As a parent, I was eager to learn more about how to support my own three children; our high school aged daughter and our two sons, who are each under the age of 13. Even though our sons are on the verge of entering this complicated stage of life, we still want to be prepared. As we all know, particularly in challenging situations such as these, information is power.
Truthfully, while the CNN special was eye-opening and at times, scary, there was one takeaway that helps me sleep better at night as a parent:
"Kids who were experiencing some conflict on social media, be it with a friend or schoolmate, had very elevated levels of distress but that experience was mitigated if their parents were highly involved with monitoring their accounts,' said Robert Faris, a sociologist with the University of California, Davis and another child development expert who collaborated with CNN on the study. Faris continued, "So parent monitoring effectively erased the negative effects of online conflicts."
While I do not personally or professionally endorse every aspect of this CNN special edition program, time-permitting, I do encourage you to make some time to learn more from the resources offered, which can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/specials/us/being13 . From what I read and watched, this link contains lots of valuable information that can help to empower parents in strengthening their relationships with their kids.
The New York Times offered a follow-up to the CNN program, which is worth a read. It may prove to support our parents, who are hard at work to support their children (our students).
Seven Ways Parents Can Help 13-Year-Olds Start Their Social Media Lives Right: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/seven-ways-parents-can-help-13-year-olds-start-their-social-media-lives-right/?smid=tw-share&_r=0 .
If you feel it's a topic worth exploring further together, as a middle school community, please do not hesitate to reach out.
On behalf of our Middle School Faculty and Staff, we appreciate our parents being an essential part of our school-home partnership!
Sincerely,
Mr. Schug
5 Resources to Support our Middle School Journey
This Week at HBMS!
Love these photos?
- Follow our HBMS Twitter account @HamptonBays_MS !
- Visit our school website: www.hbschools.us .
- Keep an eye on the PTO PEX, which will share a monthly collection of images showing "Life at HBMS".
And...if you have photos or articles worth sharing, please send them our way!
OCTOBER IS Bullying Prevention and Awareness Month in the Town of Southampton
According to the flyer from the Town of Southampton, "Parents will learn how to respond, act and cope with cyber-bullying situations, recognize cyber-bullying ‘red flags,’ create an action plan, speak with their child about bullying and share strategies for creating a safe enclave for their children online."