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September 26, 2024 

Good afternoon, RJ Grey Families:

Before I begin my typical blog-style writing, I wanted to let you know about a Health-related topic at RJ Grey.

It has come to our attention that one case of whooping cough (pertussis) was identified within our RJ Grey Junior High School community. If your child has been determined to be a close contact of this individual, you will be contacted by the Acton Board of Health for further guidance.   

A clinical advisory has been issued by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health regarding pertussis which can be found here.  Please contact your child’s primary care provider if you have any questions or concerns or if your child is showing symptoms of pertussis.  Please click on this link to learn more about pertussis and its signs and symptoms to watch for. 

As always, you are welcome to contact our RJ Grey nurses if you have questions or concerns. Please note that the school nurses need to be mindful of confidentiality and will be limited in what information can be shared.  

For my more typical updates:

'Tis the season of Back to School Nights for public schools. I hope you will join us on Thursday, October 17 for RJ Grey's Back to School Night. Starting at 7 pm, we'll have you follow your child's schedule where you'll get to hear from your child's teachers in 10-minute increments. We'll send out more info and schedules as we get closer. I visited my oldest daughter's 5th grade classroom last night for her Back to School Night. It was helpful for me to hear from her teacher, see where she sits, see some of her work on the walls, and check out her desk - it was surprisingly well organized! I hope you'll be able to join us on the 17th!

I am grateful to the individuals who expressed interest in joining the RJ Grey School Council this year. Our returning 8th grade reps are Eden Dunckel and Julie Schwartz. They will be joined by our incoming 7th grade reps: Erica Brown Soto, Krishan Kumar, and Kate Elliot Mayers. The School Council will meet seven times this year and we'll talk about all things related to RJ Grey. The School Council gets to hear about what we're working on and I rely on what they hear in the parent/guardian community. The goal is to work together to make this school a great learning environment for your children. You are always welcome to join a meeting. Check out our School Council site for dates and a Zoom address. 

You might have heard from your child about our evacuation drill yesterday afternoon. Every year, we combine one of our required fire drills with an off-site evacuation drill. If we need to leave our building and gather somewhere else during an emergency, our procedure is to walk to the Parker Damon building. Yesterday afternoon, we took over the gym and cafeteria of the McCarthy-Towne and Merriam schools - all planned for a time when those schools had already released for the day. All went as planned and we are pleased that our students have gone through the procedures in case we ever need to use them in a real emergency. We have now completed at least the first of each of our planned drills this year. We'll have at least two more fire drills and one more ALICE drill, but we now have at least a few weeks ahead of us without a planned safety drill. September is a hard month to gain much momentum in the classroom due to many planned interruptions. Here's hoping for a few weeks of calm, engaged learning at RJ Grey!

Finally, with a few weeks under our belts, I want to reshare the processes for late arrivals and early dismissals. We do ask that you let us know if you are dismissing your student ahead of time. This will prevent you from needing to wait if you arrive to dismiss your child. Please see our website with any questions!

Please check out the important dates below. I hope you have a great weekend!

Jim

Thursday, Oct 3: No School for Rosh Hashanah

Monday, Oct 7: Early Release at 1 pm

Tuesday, Oct 8: School Council Mtg #1, 7 pm

Wednesday, Oct 9: Minuteman High School Assemblies for 8th graders

Friday, Oct 11: Pajama Day at RJ Grey

Monday, Oct 14: No School for Indigenous Peoples' Day

Thursday, Oct 17: Back to School Night at RJ Grey, 7 - 9 pm
Posted by jmarcotte  On Sep 27, 2024 at 12:05 PM
  
September 12, 2024 

Good afternoon, RJ Grey Families:




I hope you have been enjoying the beautiful weather that we've had recently. I'm only hoping that we don't have to pay for it this winter. On Monday, we opened up our cafeteria courtyard as an option for students to eat their lunches. Our Phys Ed classes have been able to be outside most days, and I haven't yet needed my umbrella during the morning drop-off routine. All is good with the world!




On my best days as a principal, I get to wander in and out of classrooms to see what our kids are learning. During my travels this morning, I was able to see 8th graders working on creating shared gifs in their Dig Lit class. Students in 7th grade Health worked together on a word search to find the names of all of their classmates in an effort to build a classroom community. In 7th grade English, students analyzed the poem, Oranges, for use of color and other imagery. And in 7th grade Math, students were practicing and learning about positive and negative numbers. My 30-minute walkthrough showed me that our students are engaged in learning lots of important things throughout their day. I hope your students happily report that they've moved past learning classroom routines, and have now entered the part of the year where they are learning and thinking about new and exciting topics!

On Tuesday, we administered the iReady reading assessment to our students. Next Tuesday, we'll give the math assessment to all students. This particular tool is helpful as we get to know your students as learners. Our mantra as a school for the past three years has been, "Building a joyful, inclusive community of engaged learners." This year, we are focusing deeply on engaged learning and all that comes with it. 

At the end of September, when we have iReady data, MCAS results from last spring, and a month or so of knowing your students, we will begin working with some students in small groups during Directed Study. Over the past six months, we've been working to bring to life a Math Workshop and ELA Workshop for our students. If your child is selected to be part of one of these workshop classes, you'll hear from me. As a general description, we are going to look at our data on student learning and determine which students would benefit from some additional time with a content teacher to fill in some gaps in learning. For example, we may realize that a small group of five students would benefit from a thorough review of adding fractions. Another group may need intense practice with working with decimals. We'll select those students and have them start attending a Math Workshop during our Directed Study period for a 6-week session. The goal is to build skills and make sure students are on the path to being proficient at their grade level over time. More to come on our Workshop classes!

If you haven't already done so, please sign up to receive our Daily Announcements email. Please click this link to join our group.

Take care,

Jim
Posted by jmarcotte  On Sep 12, 2024 at 1:59 PM
  
September 5, 2024 

Good afternoon, RJ Grey Families:


I hope you are doing well and adjusting to the routines that come with a new school year. We continue to enjoy working with your kids every day. They bring great energy and a general level of respect for their peers, teachers, and school. We are off to a good start!


I am sure most of you are aware of another tragic incident of school violence yesterday in Georgia. I read briefly about the incident on my phone while at school yesterday and felt an immediate sense of sorrow. Last night, while flipping through channels when my kids were in bed, I stopped briefly on a news network where the reporter was interviewing students at the school. I could only watch for about a minute before I turned the channel. My whole life is connected to schools. I have been in schools for 180 days or more every year for about the last 38 years. My wife works as a teacher and my three kids attend school every day, just like yours. Continuing to see occasions of terrible violence in schools is shocking and shakes me every time. I chose to watch a rerun of the 80's classic The Golden Girls for a few minutes to change my mood. It worked.


On Friday and again on Tuesday, I led grade-level student assemblies on all things "safety" at RJ Grey. I talked with students about fire drills, showed them maps of our school, and talked through the ALICE protocol for how we would respond if we were ever faced with a school intruder intending to do harm in our building. Students then had a chance to return to homeroom to talk in smaller groups about the specifics of locking down in a classroom, evacuation routes, and other important procedures. We will have several drills this year to help practice our safety routines. Our first fire drill will be tomorrow. We'll have 4 fire drills this year. We'll also have two ALICE drills this year - the first will take place next week.


In addition to locked doors, emergency plans, and technical responses, our overall approach to providing a safe school environment is that we are the safest when we know our students well and we have open lines of communication. When we spend time building relationships with kids through classes, Advisory, clubs, sports, and in other ways, we hope that students build trust to communicate with us when they know something is unsafe or dangerous. Having open communication between our students and their teachers and between our students and you is paramount. If you are ever privy to information that is important for us to know, especially if it relates to school safety, I implore you to be in touch with me or a member of our admin team.


Cartwheel Webinar

We continue to work with Cartwheel Care to provide mental health support to students. Cartwheel will offer sessions for caregivers throughout the year. The first is coming up on Tuesday, September 10:

Topic: The Relationship Between ADHD and Learning Disorders

Date: September 10, 2024

Time: 7:00 PM ET

Location: Zoom

Registration: LINK

Fifty percent of youth with ADHD also have a coexisting disorder or diagnosis, such as anxiety, depression, or learning disorders, such as dyslexia. What are the impacts on students who have both ADHD and learning disorders? What can we as parents, caregivers, and school staff do to support kids who may have coexisting symptoms?

Parent Square

469 of you have signed up to receive our Daily Announcements email. If you haven't already done so, please sign up to receive our Daily Announcements email. Please click this link to join our group.


I am very aware that with the start of the school year, you are receiving lots of messages. I see them from my own kids' schools, too. If you haven't already done so, please take a look at your settings in Parent Square. You can refine how and when you receive messages from RJ Grey. You may want to turn off the text feature if you have the app notifications, as an example. Start here if you'd like to learn more about Parent Square and update your settings. If you have any questions, please let me know!


SBIRT - 7th grade families only

In March of 2016, the state legislature enacted H4056, commonly called the “STEP Act.” This legislation is in direct response to the opioid crisis and is an effort to provide tighter controls on addictive drugs and additional education about substance abuse. As part of the educational component, this legislation requires all public school districts to utilize a screening tool approved by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH), and to conduct the screening annually to all students in two different grade levels. At Acton-Boxborough, students in 7th and 9th grade will participate in the screening.

Our 7th grade Health program currently includes a brief unit that introduces topics related to substance use and abuse, and discusses issues related to the use and consumption of nicotine, alcohol and marijuana. Our plan is to include the screening tool during the final lesson of the unit, and involve our counselors and nurses in the delivery of the lesson and completion of the screening tool. Students will be asked to complete a written version of the screening tool which includes a series of questions about exposure and use of specific substances. For your review, I am including a copy of the screening questions with this letter. The screening form will be reviewed by the counselor and nurse, and students may be invited for a follow-up conversation if they indicate an interest in meeting or if their responses meet a set of criteria that the District has established. Please know that parents/guardians of any student who participates in a follow-up meeting for any reason will be contacted by the nurse or counselor. As for when this might take place for your child, students are scheduled to be enrolled in Health class (as part of the Physical Education program) at different points in the year. Some are currently in Health, others may not attend until later in the Spring.

Families will have the right to opt their child out of participating in the screening portion of the SBIRT lesson. If you wish to opt your child out of the screening portion, please email Assistant Principal Elizabeth Broadwater ([email protected]) and submit that request. Regardless of when your child is scheduled for Health class, opt-out requests need to be submitted by September 26, 2024.


Take care,

Jim

Posted by jmarcotte  On Sep 05, 2024 at 2:31 PM
  
 
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