Greetings Vikings,
What a year!!?! COVID-19, coronavirus, pandemic, school shut down, shelter in place, face masks, social distancing, remote learning, Continuity of Learning Plans, google hangouts, zoom, BBB-BigBlueButton, are all words that were not part of our vocabulary but have become part of our everyday conversations in every household for all ages. TIMES HAVE CHANGED so much in the last three months without warning or notice. It’s been an unusual school year as we lived through a historic time! But we got through it TOGETHER.
Together we’ve learned a great deal and shared experiences that will remain with us in the years to come. The strength of our community and wholehearted passion to make our school community as strong as it has become for our children makes our O.L.Smith community very special. It has brought us closer together as we worked in true partnership between home and school. It became more true than ever that we lean and support one another for the success of our children. I have always said, and will continue saying, that it truly takes a village to raise a child.
During this past school year, we continued to implement Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, tardy policy, and many other policies that helped us support our students while communicating our expectations. In the classroom, we had great success with the implementation of Formative Assessment, Differentiated Instruction, Content and Language Objectives,and Claim-Evidence-Reasoning or CER Writing. The district continued to support us in our work to pilot the Professional Learning Community in which teachers had additional time and the opportunity to analyze data, identify essential standards and collaborate on best practices. We still have work to do, but we definitely have a strong foundation in place that we are all proud of.
It is our strong PLC system that helped us succeed as we navigated our way through remote learning. Teachers at all grade levels collaborated regularly to ensure their virtual meetings didn’t overlap and all teachers teaching the same content at each grade level delivered the same instruction which makes for a guaranteed and viable curriculum. We are very proud of the way Smith teachers flipped their real life classrooms into virtual learning environments for students. They worked diligently to engage all learners during the last three months. When they learned of students or families having difficulties, they leaned on our Affective Support Team to help support students and families. Other times they leaned on admin to make contact with students who needed to be reminded of their obligations. It was a true team effort that resulted in the high level of student engagement that we had. It wasn’t easy, but our team showed true passion and dedication as they persistently reached out and you helped support their efforts from your end.
During this past year, we had many great events and activities sponsored by student led groups (and supported by caring and dedicated staff members and parents!) Student Council, Social Justice, WEB, PTSA, and NJHS, SEDSAC, etc.. These activities and events helped improve the climate and culture at the student level. We plan to continue where we left off once we get back to school. Students will have the opportunity to participate in the same clubs and elective classes, (i.e. art, gym, computers, Spanish, music, leadership). We will continue providing our Vikings with a rich middle school experience. Students take pride in being Vikings and we are proud of them.
Special thanks to all of you who have contributed in ways small, large and unimaginable! Thanks for getting your kids to school on time each day and for waking them up for their virtual meetings when we went virtual. Thanks for the kind notes of encouragement that mean so much, as well as your feedback and patience with us as we navigated through the uncharted world of remote learning. Thank you for ensuring your child’s homework was done and turned in. Thank you for communicating with me when things needed to be addressed or tweaked, and for reaching out to ask questions when things didn’t quite seem right, etc… Thank you for providing rich and engaging, well-rounded experiences for your children and knowing that education is about joy, wonder and fostering curiosity, along with the development of social skills needed to succeed. For these, and a million other things, we are truly grateful. Thank you for an amazing school year! I genuinely appreciate each and every one of you. Most of all, thank you for giving me the honor of working with your children.
To those of you who are leaving us for new places and adventures, we wish you all the best. Congratulations to our very capable 8th graders who are ready to embark on their high school experience. We hope you enjoyed the very unique end of year festivities that were dedicated in your honor (Viking delivery of your very own lawn sign and 8th grade memory book and the live promotion ceremony that was so beautiful and felt so real).
I want to send my heartfelt gratitude to our dedicated PTSA for sponsoring the lawn signs and the printing of the 8th grade books to ensure each 8th grader had their very own. Special thanks to Ms. Makled for coordinating and making miracles happen when things weren’t done or delivered on time. A special thanks to Ms. Timpf for her work on the 8th grade books as well as Dr. Elder and Mr. Reddick for working diligently on the promotion ceremony slideshow to ensure our 8th graders had one last special event to look forward to. We had 200 people tune in to the time released slideshow of our virtual promotion ceremony and clap-out. We hope you all enjoyed it!
Due to the COVID-19 crisis and while we await the state’s decision on re-opening schools, our district has a task force working on different plans for next year. They will align their work with the State Task Force that Dr. Maleyko is leading. If we are given the green light to open in the fall as planned, we plan to have the 6th grade orientation and schedule pick up on Wednesday, August 26th from from 8:30-12:00pm. Seventh grade schedule pick up is August 25 th; 8-10am and 8th grade schedule pick up is August 25th; 12-2pm. The first day of school for students is August 31st and that will be a half day. We will update you as the details of re-opening schools is made available to us.
Until then, enjoy a fun, relaxing, and well deserved summer with your family! Please check my blog for the required summer learning for your student.
Sincerely,
Zeina Jebril, Ed.S.
Principal of O.L. Smith Middle School