R.J. Grey Junior High School

Good afternoon,

It’s about 70 degrees outside my office window at the moment, reminding me that not that long ago we were enjoying warm weather and the relaxed pace of summer. We’re quite far removed from that pace here at RJ Grey, but things continue to go well. 

If you didn’t see my email yesterday about Parent/Teacher conferences, please check your inbox for an email from me some time around 7 am yesterday (11/17/21). If you need some additional information, or need me to resend an email, I’m happy to do so - please just email me.

As my messages come out on Thursdays, I’m going to take next week off from sending a message due to it being Thanksgiving. I’m hopeful that this Thanksgiving feels more typical for us all, compared to last year when we were in a surge of Covid cases. My wife, who is an educator, and I were being super cautious about Covid last year. It felt too risky for us to be out and about, with three small children and our work in schools. Instead of being tempted by both of our large extended families to join for Thanksgiving dinner or dessert somewhere, we escaped! We rented an AirB&B on the Cape and had a few great days by ourselves with our kids. We walked on the beach, I picked up a fully prepped Thanksgiving meal from Roche Bros in Mashpee, we rode our bikes, and we had a great time just being away. This year we’ll return to visiting both sets of our family at scaled down versions of a traditional Thanksgiving.

Since the beginning of the month, my family has had a plastic table cloth-style tree hanging in our kitchen. Each night, or as regularly as we think of it, our kids fill out a leaf with something they’re grateful for. We’ve had their dance teacher a few times, their school teachers, some of their aunts and uncles, grandparents, and good friends from school. We had a favorite TV show appear once. It’s a nice thing to stop on occasion and practice gratitude with them. 

As I continue into my fifth month in this Interim Principal role, there are a huge amount of things for which I’m grateful, so here are just a few:

I’m grateful for your children! They make our days full of life, excitement, and joy. They’re kind, helpful, and generally happy. I recognize that life in a middle school can be chaotic at times, but our kids make this a pretty great place to be most days.

I’m grateful for our staff - teachers, assistants, counselors, custodians, cafeteria workers, and others. I haven’t yet come upon a group of people who just go with the flow as much as these people. Everyone just seems to get that, at times, the ground beneath us doesn’t feel quite solid, but they keep moving forward with patience, flexibility and a positive attitude. I will be forever grateful to our staff for how they put our students first and keep doing the hard work in a year that has many challenges.

I’m grateful for you - our parent and guardian community. You are so supportive of us. I’ve gotten several nice emails over the year about our school; you wave at me in the morning at drop-off; you send your kids to school ready and eager to learn; you contribute to our PTSO and other organizations; and you speak up on behalf of your kids and others when you see something that could be better.

Lots of people I know work in schools - my wife, my sister, several cousins, family friends, and former colleagues who now work elsewhere. I continue to be grateful for the supportive and affirming environment that we’re able to create and maintain at RJ Grey - I know it doesn’t exist everywhere. So while I might be most grateful for some good turkey and stuffing next Thursday, the things above are pretty important and meaningful, too.

Here are some upcoming events at RJ Grey:

-Wednesday, November 24: Early Release for Thanksgiving (11:10 am)

-Thursday, November 25 and Friday, November 26: No School for Thanksgiving

-Monday, November 29: Early Release for Professional Learning (1 pm)

-Monday, December 6: RJ Grey Coat Drive Begins

-Monday, December 13: Early Release for Professional Learning (1 pm)

-Thursday, December 16: Early Release #1 (11:10) for Parent/Teacher Conferences

-Tuesday, December 21: Early Release #2 (11:10) for Parent/Teacher Conferences

-Thursday, December 23: Schools close for vacation (reopen January 3, 2022)

I wish a very Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!

Take care,

Jim

Good afternoon,

Happy Veterans Day to you all, especially to those who have served our country. I thank you for your service. You are receiving this on Thursday, but I wrote it on Wednesday afternoon. I am hopeful that my day home is filled with a little bit of downtime with my family. My 7 year old and 5 year old daughters are each having a friend over in the morning. Their three year old sister will undoubtedly tag along. I hope your day has been productive!

I’ve gotten a few emails about two items, so I’ll address them both here. Yes, we will be having parent conferences this year, and yes, we do plan to have Ski Club again this year. You’ll be hearing from me about both of those topics in the next week or so. In my nine years at RJ Grey, I tended to be the “details guy.” So it pains me greatly that we’ve not yet sent out some of our annual items like parent conferences. With our recent turnover in our main office, and me being brand new in this role, I’m giving myself some grace to be okay with this. I thank you for your patience, too.

Our dates for parent-teacher conferences will be December 16, December 21, and January 6th. We affectionately call these conferences “speed dating.” Parents or guardians who wish to connect with a teacher can choose a 5-minute slot of time to do so. While this doesn’t seem like a lot, in most cases, the time is well spent where you can hear from a single teacher, you can ask questions, and get a sense of what your child is like in a particular class. You do not have to request a parent conference, though! If you’ve had a recent connection with teachers through a team meeting, email, or other avenue, you might not feel the need to sign up for a conference. We are continuing what began last year - our parent conferences will be on Zoom. We found that it is actually easier to schedule on our end. And we heard feedback that many parents preferred to be able to zoom for a few minutes, rather than taking an afternoon out of work to come to school. We don’t yet have a plan for next year, when hopefully we are able to fully invite visitors back into our schools more regularly. Look for additional information from me, sent to all RJ Grey families, early next week about conference sign-ups.

We have finished up our fall sports season. Our soccer teams, field hockey teams, and cross country teams had really strong seasons. It was great to know that we were able to bring back one element that was completely absent last year from RJ Grey. We are now gearing up for our winter season. We have boys and girls basketball teams, as well as a Cheer team. These teams all require tryouts as we don’t have an unlimited capacity for players. See the tryout schedule here. Please pay special attention to the requirement of the physical and the Family ID sign-up. Having these things in place well ahead of time will help your child have a successful tryout without the stress of not having all the paperwork ready!

We are at the beginning stages of working to identify a new mascot for the Acton-Boxborough schools. I was part of a meeting last week, along with five students from RJ Grey, joined by high school students and staff members from both schools. At our first meeting, we were briefed on the process outlined by the superintendent to identify a new mascot. We took time to read the Mission, Vision, Values and Beliefs of the District. We each had a chance to share why we were interested in being part of this committee. There were several common themes that came up about why we were interested in being part of the committee: to include lots of voices, build community, have a positive impact on the schools and towns, have all views represented, leave a legacy, build school pride, be a safe place, and be unifying. I am confident that this student-led group will do good work to identify a mascot and make a recommendation to the subcommittee of the School Committee later this year. I will continue to use these Eye on the Junior High messages to share our progress as we move forward this year.

Finally, I want to introduce you to a new and important person in our Main Office. Mrs. Eileen Matarese has taken over as the Main Office Support at RJ Grey. Eileen worked with us as a teaching assistant in 2019-2020, spent last year in the RLP, but otherwise, has worked at Douglas for a lot of years as a classroom assistant. She’s a parent in our community, has worked with the PTSO and supports Acton and Boxborough in all sorts of ways. We are very excited to welcome her. Her first 3 days have been great and she keeps telling me that she didn’t realize how busy it would be! I did tell her...honestly, I did!

Eileen has been introduced to kids leaving early, coming late, and working with families to troubleshoot some issues. I wanted to remind all families about our process for dismissing students from school. If you follow these procedures, you’ll have a more efficient experience picking up your child: 

-Absences or Late Arrivals: If your child will be absent from or late to school, please call the absence line at (978) 264-4700 ex: 3333 before 8:00AM and state your child’s: name, team and the reason for the absence or tardy arrival.

-Dismissals: Students who will be dismissed during the school day need a note from home signed by a parent or guardian stating the time of dismissal and whether or not the student will return that day. You may write a note or print a dismissal form. Students should bring the note or completed form to the office first thing in the morning. They will be given a pass to leave class at the appropriate time. They should check in at the office as they are leaving and again when they return.

There will be emergencies and you will sometimes need to come pick up your child without having sent a note. That’s not a problem! Just give us a call and we’ll track down your student and have them ready for you when you arrive.

If you need to email the main office, we’ve created a new email address where you can reach us: [email protected]. You are welcome to use this email which will reach several of us. As we recently experienced changes in our staffing, we thought this might be a useful tool to know that your message is getting to multiple people.

Here are a few upcoming dates:

-Monday, November 15: Early Release at 1pm

-Monday, November 15: School Council Meeting #2 (Zoom link)

-Wednesday, November 24: Early Release for Thanksgiving (11:10 am)

That’s it for this week - I hope you are all doing well.

Take care,

Jim

Good afternoon,

This is a short version of Eye on the Junior High since you just received a longer email from me about student behavior assemblies this week.

Happy Diwali to all families who celebrate! I slipped up this week when I didn’t remind teachers early enough about this celebration and what it means for our students’ homework and assessments. Only today did I remind teachers to not give homework tonight or tests tomorrow. I apologize and I promise to do better next time. If your child feels pressured to get work done tonight and your family is celebrating in some way, Mr. Marcotte has given them permission to not do their homework tonight.

We continue to live through an irregular pattern of days off. This past Tuesday was a very productive professional day for our RJ Grey staff. We hope it was a good day for our students at home. Next Thursday, we are closed for Veterans Day. Huge shout out to any Veterans who are part of our RJ Grey community - we thank you for your service.

Here are some upcoming dates at RJ Grey:

-Thursday, November 11: No School - Veterans’ Day

-Monday, November 15: Early Release at 1pm

-Monday, November 15: School Council Meeting #2 (Zoom link)

-Wednesday, November 24: Early Release for Thanksgiving (11:10 am)