Welcome to our second Quarterly Newsletter. We are a Community School, which means we are the hub of the neighborhood that looks to unite educators, community partners, and families to provide all students with top-quality academics, enrichment, health, social services, and opportunities to learn and thrive.

As a school, we have a couple Wildly Important Goals. Our ELA goal is that we will grow from 14% of students reading at grade level, to 50%. Our Math goal is that we will grow from 11% of students on grade level to 55%. All K-2 students are engaging in WIG journals.Our scholars will write their own Wildly Important Goal for reading and math. They will track their actions and help to hold each other accountable.

Dennard Mitchell is a Student Retention Specialist, National Best-Selling Author, and International Education Motivational Speaker. His mission is to help schools, colleges, and student organizations to increase the engagement, retention, and success of their students and staff. Dennard Mitchell will be meeting with all of our students and staff on March 16, 2023. We are also having a special dinner event during which Mr. Mitchell will be looking forward to doing a presentation and meeting with parents. Parents, please join us on March 16 at 5:30 pm. We will be giving out raffles to very special gifts during this parent night event. Save the date and time, more information is forthcoming. We hope to see all of you there! RSVP below.

LitWorld founded World Read Aloud Day® in 2010 to celebrate the power of reading aloud to create community and amplify new stories, and to advocate for literacy as a foundational human right. Since then, World Read Aloud Day has evolved into a global movement of millions of readers, writers, and listeners from communities all across the world coming together to honor the joy and power of reading and sharing stories, and continue expanding the definition and scope of global literacy. World Read Aloud Day was a success! The community came together to read aloud in every classroom in English and in Spanish. Students, staff, foster grandparents, community partners, teachers, and staff had a great day hearing a diverse number of great titles from PreK-6. we're looking forward to next year.

We partnered this past month with Merill Lynch Wealth Management. There generous donations helped to further sustain our food pantry for families in need. Thank you Merill Lynch Wealth Management. We very much are looking forward to our continual partnership at School 33.

Our 5th graders had a great time visiting East and now our 6th graders will be attending a field trip to East high school on February 13 to learn more about the great programs offered.

We had an awesome Holiday Concert, thank you for all who came to see your children sing or play! We are getting ready for School 33’s Black History Concert on March 2nd, and will send information home as we get closer to the date. Students are back into their normal routine of coming to lessons with Mr. Wiessner and Mrs. Mixer, learning how to read and play music, while all students are loving going to general music with Mr. Phinney and Mrs. Johnson. Mr. Phinney just finished up a drumming unit, ask your kids to show you their new skills! Mrs. Johnson has a new student teacher, Ms. D’Angelo, the kids are being really patient as she learns how to be an awesome music teacher!

The library will undergo exciting changes this spring. We’ve received funding to provide new furnishing that will add color, comfort,and coziness to our already wonderful library. We’ve also received funding to add more multicultural books, graphic novels, and other resources to get students excited about reading! If you would like to find a way to give to the school, we are always in need of volunteers at the library. If you are interested, contact me, Shawn McConnell, the school librarian at shawn.mcconnell@rcsdk12.org.

On Jan 20th, the Pillars of Hope ran “Calvin’s Classroom Clash; a Family Feud style game with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life as the subject matter. The Scholars prepared by reviewing the movie “Our Friend Martin '' and working through Dr. King's contribution to the Civil Rights Movement with Mrs. Calvin. Everyone had a great time learning about Dr. King’s sacrificial contributions. The Pillars will be back next month to share our perspective of Black History Month. This has led us in preparing our 6th grade class to attend two very special field trips this year to the Rochester Museum & Science Center in the end of April and the Public Central library in the end of May. We will be sending parents further information as we get closer to those dates.

The PTA hosted Cash: Creating Assets, Savings & Hope. Empire Justice will be providing a workshop on February 6, 2023 from 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm on Taxes 101: Getting Ready for Tax Season. Click on the CASH icon to access Empire Justice site. Cash is currently taking tax prep appointments at this time. Parents can leave a voicemail and a staff member will return calls to schedule an appointment. You may also schedule your appointment at www.cashtaxprep2022.as.me. The site has been open since January 24th.

• Prior-year tax returns (before 2022) will only be performed in March.
• You can free-file your own taxes on the IRS website: www.irs.gov/freefile
• If you have received a letter from the IRS, please call us at (585) 900-1004 to schedule an appointment to meet with one of our trained tax professionals. You must leave a voicemail in order to receive a return call.

Connected Communities would like to Celebrate Black History Month throughout the Month of February with the community we serve! Click on the picture to the right or below to RSVP and we will see you there!

We are currently in our 12th week of program. Our garden literacy activities have been extremely exciting! Scholars thus far have engaged in gardening activities that focus on the importance of seeds, observing different types of seeds (size, shape, color, etc…), reading literature on the essentials of gardening, garden poetry, learning about Swiss Chard, growing lettuce, and being introduced to soil pods.During the Integrated Reading Curriculum scholars are currently reading:

Level I’s (1st-3rd):
Mama The Alien/Mamá la Extraterrestre by René Colato Lainez

Book Daily Theme (underlying message): Appearances can be deceiving

Book Focus Skill: Homonyms

Level II’s (4th-5th):

When Grandmama Sings by Margaree King Mitchell

Book Daily Theme (underlying message): Experiencing segregation

Book Focus Skill: Symbolism

The rich discussions that scholars are having with servant leaders about plot, setting, and characters are always in great detail! They enjoy applying prior knowledge to every text.

The Encompass Resources for Learning after school program held its family night celebration on January 11, 2023. This was our first family night since the pandemic and we were very happy to have families, friends and school staff celebrate in person all the wonderful work the students in the program did. There were displays and presentations on the rain forest, animals, simple machines, plants and natural disasters. There were also incredible performances from our step club and dance club!

Our Foster Grandparents help our students to further develop the academic and life skills that are critical to their development and future successes. They share their time and experience to help our students in reading, school readiness, tackle tough subjects, and make decisions that keep them on the right path. Let's give a warm welcome to our foster grandparents, Ms. Oviedo, Ms. Rivero, Mr. Rodriguez, Ms. Sanchez, and Ms. Rivera from Community Place. Thank you for spending time with our students. We truly appreciate all of you.

We’ve continued hosting play sessions with three of School #33’s wonderful kindergarten classes through The Strong National Museum of Play’s G2 program. Each child is paired with a trained volunteer and given the chance to have a 30-minute play session. We provide all the toys, games, and craft materials, and all the play is child-directed, which means the children lead the games, rules, and projects. It’s a great chance for our play buddies to explore their interests and ideas and for them to form strong bonds with the play buddies that they meet with each week. If you’re interested in getting involved or learning more about our program, please reach out to Jake Dyson at 585-410-6318 or by email at jrdyson@museumofplay.org.

We are in full swing with our partnership with Greater Rochester Soap Box Derby. During our CYAP (Center for Youth Afterschool Program), students have built and designed their own mini-cars.Two students won trophies for best design and fastest car. Additionally, we were able to start our Robotics Club. Our afterschool participants, who sign-up for robotics, are working on building their very own robot! Lastly, we held our first Family Night on Friday, January 6th for our Winter Wonderland Celebration. Student-led stations of gingerbread house making, cocoa station, cookie decorating and chocolate fondue/fruit station were enjoyed by our students and 14 family guests. All wall decorations (posters and banners) were designed by our students!

The School Based Health Center continues to offer flu shots to students to help prevent illness. We are available for illness visits every day-we can test for flu, covid, strep, and rsv! The SBHC is piloting a telehealth program called TYTO. We are offering a device that you use at home and have telehealth visits to students with asthma. If your family is interested, please call 482-9290 ex 8118 to discuss how to pick up the device. Looking ahead, any 5 go 6 student or 6 go 7 student will need required immunizations (Tdap and Menactra) and a physical for the next school year. We are happy to do the physical and will send a consent home for the necessary immunizations. A copy of the physical and immunizations will be sent home and records are shared with your pediatrician and school nurse. Please enroll here! Or call the SBHC at 482-9290 ex 8112 for an appointment.

Parents and teachers, find interactive, grade-level appropriate literacy games with your children. PBS Kids has a great collection of engaging activites online for you. Access games, videos shows and more by clicking on the PBS Kids for Parents picture.

The NYSAA-ACE Friday Coffee Club continues to be a huge success. Staff are enjoying the end of week treat and our students are gaining valuable real-life work skills. The Holiday Craft Fair was wonderful and we were close to selling out! Thank you to all of the staff and students that came to shop!

John James Audubon School 33 will be working on a special project. We will be having multiclolred bilingual Social emotional signs and grade-level math equations on every step in our building. We have a total of 8 staircases, each staircase with a total of 44 steps from the first floor up to the third floor. If you do the math, what are the total steps that will require signs like the picture below? Yes! 352 steps. Nice job!

We are currently working on a new partnership with Dr. Marie Watkins of Nazareth College’s School of Social Work. We are closely looking at how we can engage two classes in a Community Youth Development service-learning project with the third-grade students at School #33 and the Community Youth Development students in the GET REAL with Youth class at Nazareth College. The goals of the 5-week experience include:

1. interaction with the students in a manner that supports the school’s curriculum to enhance social and emotional learning;
2. an opportunity to engage your students within project-based learning that results in some type of experiential learning that supports our curricular goals;
3. the possibility of a tour of the campus and opportunities for the School #33 students to engage with college students to share realities of being college-bound and college-ready even in elementary school.

As you have heard many times, our school is a well oiled machine. Let's keep pouring that oil and trucking along!