Bates Family Newsletter

I hope you're staying warm today! Shout out to our custodians who have been hard at work clearing the property for a safe return tomorrow. We enjoyed a 3-day week last week where students and teachers worked hard to get back into the swing of our school-day routines. This week is a full week, and we look forward to hearing from many families regarding our latest initiative, Spotlight Families!

Please consider signing up to be a "Spotlight Family"!

Twice a month, two of our wonderful families will be featured on our morning announcements that are shared each day to build community in our school as well as in our family newsletter. Our hope is that this will create new friendships, bring us closer as a community, and help us celebrate the beautiful diversity that we have here at Bates. It ties in with our new motto: "Believe, Be you, Belong, at Bates!".

Families will have two options from which to choose:

Option 1: Your family will be interviewed on Zoom by our Family Engagement Facilitator, Rosalyn Guevara. She will ask your family a few questions, such as, "What is your cultural background? What are your family's traditions? What does your family do for fun?" If you choose this Zoom option, Ms. Roz will reach out to you to schedule a time for the interview.

Option 2: If you prefer not to be recorded as a family, you can create a poster with family photos and answers to the questions listed above. You can also feel free to add details of your choice! Your student(s) will be recorded at school explaining the pictures you included on your family's poster. The poster will be returned after your student(s) are recorded. If you want to come to school and be recorded with your student to be recorded, let us know!

We all belong at Bates! Let's celebrate our community in this special way by getting as many families as we can to participate in this project. Interested? Fil in this Google Form, and Ms. Roz will reach out to you. Please sign up here today!

STUDENT CODE OF CONDUCT:

Students in the Salem Public Schools are expected to treat all members of their school and district-wide community with dignity and respect. A school community includes anyone who attends, works in, or interacts within the school. Students, teachers, administrators, school adjustment counselors, paraprofessionals, custodians, secretaries, cafeteria workers, parent/guardian volunteers, and school visitors are all considered members of a school community.

All members of the school community have a responsibility to conduct themselves in a way that demonstrates respect for all individuals, their rights and their property. All members of the school community must also understand and support the standards of conduct of the school and assist in the enforcement of rules and regulations. Students are expected to be safe, responsible, and respectful throughout the school day, at the bus stop, in the cafeteria, on the playground, and in the classroom. This behavior is also expected during all curricular, co-curricular, athletic and special events of the school, both on and off campus, including school-sponsored trips and those times when school buses or other school-provided transportation is used.

A student’s participation in co-curricular, athletic, or other school or district events is a privilege, not a right or entitlement. Such activities include but are not limited to dances, proms, athletics, theater, and musical events. Failure to meet the Salem Public Schools code of conduct, both while in school and in the community, may result in revocation of such privileges, including the possibility of further penalties according to the Salem Public Schools discipline policy.

These rules and regulations may be supplemented by those developed by each individual school and/or classroom teacher. The academic success and safety of students are contingent upon students maintaining appropriate and responsible behavior. The discipline procedures for students with disabilities shall follow applicable state and federal laws.

Please see the SPS code of conduct and student discipline in the Policy handbook.

Emotional Awareness

We'll continue talking talking about emotions and emotional awareness this week. Looking forward to hearing many perspectives on our morning announcements.

This month, the focus is on “Managing Myself”- being able to have a handle on our emotions and actions. With so many skills involved in managing oneself, a great place to start is having emotional awareness- understanding what emotions are,that we all have various emotions, we may show them differently and thinking about how others might be feeling.

One way we can help our students better understand emotions is by naming them, discussing them, and modeling stating our emotions in a respectful and natural way using “I am” statements or “I feel….”

Helping our students increase their vocabulary for words associated with emotions is another great step. Lucky for us, there are many different ways to express emotions: We can say “happy, ecstatic, content, merry, cheerful, etc.” and there are just as many ways to describe other emotions such as sad, angry, embarrassed, excited.

(A great game to play is to state an emotion and think of how many different ways it can be said!)

We can all help our students (and ourselves) better understand emotions by stopping to think how we are feeling at a given moment. We can also think about how another person might be feeling at a certain time during a movie, a book, or a real life situation.

(Emojis are a fun way to identify how you are feeling! 😀)

We can take this even further by asking our students why we think another is feeling a certain way. Are there eyes open or squinted, are their teeth clenched, etc?

(A great game to play is charades! The students got a chance to play on 1/4/23 in their classrooms. A student would act out an emotion without using words and the others had to guess what it was! You can do this easily at home for some laughs and learning!)

Being able to understand how one is feeling is such an important life skill- now and later in life!

By talking about emotions more openly, we allow our students to better understand themselves and others and allow them to feel more comfortable talking to us!

A great resource for helping us help our kids with their emotional awareness:

https://www.pbs.org/parents/learn-grow/all-ages/emotions-self-awareness

Save the date...fun for all😀

Join us in the library from 6-7pm. New members always welcome!

The school menus are posted on the SPS website. Find them here.

Our multilingual learners will start their Access testing tomorrow! If your student is an ML, we wish them the very best of luck in this testing. We are so proud of all our multilingual learners!

Reminders:

We ask that students wear shoes that have backings. Slides and crocs are not safe for the school playground. There have been many accidents from students not having backings on their shoes. Sneakers are the best option when in school.

We want to be sure that if students are healthy, they are in school! Our chronic attendance rate is climbing, so please do your best to send your learners to school. Check out that grade 2 number, however. Wow! Shout out to you, second grade families.

Please visit the Salem Public Schools webpage here for guidance on the district's homework policy.

Before winter break, students engaged in a community service project. They created cards for first responders, patients in the hospital and the elderly in nursing homes, to name a few. We shine our light on others, and that feels good.

Did you know you can earn money for our school just by scanning your grocery receipts? All you need to do is download the Boxtops app, and scan those receipts! Don't want to scan? No worries, you can always send receipts into school with your student in an envelope marked, "PTO Boxtops".

Again, we're stressing that if you MUST leave your car during drop off, pull up past the school entrance and drive as far down the sidewalk as possible. Adults are exiting vehicles close to "the rock" causing a cars to back up into the street. This is unsafe. Please follow the drop off rules.

Our Bates spirit rock is available for weekly rentals. Celebrate your student's birthday or other accomplishments by painting a message on our rock. Please click here to rent the rock!

Bates Elementary School, in partnership with our families and community, will provide all students with a culturally responsive, student – centered, and equitable learning experience that celebrates our students’ diverse backgrounds, creative pursuits, and their academic, social, emotional success.