| Upcoming Events | | | 11/11 | Open House | 9 AM | | 11/11 | Veteran's Day Remembrance Celebration | 11 AM | | 11/12 | 1:30 Dismissal | | | 11/17 | Anastasia Performance | 7 PM |
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| Safety Week | | We had planned to have our annual Safety Week during the last week in October, but due to the large number of our students out for illness, we postponed the activities. Safety Week will be rescheduled very soon. Those activities we will have during Safety Week are as follows: viewing a bus evacuation video, and an actual bus evacuation, a tornado drill, fire drill and a Code Red lockdown. For those of you not familiar with Code Red, Blue and Yellow alerts in school systems, they mean – Code Red: There is imminent danger – This is an emergency where all areas of our buildings are secured (lockdown) and every student, visitor and staff member be accounted for. Examples: intruder with a weapon, suspicious package. Code Blue: This is an alert status - This is an emergency that requires all students be under supervision and accounted for, and no lockdown is required. Examples: chemical explosion, weapon found, electricity or water outage or medical emergency. Code Yellow: The Triage Team is needed – There are a number of Barnesville administrative, staff and faculty members that participated in a first aid course, and there are many of us certified to administer CPR and use our AED (automated external defibrillator). | |
| Grandparents Day | | Please encourage your child's Grandparents or Special Friends to get their RSVP's in! We're looking forward to welcoming them all to the school on Wednesday, November 25th!!! | |
| | | Just a reminder that our next Gala and Auction meeting with be next Tuesday, November 10th, at 2pm in the lunchroom-we hope to see you there!! | |
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| | From Our Head of School | | It’s not often that I use this space to recommend a book, but this week I wanted to share with you a most interesting read: NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, written by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. While parenting books have been around for centuries, this one has impressed me both in its lucidity and its grounding in social research. The authors have taken provocative stances that run contrary to perceived wisdom of parenting, and the results can be most jarring. Each chapter introduces and then refutes a particular nugget of “wisdom”, and shares the meta-studies that support the actual lesson. The result, at least for me, has been a healthy dose of cognitive dissonance. For example… - On praise: Praise designed to boost students’ self-esteem can cause children to be risk-adverse, reduce their autonomy, increase peer criticism, and decrease persistence. Instead, effective praise is given for effort (“You must have worked really hard on that worksheet!”), not ability (“You are so smart!”)
- On sleep: Children’s need for adequate sleep is so great that even a loss of one hour of sleep for three days can show a performance gap of two grade levels. Because children’s type of sleep is markedly different than adult sleep, even small sleep deficits can have major effects on children’s academic performance and emotional stability.
- On race: children demonstrate racial basis as early as age three. A racially diverse environment is not enough to build racial openness in children. The developmental window to impact children’s attitudes on race happens much earlier than the time parents typically discuss race with their children.
I encourage you to pick up a copy of this fascinating book and read the compelling arguments therein. This weekend I’ll be reading the next chapter: Why Kids Lie. John Huber PS – Should you wish to meet the authors (along with over 70 other authors, including Chris Matthews, Rod Blagojevich, Tom Ridge, and Gwen Ifill), they will be appearing at the National Press Club’s 32nd Annual Book Fair and Author’s Night on Thursday, Nov. 17th. | |
| Veteran's Day Remembrance Celebration | | We will have our annual Veteran’s Day Remembrance Celebration on Wednesday, November 11 from 11:00 to 11:20am. We will meet at the flagpole in front of the school Information will be sent home to parents in this coming Thursday’s BITS. The program will consist of the following: *Raising of the flag
*Moment of Silence
*Songs (1st grade – Roman Soldiers) & 3rd/4th grades – When Johnny Comes Marching Home)
*Announcement of $ raised for Fisher House
*Flags placed along driveway by each student/faculty/staff member We are asking everyone to bring in $1.00 in support of the Fisher House, which supports America’s military families in their time of need). Any money collected should be placed in the envelope that will be provided in your mailboxes. Then, turn those envelopes in to Tara by 10am on November 11. Lunch for Middle School will start at 10:30 for all grades, except for 7th, who will be off-campus. Therefore, grades 5, 6 and 8 can all eat in the lunchroom on this day. | |
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