Summer Street School Newsletter November 2017 Issue 3 Dear Summer Street Families and Friends: What a pleasure to return to school last week and find everything functioning so smoothly! This is a credit to Assistant to the Principal Lorie Kelly and the entire staff! By all accounts, Ms. Kelly did an outstanding job supporting teachers, addressing inquiries from parents, organizing professional development and committee meetings and teaching her fourth-grade students while I was away on my trip. Special thanks as well to Emily Schelzi, a former Summer Street teacher who co-taught Ms. Kelly’s fourth-grade class during this period. Many people have asked me about my trip. My wife, Katy and I over a year ago planned a month-long trip to Rwanda and Tanzania to learn more about these two countries and to see the game. This was my third trip to East Africa but Katy’s first. In Rwanda, we visited the Genocide Memorial Museum and learned about the reconciliation process that has taken place since the 1994 genocide in which almost a million Rwandans were killed within a 100-day period. Having visited Rwanda 28 years ago, just before the strife that led to the genocide erupted, I was amazed by the progress I saw during this trip. Rwanda is a dynamic country experiencing remarkable economic growth. Paul Kagame, the president since 1994, has put in place a number of reforms to both heal and modernize the country, including universal health care, universal primary and secondary education, internet service covering 95% of the country, and a nationwide community service program which requires every Rwandan to complete service in his or her village the last Saturday morning of every month. This community service is followed by an hour or more of discussion of local problems and issues. Things are by no means perfect, but life is clearly moving forward. While in Rwanda, Katy and I trekked in the Virunga volcanoes to visit two different gorilla families. This was a truly life-changing experience, one that I will be sharing with students in the near future. Tanzania is an equally remarkable and interesting nation. In 1961, Tanzania’s first president, Julius Nyerere, faced with building a nation out of 125 different tribes spread out over a vast geographical area, instituted Swahili as a national language and removed all tribal chieftains from authority. At the time of independence, Tanzania had only eleven trained doctors. Now, Tanzania is a stable nation with universal primary and secondary education and a growing number of clinics and medical facilities. Katy and I were fortunate to have the opportunity to meet numerous Tanzanians in different parts of the country. I had last been in Tanzania 41 years ago; I was absolutely amazed by the many changes I saw during this visit. On one occasion we visited a Masai kindergarten (ages 3-6) where the students were learning to read and write Swahili and English in addition to math. I examined students’ exercise books – with the teacher’s permission – to see their work, just as I do every day at Summer Street. It was truly inspiring to see the work these youngsters were doing inside a mud and wattle hut with almost no tools or amenities; it made me appreciate all that we have here at Summer Street. In addition to learning about the culture and people of Tanzania, Katy and I visited a number of game parks, some in remote locations. We followed the migration of the wildebeest across the Serengeti (Swahili for ‘endless plain’), tracked chimpanzees in the Mahale Mountains on the Tanzania / Congo border, and spent several days eyeball to eyeball with hippos, elephants and crocodiles while floating down the Rufigi River in a small boat. All of this was quite extraordinary, and I will be sharing these adventures and experiences with Summer Street students as well. MCAS As you already know by now, Summer Street students performed admirably on last spring’s MCAS tests. I am pleased to report that Summer Street’s third and fourth graders did well on the ELA and Math portions of the test, outperforming the state averages and, in most instances, outperforming the majority of students in the 900 + other elementary schools throughout the state! This is a feather in our cap. It is a credit to the hard work and day-to-day conscientiousness of the staff and students, especially in light of the fact that the test incorporated a number of new and challenging formats, difficult questions that required students to show their thinking and list the specific evidence they were using to support their opinions and mathematical solutions, and, for the first time, was completed entirely on computers! Elementary Director of English Language Arts and Social Studies Maureen Fennessy and Elementary Director of Math and Science Christina Noce and I are meeting with teachers this week to examine the results in detail and really pin down what we are doing well and what we need to improve. Social and Emotional Learning One of our key School Improvement Plan goals is to adopt and/or develop a social and emotional learning program and to begin implementation in the spring. On November 1, Summer Street teachers joined with their Huckleberry Hill counterparts to participate in a workshop on various social and emotional initiatives, including Responsive Classroom (led by Nicole Drouin and Marina Padovani), Second Step (led by a variety of Huckleberry Hill teachers), Zones of Regulation (Rochelle Hardenstine), Growth Mindset (Deb Guenard and Lisa Forrest), and Mindfulness Practices (Jill Quickel). Mrs. Kelly and a number of other Summer Street teachers have told me this was a very valuable afternoon. We do know that regardless of the program we adopt, helping students develop empathy for others will be a concept we emphasize. Much of what we do on a daily basis, as we practice kindness toward others and understanding and appreciating differences, naturally focuses on empathy. In keeping with this goal, teachers Lisa Forrest and Yota Kariotis enlisted the help of the Summer Street Student Council to begin a ‘loose change’ collection to aid hurricane victims in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. To everyone’s astonishment, a five-day drive during which teachers talked in their classes about the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Maria, yielded $1,600 in pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters! We will be sending this money to the One America Appeal, a 501 nonprofit organization founded on September 7, 2017, by all five living former U.S. Presidents: Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Our contribution will help the victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria (in Texas, Florida and the Caribbean) recover and rebuild. The Student Council, I might add, is already busy with their next two fundraising projects: a food drive for local community pantries and, as we approach the holidays, Toys for Tots. 2 Enrichment We are always grateful to the PTO for sponsoring a number of enrichment programs and events. Recently we were fortunate to participate in the annual Pumpkin Fair (the children had a great time decorating pumpkins, playing bubble soccer, and enjoying pony rides). Kindergarten students learned about gravity and motion from staff members of the Discovery Museum. Fourth graders, as part of their unit on animal adaptation, enjoyed a hands-on workshop with the Museum of Science staff and a number of furry and/or scaly friends including a lizard that is capable of losing its tail and an opossum that feigns death when it is trapped. We really appreciate having such a wonderful array of programs to supplement and complement our regular work in the classroom! I will conclude by saying a lot of exciting things are happening at Summer Street School every single day! I love what I see going on in classrooms. I love seeing the excitement on students’ faces as they learn new skills, acquire new knowledge, and enjoy new experiences! In short, I love being here! All the best, Greg Notes from the front office Parking With the addition of the additional parking area here at SSS, our parking issues seem to have greatly improved; however please be mindful of our neighbors when parking on Todd Lane or Elizabeth Way. It is imperative that vehicles park on ONLY ONE SIDE of the street. If you are not the first person to park over there, please park on the SAME side as the other cars. The police department will be patrolling regularly. Absence and Tardy Calls Please remember to notify the front office if your child is going to be tardy or absent. Voicemail is on when the office is closed. You may also email Karen Roberto at [email protected] at any time. Change of Dismissal It would be helpful if your child came to school confident with their dismissal routine for the day. Please tell your child how they are going home from school at home in the morning and, if it is a 3 change in their normal routine, be sure to send a note in to the teacher. Phone calls to the school office to change dismissal should only be done in an emergency. DATES TO REMEMBER EARLY DISMISSAL: November 16th at 11:30 for Conferences EARLY DISMISSAL: November 22nd - All Students dismissed at 11:30 NO SCHOOL: November 23rd& 24th Thanksgiving Recess EARLY DISMISSAL: December 6th at 11:30 for Professional Development From the School Committee MCAS RESULTS DON’T TELL THE WHOLE STORY The most recent results of the MCAS 2.0 test demonstrate that Lynnfield continues to be a high achieving school district, one of the top performing districts in the Commonwealth.